Capital punishment
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...
is a legal penalty in
Laos.
The long list of capital crimes enumerated in the statute books of Laos include
murder;
terrorism
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
;
drug trafficking;
drug possession;
robbery;
kidnapping; obstructing an officer in the performance of his public duties and causing his death or causing him physically disability; disrupting industry, trade, agriculture or other economic activities with the intent of undermining the national economy;
treason
Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplo ...
and
espionage
Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangib ...
. Executions are carried out by a
firing squad
Execution by firing squad, in the past sometimes called fusillading (from the French ''fusil'', rifle), is a method of capital punishment, particularly common in the military and in times of war. Some reasons for its use are that firearms are ...
. In March 2009, the government of Laos reported to
Amnesty International that at the end of 2008, there were 85 people on death row. The last known execution in Laos took place in 1989.
References
Laos
Penal system in Laos
Death in Laos
Human rights abuses in Laos
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