Australian Prime Minister John Howard rejected a call...

Australian Prime Minister John Howard rejected a call for the death penalty for terrorists or hijackers. "I am personally not in support of the death penalty," he said on Melbourne radio 3AW in response to a talkback caller. "I know from a practical point of view the law sometimes makes mistakes and you can't bring a person back after they have been hung or electrocuted or whatever." Mr Howard said the experience of other countries indicated that the death penalty was not automatically a deterrent. "The homicide rate in the United States where the death penalty is applied quite widely is relatively speaking much higher than the homicide rate in Australia or the United Kingdom where there is no death penalty," he said.