Acting Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister...

Acting Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Magwagwa Mdluli said that two prisoners were ready to be executed after losing their appeals for mercy last week.
Mdluli said Swaziland has been searching for a freelance hangman, but the candidate has been hard to find up to now.
Two years ago a string of interested applicants for the post that was advertised in the foreign media flooded the Prison Services Department, but none of them were recruited.
The department claimed that the applicants were not suitable for the job. Among the failed applicants were known executioners of the then apartheid government in neighbouring South Africa, a regional leader in the death penalty before 1994.
Mdluli said there would be no need to employ a permanent executioner, as he would be required to carry out the executions at once.
He added that once the present death row prisoners have been executed, Swaziland would have to wait for a long time before a similar exercise was carried out.
Swaziland has nine death row prisoners following the reversal of death sentences on four other by an appeals court last year.