Georgetown : Four Guyanese death row inmates have had their sentences reduced to life imprisonment by Chief Justice Ian Chang.
The convicts are Noel Thomas, who, along with Abdool Saleem Yassin, was sentenced to death in 1992 for the murder of Yassin’s younger brother, Abdool Kaleem Yassin. The younger Yassin was shot dead in his Riverstown, Essequibo home on March 19, 1987.
The elder brother had hatched the murder plot to get his hands on his brother’s inheritance. Thomas was implicated as the hit-man. Abdool Saleem Yassin died in prison in 2002 from tuberculosis.
Thomas has been waging a legal fight to commute the sentence to life imprisonment.
The alleged hit-man and his co-accused had successfully appealed to the UN Human Rights Committee, which recommended their immediate release from prison.
However, Guyana subsequently withdrew from the UN Optional Protocol on Civil and Political Rights, then re-subscribed with a reservation preventing convicted murderers from appealing to the body.
Justice Chang’s ruling yesterday followed appeals by Thomas’s lawyer, Nigel Hughes and Attorneys Jainarayan Singh and Ronald Burch-Smith, which stated that the men’s extended incarceration on Death Row amounted to inhumane treatment.
The other three death row inmates who had their sentences commuted are Lawrence Chan, who was sentenced to death in 1995, Rabindranauth Deo, Attorney Jainarayan Singh’s client, and Muntaz Ali, who was represented by Attorney-at-law Burch-Smith.
