He is commissioner of the International Committee against Death Penalty (ICDP). When I entered office in 2009, I quickly came to realize that use of the death penalty in Mongolia had been arbitrary, secretive and cruel. By the end of 2022, more than two-thirds of the world’s nations had done away with the practice, according to the Washington, DC-based Death Penalty Information Center. Research from Amnesty International found no evidence that the death penalty deterred crime more than life imprisonment. When I became Mongolia’s president, five crimes were eligible for the death penalty: two forms of terrorist attacks, sabotage, rape and aggravated murder.

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Persons: Tsakhia, Read, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, it’s, who’s, Elbegdorj, –, Lui Tuck Yew, Tharman Organizations: International, CNN, International Covenant, Civil, Political, Amnesty, Central African, Research, Amnesty International Locations: Mongolia, Singapore, Washington, DC, Kazakhstan, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Thailand, Malaysia, United States