GENEVA: The head of the UN human rights office denounced on Friday the use of nitrogen gas to execute a prisoner in the US state of Alabama, claiming that the practice may have been torture.
Kenneth Smith, who was found guilty of a 1988 murder-for-hire, was put to death on Thursday using nitrogen gas, the first time a novel form of capital punishment had been applied in the US since the advent of fatal injections forty years earlier.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said, “I deeply regret Kenneth Eugene Smith’s execution in Alabama despite serious concerns this novel and untested method of suffocation by nitrogen gas may amount to torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”
“The fundamental right to life is incompatible with the death penalty. In order to move toward its complete elimination, I implore every state to impose a moratorium on its usage.”
Smith had already escaped one attempt at execution. The execution by lethal injection was postponed in November 2022 by Alabama officials due to difficulties lasting hours to get the needle into his body through an intravenous line.
