Reprieve’s stop aid for executions (SAFE) project

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Reprieve’s stop aid for executions (SAFE) project

23 March 2015

Families of those who have faced the death penalty for drug offences speak out against European aid for executions.

The death penalty for drug offences is the ‘sharp end’ of the global war on drugs: a practice that disproportionately harms the vulnerable, sustains entrenched forces of crime and corruption, and entirely fails to change a disastrous status quo.

All states within the EU have made the campaign for worldwide abolition of the death penalty a foreign policy priority, but many of these states actively perpetuate the death penalty for drug offences by aiding and assisting aggressive anti-drug raids in countries which execute alleged drug offenders – including Iran and Pakistan. States in this position include the UK, Italy, Germany, France, Denmark, and Norway.

Reprieve’s European Aid for Executions report recently revealed that European taxpayers’ money has enabled more than 3,000 brutal executions in Iran and at least 112 pending death sentences in Pakistan. These links have been established by comparing the specific counter-narcotics programmes supported by European donors in Iran and Pakistan, the timings of their contributions, and recorded death sentences and executions.

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