EU slams ‘inhumane’ death penalty after MKs advance bill

Hours after lawmakers voted to advance legislation that would allow military judges to impose the death penalty on convicted terrorists, the European Union’s embassy in Israel slammed capital punishment as “inhumane and degrading treatment.”

“The death penalty is incompatible with human dignity. It constitutes inhuman & degrading treatment, does not have any proven deterrent effect & allows judicial errors to become irreversible & fatal,” the embassy says in a tweet.

In a subsequent tweet, the EU mission says the bloc “welcomes the global trend towards the abolition of capital punishment, which has already resulted in more than two-thirds of all countries having abolished the death penalty in law or in practice.”

Earlier, the Knesset gave preliminary approval to a bill making it easier for convicted terrorists to be sentenced to death in a 52-49 vote.