LOOKING BACK

FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES 50 YEARS AGO

South Africa applies the death sentence more often than any other country in the world and accounts for 47 per cent of all capital punishment in the world, according to statistics compiled by the United Nations and the South African Government. These facts, contained in the current Annual Survey of South African Law, have aroused comment in the British Press. Under the headline “South Africa’s grim policy of death”, the London Sunday Times last week devoted the main part of its “Spectrum” section to a review of the Survey. This has been censored in the airmail editions of the newspaper on sale in South Africa. — November 3 1968 FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES 25 YEARS AGO

Little Jamie Bulger — the toddler whose murder has shamed Britain — could have been saved by at least 26 people who saw him during his 4km walk to his death. One by one witnesses came to court this week to recount how they failed to rescue the two-year-old in his Noddy T-shirt from his alleged killers. They saw the little boy’s tears as he was led away from a shopping centre in Bootle, Merseyside, and watched the child struggling to pull away from two 10-year-old boys. The boys — now aged 11 — stand accused of luring Jamie away from his mother at a shopping centre in Bootle, and then beating him to death with bricks and an iron bar. — November 7 1993