Death Penalty!?: Dr Hassan Saeed

“We should be clear on why want to carry out the death penalty. Do we want it as deterrence or as a discharge of a divine obligation?” Dr Hassan Saeed, Special Advisor to President Waheed, has asked the question in an opinion piece for Haveeru.

“Last week I talked about the murder of my friend Ahmed Najeeb. Knowing him well as I did I sought to rationalize how we as a society should respond to such a senseless act. I felt it was the least I could do to honour his memory and make some sense of this tragedy.

It is also right that we consider our emotions too. As well as sadness there is anger. That anger can drive us to seek retribution as a form of justice. Seeking an equivalent penalty from the murderer could be seen as a form of fairness and has a long history across religions and cultures throughout the world. It is not just particular to us in the Maldives.

I have seen the use of execution with my own eyes. As a teenager I witnessed two people being hanged in Faisalabaad, Pakistan. I was close to the platform setup for the hanging. The hanging was announced in advance. I went to see the event. And found a space reasonably close to the platform.  It was a vast open field and the whole place was full. I have never seen such a huge crowd.

I saw the two men brought to the place of execution. When the two of were brought in front of the crowd the public cursed. Their hands and legs were tied. Their faces were covered in a sack like cloth piece. When they were hanged I saw them struggling. There was deafening silence. Finally their struggle came to an end. Doctors checked and the bodies were taken away.

The military ruler of Pakistan General Ziyaul Haqq clearly knew what he was doing. He was carrying out Quranic punishment. He believed pubic execution would be the best form of deterrence.

It certainly affected me. Even some 27 years later I still have clear memories of that day. I am sure lot of others who witnessed that event would remember that too.

But I haven’t committed murder because of that experience. It was because I believe it is wrong. It is an offence. One of my neighbours who also witnessed the hanging was arrested shortly afterwards for attempted murder! Apparently the incident did not deter him.

Following the murder of lawyer Najeeb lots of people are calling for the death penalty. Perhaps the loudest argument in favour of it is that it would deter offenders. I will come back to the issue of deterrence, but there are a lot of issues in this debate, which in a short article, one cannot do full justice to.

Some are legal issues that I am aware of from my professional work. The death penalty is very expensive to administer. It is a lucrative area for lawyers as appeals will take years. Do we want a justice system that costs the Maldivian people even more than imprisonment? It can also be arbitrary where the quality of the defence counsel will determine the outcome as much as the actual guilt of the suspect.”

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