Death Penalty To Face Growing Crime

Debate over the application of the death penalty in Algeria returned to the fore, and this was reflected in the “heated” debate at the international forum that was organized by the Boumerdès District Council (eastern Algiers).

Lawyers, judges, regional prosecutors from several provinces and delegations from foreign countries were divided between supporters of the return to application of the death penalty, in light of the growing crime, and between the delay due to the sensitivity of the subject.

Head of the Lawyers Association of Boumerdes (Eastern Algeria), member of the International Federation of Lawyers, Ahmed Ben Antar, said in his intervention, that the topic was chosen from the point of view that the debate is still open and raging about the implementation of the death penalty, based on the different positions of the minds of thought, politics and law in each society and the debate develops based on the evolution of the legal system of each country.

Calls for applying the death penalty rigorously is escalating whenever serious crimes appear on the surface as a means of deterrence, which makes dealing with the issue substantive, and does not contradict with the logic of abolition of punishment in response to the political and legal requirements of each country.

Lawyer Ahmed Ben Antar, said the debate intensified after the emergence of some crimes such as kids abduction, as the civil society calls for the need to activate the implementation of the death penalty that is provided for in the Penal Code and that is frozen, after Algeria ratified a recommendation that is issued by the United Nations in 2007.

On the other hand, chairman of the Federation of Lawyers Organizations in Algeria, Ahmed Saii, said that the abolition of this penalty, which was suspended for 30 years, is gradually being carried out in many crimes, but the penal code is still stipulated in serious crimes and its final abolition requires intellectual maturity and acceptance with all components of society.

Vice president of the Tunisian People’s Deputies Association, Abdelfattah Mourou, asserted the importance of working to spread public awareness of the society under each crime, which means resorting to execution as a punishment for “the biggest crime”.

Chairman of the Bar Association of Morocco Casablanca, considered the death penalty a “formidable problem that preoccupies Moroccan public opinion, as is the case in Algeria between retention and abolition”.

“There is no need to this penalty if it is neither activated not abolished. Death penalty should not be reactivated in Morocco. At least WE agree in this position with Algeria”.

For his part, the representative of the Minister of Justice, Hafed Lakhdari Mohammed, called for the need to discuss this issue objectively to reach a consensus away from the subjective and biased positions, that often surround this issue when raised in tense conditions in response to the commission of heinous crimes.

“Death penalty could not be shortened in some legal articles because it had social, political and cultural dimensions, and any decisive step in that matter needs to create the reasons and circumstances for the realization of any progress”.