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New Amnesty International interview on Mumia
by
Abu-Jamal-News.com | 05.07.2007
Interview with Piers Bannister, Paris, Opera Bastille, February 3, 2007 A Life Still in the Balance: Amnesty International, the Fight Against the Death Penalty, and the Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal Interview with Piers Bannister, Paris, Opera Bastille, February 3, 2007 MS: This is for a brochure we are going to make about the World Congress, which should appear soon. I’m talking to Piers Bannister from Amnesty Internat¬ional, and maybe, Piers, you just intro-duce yourself in terms of what you’ve been doing for Amnesty, and what you are doing now. PB: My role in Amnesty is and has been to provide a global overview of the death penalty, and thus I have a little knowledge about a lot of countries. But I also have knowledge about global trends in executions and knowledge of various legal systems, as well as knowledge about the United Nations and various other human rights apparatuses, and Amnesty’s cam-paign against the death penalty. MS: Well, I understand that the day before yesterday, you also gave a summary of what’s transpiring at the World Congress Against the Death Penalty. Could you give a short over-view over what was the focus of these three days which are now ending with a demonstration in Paris against the death penalty? PB: I think what we have achieved at the World Congress is to remind ourselves of several things: that the death penalty is a failure of justice; that it is administered in a discriminatory and unsatisfactory way – by that, I mean by grossly unfair trials, of which, sadly, there are many examples in the United States. We have also heard of others in Uganda, in Singapore etcetera, where the death penalty is also administered in violation of international standards regarding fair trials. We’ve reminded ourselves of the successes and the fact that many coun-tries have abolished the death penalty and that many are on the verge of abolition. And we’ve swapped information and unified our struggle, which I think is very important. Death penalty work can often be lonely in many countries; you can sometimes be a sole voice. Reminding ourselves that we are part and parcel of a global movement to see and end of capi-tal punishment is an important message to send to the outside world – and ourselves. MS: Yes, and there is also something coming up at the United Nations, and I think in your speech you stressed the importance of that. PB: We, the Italian government, and other governments are keen to see the United Nations General Assembly pass a resolution that says, we are calling for a moratorium on executions worldwide. If that is achieved, I thing it will be a major intermediate goal in achieving the end of capital punishment. It isn’t the sole answer, but it will be a milestone, it will be a signifi-cant stepping stone in achieving our aims. MS: And there is also a flip side, I understand: A defeat would be also a big defeat… PB: A defeat would also set us back. There are many nations, Singapore, Indonesia, Egypt, who say that there is no world consensus on the death penalty: it’s not a violation of interna-tional human rights standards, and it is acceptable for sovereign states to carry it out. If we loose at the United Nations, we embolden those that make those arguments, we give them confidence. So a loss is not a free loss; it will hurt our movement. We have to make sure we win it, we have to be strategic to make sure we do it at the right time. MS: When will the decision at the United Nations be taken? PB: Well, that’s up to the member states. Here, it is important to remember that the abolition-ist movement isn’t a member of the United Nations. That body is controlled by the world’s governments. And so we have only the influence of campaigning. It will be up to the Italians, the European Union, the African countries that are behind this initiative, to decide when it is brought forward. MS: Yes, and of course the population in these states, respectively… Let’s now talk about something you’ve been involved in as an author. You are the author of the February 2000 Amnesty report on Mumia Abu-Jamal, A Life in the Balance. Can you talk a bit about how it came that you wrote that report, and what did you do in the process of writing it? PB: At that point I was responsible for Amnesty International’s research on the death penalty in the United States, and I decided that Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case was one of the key cases in the U.S. that was worthy of examination as an illustration of all that is wrong with the system. I read the entire trial transcript, I read many of the briefs put in by the defense and the prose-cution, and it’s very important to listen to what the prosecution had to say. And then I did an analysis using international law about whether that trial was fair, and I found that it was fun-damentally unfair and failed to meet international standards governing and pertaining to the administration of capital punishment. MS: Yes. Why in particular do you think that trial was unfair? PB: Well, the report is more than 30 pages long, and I can give you just some highlights. I think that one of the most shocking thinks, one of the things that spoke to me very soon in the trial about the bias of the judge, was the removal of Mumia Abu-Jamal from his right to le-gally represent himself. The judge said things such as that he was intimidating the jurors, that he was taking too long to question them. In the trial transcript, there is absolutely no evidence to support that. His language is polite, it is appropriate for a courtroom, he asks pertinent questions, there is no indication that it is taking too long, and no point where the judge is ask-ing him to hurry up as far as I can remember. So that was the first thing that showed me bias. I was shocked by his defense lawyer’s – who was appointed to him – lack of ability to cross-examine adequately witnesses. He would get up, he would ask a few questions that I didn’t really feel advanced the case of the defense, and then would sit down, and I was left wondering as I read the trial transcript what strategy did this lawyer have to save the client and prove the innocence of his client? There seemed to be nothing in place. MS: There was also, I understand, a rift between the lawyer and his client, a rift that was ba-sically generated by the court and the prosecution. PB: I can’t really speak to that because my memory has faded a bit – I did this eight years ago now, so detailed questions like this are hard for me to answer without looking at the report. For that you would have to turn to that report itself. MS: So let me just wind up by asking you: Have you been following up the issue since Feb-ruary 2000, and can you comment on the present state of the case? PB: Yes, it’s one of the cases I invested my time in, and there are several key cases around the world, the case of the Grenada 17 and Abu-Jamal’s case and several others that I continue to monitor, as is the case of the state of the death penalty in those countries. My understanding is that he now has the chance of getting an adequate hearing to examine the troubling issues in that case. Amnesty’s position has always been crystal-clear: We believe that the original trial is so fundamentally flawed so as to be an inadequate fact-finding mechanism. So we take no position on his guilt or innocence, but we can say that that original trial is not sufficient to establish his guilt. Therefore, the answer to that is a new trial. So we will con-tinue calling for a new trial, and we hope that the judicial system of the United States grants him a new trial at its earliest possible convenience. MS: There is a hearing for Mumia Abu-Jamal coming up now, and maybe the hearing will re¬sult in Abu-Jamal being given a new trial. Will Amnesty be monitoring the hearing, and will it be monitoring the trial? PB: For both the hearing and trial, of course it will! MS: Thanks a lot, Piers. PB: You’re welcome. Check out the complete AI report on Mumia at: Amnesty International Report: A Life in the Balance, The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, February 17, 2000 http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engAMR510012000
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