Serbs abolish death penalty

Banja Luka - In Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb entity, deputies voted yesterday to abolish the death penalty in favour of life imprisonment, in line with the Dayton peace accords which ended Bosnia's 1992-95 war. Several death penalties have been handed down in Republika Srpska since it was created in 1992 but none of the condemned has been executed. The other entity in Bosnia, the Muslim-Croat Federation, had already dropped the death penalty.