Human Rights Watch (HRW)

Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas to suspend the death penalty, slamming courts for handing down death sentences at unfair trials with no right to appeal. In an open letter to Abbas, HRW urged him to call an "immediate moratorium" on the use of the death penalty in the occupied territories with a view to abolishing capital punishment altogether.
In early March, Palestinian officials said 15 prisoners on death row would be executed by the end of the month, in the first use of capital punishment since August 2002, but no such executions had been reported.
Of at least 27 people on death row in the territories, HRW said many had been sentenced by military or state security courts in trials which human rights organizations judged to be "grossly unfair".
"It is imperative that Palestinians tried under these courts be removed from death row and granted new trials that comport with international standards," said the letter, signed by Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW Middle East director.
She described the trials as often summary, based largely on confessions sometimes obtained under duress or torture, at which defendants were granted little or no access to legal counsel and had no right to appeal the verdicts.