Jurists: Death penalty law is available… but the problem rests with manner of its implementation

A host of University professors stressed on Monday at the Faculty of Law at the University of Mohamed Tahiri in Béchar, (south-western Algeria) the existence in the Algerian legal apparatus of a law providing for the meting out of the penalty against murderers and criminals but this law, they said, has been frozen for many years now because of the huge leverage against capital punishment exerted worldwide by many international organizations and associations.

They noted in this connection that certain countries like the United States haven’t toed the line of these world organizations and associations by implementing the death penalty against those found guilty of serious criminal offences.

This came out during freewheeling discussions among these university professors on the burning topic of the abduction of children and how to handle the media coverage of this type of heinous crimes as part of a seminar held at the Béchar Faculty of law in the presence of the public prosecutor of Béchar province and other high-profile magistrates.

In this regard, the participants widely criticized the untoward practices of some ill-advised media outlets in dealing with such sensitive issues, stressing that the rush of the latter to get a scoop sometimes has an adverse  impact on the course of the inquiry, either by “allowing” those involved in the crimes of children to escape or by giving them a chance to obliterate or tamper with evidence of such horrendous crimes, thus warping the judicial investigations, as they put it.

They further asserted that the death penalty law exists in the Algerian legal system concerning the abduction and killing of children by criminals and murderers but the hitch now rests with how it should be duly implemented as part of efforts to stamp out this evil phenomenon in the Algerian society.