The Gambian government is now executing criminals in order to lower crime in the country, the Associated Press reports.
President Yahya Jammeh unveiled his plan to execute death row inmates during a speech celebrating Eid-al-Fitr, a Muslim feast celebrating the end of Ramadan.
Jammeh's plan is already being enacted.
Gambia's Interior Ministry announced on Monday that nine criminals had been killed by a firing squad the day before. All of those who received the death penalty had lost their respective final appeals.
The U.S. State Department has called upon on President Jammeh to "immediately halt all executions."
Paule Rigaud, Amnesty International's Africa deputy director, called the executions a "giant leap backwards" for the west African state. And Macky Sall, the president of Senegal — Gambia's neighbor to the north — also denounced the executions.
Many critics are calling into question the transparency and impartiality of the executions as well. Christof Heyns, the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, noted that, "according to available evidence, the trials did not meet due process safeguards." He added that "the executions were carried out in secrecy, away from the public and from the families, and do not meet the requirements of transparency."
Despite the heavy-handed international criticism, Gambian leaders are not backing down. "Every sovereign state has its own national laws, which may be different from other countries, and in the case of the Gambia, the sentences that were handed out were in due compliance with the laws of the country," Jammeh said in a statement.
The efficacy of capital punishment as a deterrent for criminal activity is still a hotly debated topic. In its argument against the death penalty, Amnesty International cites a 2009 survey of criminologists which revealed that over 88 percent believed the death penalty was not an effective deterrent to murder.
There are currently 39 death row inmates remaining in the Gambia — and the Los Angeles Times has reported that they have all been moved to an execution site.
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