UZBEKISTAN. KAZAKH PAPER DOUBTS UZBEK DEATH PENALTY ABOLITION TRUE HUMANITARIAN MOVE

Uzbek President Islom Karimov's recent decree abolishing the death penalty can only be praised as a humanitarian and long overdue act, Delovaya Nedelya correspondent Andrey Saidov commented, questioning why it would only come into effect on 1 January 2008.
There is a problem with the main official explanation  that additional prisons had to be built to house those who would otherwise have been executed, he added, reasoning that Karimov had said in the past that only 50 to 60 people were sentenced to death every year in Uzbekistan - a figure that would not necessitate much, if any, new building. This suggested that the claim put forward by human rights activists, who say that several hundred death sentences are meted out every year in Uzbekistan, is true, Saidov concluded. He also pointed out that Karimov had left himself with the power of life and death until the end of his term in office, autumn 2007.