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Prisons chief explains blunder in the death-row prisoner list sent to President
Prisons Department Commissioner General H.M.N.C. Dhanasinghe claimed the department was severely inconvenienced in tracking the records of prisoners on death row for narcotics offences, as the convicts are sent to prisons by Courts sans the relevant documentation. He was responding to an allegation made by President Maithripala Sirisena that some of the names of prisoners forwarded to him by the department had their appeals pending and, therefore, could not be hanged.
The Commissioner General claimed that this was the reason why the inclusion of names of prisoners who had appealed against the conviction, were included in the list sent to the President. He conceded that the department had sent the names without determining the status of the 18 convicts on death row. His excuse was that the department had sketchy details on the prisoners.
In July this year, the President, in a bid to implement the death penalty, requested the department to send in names of prisoners on death row for repeated drug-related offences. The move followed reports that some of them were carrying out drug trafficking whilst in prison. The implementation of the death penalty was stalled due to opposition from the European Union, human rights and civil society groups. However, the topic was recently raised again when the President again stressed the need to curb underworld drug trafficking by implementing the death sentence as a deterrent.
Mr. Dhanasinghe said the 18 names in the list were those of convicts with repeated drug offences from Welikada, Mahara and Angunukolapelessa and they were underworld drug kingpins. He added, however, that even if the death penalty was to be implemented the department had no hangmen among its cadre.
Previous attempts to recruit hangmen to the department had proved unsuccessful. Two men recruited for the job in 2014 had vacated post after two weeks on the job. The department had called for applications in July 2018 but had to shelve the idea, with the Government backtracking in the face of protests.
Meanwhile, Mr. Dhanasinghe commenting on the plan to deploy the Special Task Force (STF) to monitor the prisons, said the department was ready to work with the STF. Meanwhile, IGP Pujitha Jayasundera said the proposals he had submitted included the need for an efficient international network to nab drug dealers.
He spoke of the need to have a binding treaty to urge foreign countries to extradite those wanted here for drug smuggling offences.
The existing extradition agreements are slow and most often the investigations are hindered by this, he said. According to the 2017 annual report of the Prisons Department, during the past three years (2015 -2017) 23 prisoners had been sentenced to death for narcotic drug offences.