Gaborone: A 28 year old Botswana prisoner on death row has been executed by Botswana prison authorities – the first execution in two years.
Joseph Poni Tselayarona was executed Saturday following his conviction for the murder of his girlfriend and her three year old son in 2010, the Botswana Prison Services said in a notice.
“This follows a death sentence which was imposed on him by the Gaborone High Court on the 10th March 2017 for the offence of murder,” the statement reads in part.
“The High Court convicted Tselayarona for the murder of his girlfriend, Ngwanyanaotsile Keikanne and her three-year-old son, Miguel Keikanne in 2010 at Molepolole. He was sentenced 20 years in prison for the murder of his girlfriend and handed a death penalty for the murder of the son.”
Tselayarona had appealed the judgment but it was dismissed by the Court of Appeal.
The death penalty in Botswana has been enforced since independence in 1966.
One third of all countries still use capital punishment, even though it has never been shown to deter to crime.
A United States based human rights group, Reprieve US is working on the front line to end the death penalty across the world.
The human rights group runs a “Stop Aid for Executions (SAFE) project seeks to stop governments from providing financial counter-narcotics assistance to countries which hand down the death penalty for drug-related offenses”.
