Arusha, 11 July 2007 (FH) - The Rwandan Senate voted Tuesday to abolish the death penalty, a bill that was initiated by the ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), it was learnt on Wednesday morning.\u00a0
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\n"The Senate voted yesterday (Tuesday) on the bill abolishing the death penalty", reported Wednesday morning, the state run radio, Radio Rwanda, received by the Hirondelle agency in Arusha, Tanzania.
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\nThe radio underlined in a news bulletin that the bill was adopted unanimously by the senators present.
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\nAll that remains is for President Paul Kagame to sign the bill, which his party is at the origin, into law.
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\nAccording to this bill, all persons sentenced to capital punishment who are currently in prison, approximately 600, will see their sentence commuted to life in prison.
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\nHowever, certain categories of persons sentenced to life in prison, in particular those found guilty of genocide, are not eligible for a presidential pardon nor can they have their sentences commuted, added the radio referring to the new law.
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\nThis law lies notably within the scope of Rwanda\u2019s preparation to accommodate defendants who will possibly be transferred from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) or who will be extradited from other countries.
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\nThe ICTR, which the Security Council has asked to finish its trials by next year, has to transfer some cases to national jurisdictions, including Rwanda.
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\nOne of the principal conditions required by the ICTR for a country wishing to try defendants is not to apply the death penalty.
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\nThe last executions of persons sentenced to death in Rwanda goes back to 24 April 1998, date on which 22 people who had been found guilty of genocide were publicly shot.
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\n\u00a9 Hirondelle News Agency<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arusha, 11 July 2007 (FH) - The Rwandan Senate voted Tuesday to abolish the death penalty, a bill that was initiated by the ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), it was learnt on Wednesday morning.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-18886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hirondellenews"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n