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Abbas agrees to end death penalty, but Hamas objects

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has signed a protocol to abolish the death penalty, but the measure faces opposition in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas continues to support the sentence.
Palestinian families of those killed in violence in the Gaza Strip, protest in support of executing criminals outside a conference being held by non-governmental organisations on the occasion of the World Day Against the Death Penalty, in Gaza City, on October 9, 2013. The Gaza Strip's Islamist rulers Hamas hanged a prisoner today who had been convicted of murder, its interior ministry said, despite international calls for a halt to executions. Under Palestinian law, collaboration with Israel, murder and dr
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GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Palestine is joining 102 countries that have abolished the death penalty and 33 others that have suspended it. On June 6, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed documents to accede to seven international conventions and treaties, including one on abolition of the death penalty. Abbas instructed Foreign Minister Riad Malki to handle the procedures to implement these conventions.

Abbas signed the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted by the UN in 1989, aimed at abolishing the death penalty and stipulating, “No one within the jurisdiction of a state party to the present protocol shall be executed,” and “each state party shall take all necessary measures to abolish the death penalty within its jurisdiction.”

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