{"id":80373,"date":"2018-08-23T14:06:02","date_gmt":"2018-08-23T21:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=80373"},"modified":"2018-08-23T14:06:02","modified_gmt":"2018-08-23T21:06:02","slug":"president-to-deport-five-pakistani-death-row-inmates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/08\/23\/president-to-deport-five-pakistani-death-row-inmates\/","title":{"rendered":"President to deport five Pakistani death row inmates"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy Ceylon Today<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>President Maithripala Sirisena yesterday said he will soon initiate talks with the Government of newly elected Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan, to extradite five Pakistani nationals who are on top of the death row list.<\/p>\n<p>President Sirisena, who was addressing people in Jaffna, said the drug menace is not only restricted to the North or the East, but is a massive problem affecting all in the country.<\/p>\n<p>Therefore, I will not hesitate to go ahead with the decision to impose the death penalty on those already found guilty of possessing or trading drugs. I also told the authorities to impose the maximum possible penalty on those who are even caught with drugs in their possession,\u201d he added.<br \/>\nSirisena also said apart from the five Pakistanis, the next in line is a woman.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I am determined to carry out the death penalty for serious drug offenders and I will start with a list (of 18) given to me by the prisons,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>International rights groups and the European Union have asked Sri Lanka to reconsider, since Sirisena announced last month that he wanted to end the moratorium on hanging. Police believe Sri Lanka is being used as a transit point by drug traffickers. More than a tonne of cocaine seized in recent years was destroyed by Police in January.<\/p>\n<p>According to AFP, official figures show there were 373 convicts on death row in Sri Lanka, including the 18 drug offenders, as of last month. Death sentences are still passed for crimes including murder, rape and drug-related offences, but the last execution was in 1976. \u00a0Nearly 900 people are in prison after being sentenced to death, although many have had their sentences commuted to life or are appealing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy Ceylon Today President Maithripala Sirisena yesterday said he will soon initiate talks with the Government of newly elected Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan, to extradite five Pakistani nationals who are on top of the death row list. President Sirisena, who was addressing people in Jaffna, said the drug menace is not only restricted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80373\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}