 GAZA - A Palestinian human rights group marked the World Day against the Death Penalty Tuesday by calling on the Palestine Authority to abolish the punishment, along with the military courts who issue them in lightning trials.
| You can't have a fatwa without the death penalty! |
The state security courts violate human rights, because they allow no appeals against their sentences to a higher body, deny access to effective legal counsel and their trials are summary, said a statement issued by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR).
| And always applied against suspected collaborators. |
It said that since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, at least 76 death sentences had been issued in the Palestinian autonomous areas.
President Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree last summer ordering that criminals convicted to death at the military courts receive retrials in civil courts. But the rights group called on Abbas to abolish the courts altogether, as well as the penal law allowing the death penalty.
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