Tony Beechwell (Letters, January 16) suggests the return of capital punishment.
On January 27, 1999, in Strasbourg, the Home Secretary officially signed Protocol 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights on behalf of the UK.
This was ratified on May 27, 1999. The protocol requires signatories to abolish the death penalty and requires that no person should be condemned to such penalty or executed.
The UK has also signed the Second Optional Protocol of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in New York on March 31, 1999.
This was ratified on December 10, 1999. The effect of this is that Parliament will not be able to reintroduce the death penalty in peacetime without denouncing the Convention as a whole.
-Mrs C J Wincher, Carden Avenue, Brighton
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