Resh­ma Ra­goonath

As the de­bate over the re­sump­tion of hang­ings rages on, mem­bers of the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty yes­ter­day pledged their sup­port for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the death penal­ty. Is­lam­ic schol­ar Dr Waffie Mo­hammed be­lieves "it is im­pos­si­ble to make a case for the abol­ish­ment of the death penal­ty," since it is a "di­vine" de­cree in the Qur'an that the pun­ish­ment for mur­der is death. Mo­hammed, ad­dress­ing a sym­po­sium on the Mus­lim po­si­tion on the death penal­ty, at the Markhan-al-Ih­saan Cen­tre for Re­fine­ment, Her­mitage, San Fer­nan­do, said in Sharia or Is­lam­ic law when some­one was found guilty of mur­der, that crime was pun­ish­able by death in a pub­lic place. "There are those who ad­vo­cate the abol­ish­ment of the death penal­ty, but this should not be so, it is di­vine...It has been pre­scribed by Al­lah," he said.

Jus­tice Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney, who was present at the sym­po­sium, said he was in­vit­ed to lis­ten to the views of the Markhan-al-Ih­saan mem­bers and would take their views back to Cab­i­net. He ad­mit­ted that swift jus­tice was a ma­jor prob­lem in T&T and likened the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem to a heart whose ar­ter­ies were clogged with plaque. "It makes no sense sen­tenc­ing a man ten or 15 years af­ter the event," Vol­ney said. "For there to be de­ter­rence, for peo­ple to feel there has been a sense of jus­tice, the sen­tence must be car­ried out, what­ev­er crime, with­in a short space of time of the com­mis­sion of the crime.

"There must be a cor­re­la­tion be­tween the car­ry­ing out of a sen­tence and the com­mis­sion of the crime." This point was echoed by Mo­hammed who said jus­tice in Is­lam was "speedy" be­cause in ten years wait­ing for a tri­al to be­gin "wit­ness­es can dis­ap­pear and ev­i­dence can be lost...Is­lam wants this to be swift, too." Mo­hammed said the vic­tim's fam­i­ly was al­lowed to choose the man­ner of death for the mur­der­er which was ei­ther the same death as their rel­a­tive or be­ing be­head­ed. Some­times, he said, the fam­i­ly can for­give the killer and he was not put to death. Mo­hammed, re­fer­ring to the re­cent mur­der of Cen­tral busi­ness­man Nee­shad Ali, said the pun­ish­ment must fit the crime.

"When you have a man put on his knees and his throat cut, that pun­ish­ment must be equal to the crime," he said. While he ad­mit­ted that some of the pun­ish­ments un­der Sharia law may seem cru­el, Mo­hammed said it was "pre­ven­ta­tive laws." "When cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is in­flict­ed on a crim­i­nal, it is al­ways done in pub­lic to en­sure that oth­ers do not com­mit the same crime," he ar­gued. Mo­hammed ad­vo­cat­ed the need for com­pen­sa­tion to be a con­sid­er­a­tion when is­su­ing a sen­tence.