A man was shot dead by firing squad in the Chadian...

A man was shot dead by firing squad in the Chadian capital Ndjamena for the murder of a Guatemalan religious worker. Leon Totoloum was the ninth person to be executed in Chad in less than a week despite the protests of human rights groups.
His execution was carried out in the presence of journalists. The government recently vowed to crack down on unrest in the impoverished desert state of some eight million people, where the death penalty had not been applied since 1991 before the November 6 executions.
"The law is tough, but it's the law," a high-ranking justice official, Etienne Dianaibeye Doutelngar, said at Totoloum's execution.
"Since his sentencing, his lawyer has made no plea, no appeal, nor any request for a pardon. In these conditions his sentence had to be carried out," Doutelngar told AFP Human rights groups including the local Chadian League of Human Rights strongly denounced the executions, the first since court-martialed soldiers were executed in 1991 in the former French colony.
The International Federation of Human Rights (LIDH) also issued a statement following te November 6 executions to voice "its extreme indignation and dismay (over) a crushing blow to the state of law which the Chadian authorities claim to be consolidating."
The Dakar-based LIDH called for a moratorium on executions leading to the abolition of the death penalty.
Authorities in Ndjamena said the executions were a response to repeated complaints by opposition parties and the general public over insecurity in Chad, a landlocked country in the southern Sahara.
Since independence in 1960 Chad has seen continuing unrest stemming largely from tension between the Muslim north and the mainly Christian south.
In 1998 the latest armed uprising began in the north. A peace deal was signed in early 2002, but has been marred by continuing clashes between rebels and government forces.