Brussels, 10/01/2006 (Agence Europe) - “The death penalty is a brutal and vindictive travesty of justice”, the secretary general of the Council of Europe, Terry Davis, said on 4 January regarding the resumption of executions in the United States on 17 January. Clarence Ray Allen, 75 years of age, is to be put to death in California that day. Clarence Ray Allen “is not an innocent man”, Terry Davis recognises, but continues to call on the governor of California, Arnold Schwarznegger, to “spare the life of Clarence Ray Allen and on the US authorities to join virtually all other civilised and democratic countries in the world and abolish the death penalty once and for all”. The United States and Japan are the only States with observer status at the Council of Europe which still carry out capital punishment, a press release states.