On August 22, a delegation from Hands off Cain went...

On August 22, a delegation from Hands off Cain went to Barbados to lobby for the resolution for a moratorium that the European Union was planning to present at the UN General Assembly. The delegation - composed of Sergio d'Elia and Elisabetta Zamparutti of Hands off Cain, Ambassador Claudio Moreno of the Italian Foreign Ministry and the Hon. Vincenzo Trantino, Deputy Chair of the Foreign Affairs Commission at the Italian Chamber of Deputies - met Attorney General David Simmons, the President of the Parliament Sir Fred Gollop, the Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Theresa Marshall, and other government officials. During the meeting, Attorney General David Simmons said the majority of people support the death penalty and politicians cannot ignore this support. According to a poll, about 88% of Barbados' 265,000 inhabitants are in favor of the death penalty for murder. He added that during the Plenipotentiary Conference held in Rome in July 1998 for the International Criminal Court, 46 countries called for the death penalty in the Court, and that Barbados does not agree with the European policy on the death penalty. The delegation met also Attorney Alain Shepard. He said that 12 death row inmates had had their sentence commuted as a result of the Pratt & Morgan case. Some of them are still in jail. Of the two condemned prisoners presently on death row, one has his capital case pending at the Court of Appeal in October, and the other at the trial by jury in December.