The death penalty: UN victory puts total abolition within our grasp

Abstract

On 18 December 2007, the United Nations General Assembly voted for a moratorium on executions as a step towards the total abolition of capital punishment. The eradication of capital punishment has been spectacular in the last three decades and over 135 countries have now abolished the death penalty in law or practice. The end of the death penalty may be in site. Amnesty International argues that this outmoded and barbaric form of punishment belongs in the past and looks forward to a world free from state judicial killing. Two weeks after his 18th birthday in 2006, Sina Paymard was taken to the gallows to be executed in Iran. As he stood there with a noose around his neck, he was asked for his final request. He said that he would like to play the ney – a Middle Eastern flute. Relatives of the murder victim, who were there to witness the execution, were so moved by his music that they agreed to accept the payment of diyeh (blood money) instead of retribution by death, as is allowed under Iranian law. The noose was removed and he was taken down from the gallows. Sina Paymard was granted a stay of execution while his family and his victim's family negotiated payment of diyeh. Although Sina Paymard remains today under sentence of death in Reja'i Shahr prison in Karaj, his story offers a rare glimmer of humanity in the brutal world of state killings. Sina Paymard's story is unusual. Iran executes hundreds of people every year.