HANOI, May 29 (Reuters) – Hundreds of death-row prisoners in
Vietnam have been given a reprieve of sorts due to a shortage of
the drug used for lethal injections, a newspaper said on
Tuesday.
Death by firing squad was replaced by lethal injections to
reduce suffering last July – but police have failed to execute
anyone since.
“In the past year, the execution of more than 400 inmates
has not been able to go ahead. More than 100 of them have
completed all the paperwork,” Deputy Police Minister Dang Van
Hieu was quoted by Tuesday’s Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper as
saying.
“Their execution awaits the drug, which is not available
yet.” He said imports of the unspecified drug “had proved
difficult”.
The newspaper did not give any suggestion of how the problem
could be solved.
The American state of Oklahoma, which executes more
prisoners per capita than any other state, said this month it
had only one remaining dose of European-made pentobarbital, a
key drug used to kill condemned prisoners.
One reason the state had run so low in stocks was because of
a ban on the sale of drugs for such purposes by the European
Union, which opposes the death penalty.
(Reporting by Ho Binh Minh; Editing by Nick Macfie)
