Tom Brake – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tom Brake on 2016-04-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of the legality of the death sentence handed down to Andrew Tsege in Ethiopia.

James Duddridge

The UK Government is opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances as a matter of principle. We have serious concerns about the process by which Mr Andargachew Tsege was transferred from Yemen and his ongoing lack of access to a lawyer. The Foreign Secretary, my Rt Hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond) has raised Mr Tsege’s case 21 times with his Ethiopian counterpart. I have also raised this case, most recently on 8 January. We continue to lobby for Mr Tsege to be granted access to a lawyer.