ABSTRACT: After the executions a few days ago of Joe Angel Cordova in Texas and of Mark Hopkinson in Wyoming, radicals Sergio Stanzani, Emma Bonino, Paolo Vigevano, Marco Pannella and Sergio D'Elia sent a letter to Peter Secchia, American ambassador in Rome, to express their condemnation of the executions. The letter was sent also on behalf of the committee that promoted the parliamentary campaign for the abolition of the death penalty in the world, which was endorsed by over 600 parliamentarians and government officials, and hundreds of preeminent personalities in the field of culture, science and art.

The radicals, who had demonstrated the day before in front of the Cuban embassy to condemn the execution of Betancourt on the part of Fidel Castro's regime, in the letter to the American ambassador underlined that "our dissent is as firm and convinced as our consideration for the United States of America and for its principles of freedom, rule of law and political democracy", that "the distinction between democracy and totalitarian systems is not an ideological distinction, but one based on fundamental principles, the chief of which are the right to life and the rule of law", and that "democracy should differ from totalitarianism also with respect to the practice of the death penalty".

Moreover, the radicals expressed the hope that legal executions in the United States be suspended in the meantime.