Extrajudicial Executions: An Insight into the Global Dimensions of a Human Rights Violation

Abstract

Among human rights violations, no practice is more flagrant, degrading, and irreversible than extrajudicial execution-the taking of a person's life without minimal guarantees of due process of law. Political assassinations, defined as that are part of a rational scheme to transfer political power from one group to another or to achieve a specific policy objective,' have traditionally been associated with individual acts and opposition groups. Extrajudicial executions (EJE), on the other hand, refer not only to assassinations for the purpose of transferring political power, but also-and today overwhelmingly so-to assassinations for the purpose of retaining such political power. Over the past decades extrajudicial execution has become the tool of governments with precarious futures. Opposition groups still carry out political assassinations, but by means of EJE governments have disposed of thousands of real or imaginary political enemies.