A global human rights watchdog urged South Sudan to stop executing people held in death rows in Juba, Wau and Malakal.
In December, South Sudan was among 111 member states that voted in favour of a U.N. General Assembly resolution calling for a moratorium on the death penalty.Amnesty International said more than 200 prisoners are on death row, shackled and crowded into cramped and dirty cells.
Jan Erik Wetzel, an adviser on the death penalty to Amnesty, told Associated Press that the rights group was calling on the government of South Sudan to heed their own call at the United Nations and implement it at home and suspend all further executions.
He asked also the Government to review the use of the death penalty with possible abolition in future.
Last September South Sudan’s permanent representative in Geneva, Riek Puok Riek, told the U.N. Human Rights Council that “South Sudan agrees with … the logic of abolishing the death penalty.”
He added that the process could be approached gradually.