King Mswati III’s Swaziland government is in search of a hangman so prisoners presently on death row may be executed.
The Swazi Minister
of Justice and Constitutional Affairs Chief Mgwagwa Gamedze said a job vacancy
advert would be placed as soon as possible.
Gamedze told the Weekend Observer, a newspaper in effect
owned by King Mswati, an advert had been placed last year but no suitable
applicants had put their name forward.
The Observer reported that taxpayers, who
they did not name, had complained about the cost of keeping death-row inmates
in prison.
Gamedze said his
ministry was waiting for permission to place the hangman’s advert again. Immediately
they got the instruction, they would definitely re-advertise the post, the Observer reported him saying.
The Observer said, ‘Some of the concerned
members of the public’ (again, who they did not name) wanted to see David
Simelane, who had been sentenced to death last year (2012) for killing 28
people, executed. At least five other people are thought to be waiting
execution in Swaziland.
The Observer said families to victims (who
they did not name) ‘who were murdered by the convicts … said they were
comforted when the courts issued the [death] sentences but it pained them to
see that the convicts were still enjoying full benefits for inmates at the
correctional institutions’.
In October
2011, Swaziland was heavily criticised at the UN Universal
Periodic Review into human rights in the kingdom for continuing to have
the death penalty. Gamedze told the UN that although the death penalty
existed in Swaziland the last execution had been in 1983. He said this showed
that the kingdom was abolitionist in practice.
See also
DEATH PENALTY TEST FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
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