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Chief Justice commutes four death sentences

Jun 05, 2012 News

 

Four death row inmates have had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment by Chief Justice Ian Chang.
They include Noel Thomas, who, along with Abdool Saleem Yassin, was sentenced to death in 1992 for the murder of Yassin’s younger brother, Abdool Kaleem Yassin. The younger Yassin was shot dead in his Riverstown, Essequibo home on March 19, 1987.
The elder brother had hatched the murder plot to get his hands on his brother’s inheritance. Thomas was implicated as the hit-man.  Abdool Saleem Yassin died in prison in 2002 from tuberculosis.
Thomas has been waging a legal fight to commute the sentence to life imprisonment. The alleged hit-man and his co-accused had successfully appealed to the UN Human Rights Committee, which recommended their immediate release from prison.
However, Guyana subsequently withdrew from the UN Optional Protocol on Civil and Political Rights, then re-subscribed with a reservation preventing convicted murderers from appealing to the body.
Justice Chang’s ruling yesterday followed appeals by Thomas’s lawyer, Nigel Hughes and Attorneys Jainarayan Singh and Ronald Burch-Smith, which stated that the men’s extended incarceration on Death Row amounted to inhumane treatment.
The other three death row inmates who had their sentences commuted are Lawrence Chan, who was sentenced to death in 1995, Rabindranauth Deo, Attorney Jainarayan Singh’s client, and Muntaz Ali, who was represented by Attorney-at-law Burch-Smith.
Both Chan and Deo had their death warrants read to them on February 3, 2000. Two other Death Row inmates Oral Hendricks and Ganga Deolall also had their warrants read to them on the same day. None was ever executed but lived under the shadow of the gallows all those years.
Muntaz Ali, and Terrence Sahadeo, were condemned to death for the 1985 murder of 18-year-old Roshana Kassim of Sheet Anchor, East Canje. They had been convicted with Shireen Khan.
They have been in prison for over 27 years.
Shireen Khan died at the New Amsterdam Female Prison in December 2009. One other female remains on Death Row.
Chan, who has been on death row since 1995, was charged, along with his brothers John and Godfrey Rodrigues, with the murders of Raphael Seecharran and Ramo.
In an appeal in November, 2010, Chan, through his attorneys, claimed that being under the threat of execution by hanging for such a long time was inhuman and /or degrading punishment and in breach of his fundamental rights as guaranteed by Article 141 of the Constitution of Guyana.
The accused also stated that he expected a decision of the United Nations Human Rights Committee dated October 31, 2005, to commute his sentence to life imprisonment, to be enforced by the state of Guyana.

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