[Deathpenalty]death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

July 10


IRAQ:

First death sentences in Iraq after war


A criminal court in the southern Iraqi city of Karbala has issued the 1st
6 death sentences in the country since the toppling of former president
Saddam Hussein's regime.

Chief of police in Karbala, 100 km south of Iraq's capital of Baghdad,
said the court issued a fair sentence for criminals who had committed
crimes against the people of the city and violated security law.
CRIENGLISH.com reported Friday.

The death penalty, once suspended by Paul Bremer, the American civil
administrator in Iraq, has been reactivated by the interim Iraqi
government in a bid to put an end to the terrorist attacks and organized
crimes in Iraq.

(source: Xinhua News)






TRINIDAD & TOBADO:

Anger, joy as lucky 86 leave Death Row


GRANTED life by the Privy Council, instead of a hanging death by the
State, 86 murder convicts will soon vacate their death row cells near the
gallows.

6 of those getting reprieves are women. Their lucky break has angered
several of the families of the people they killed.

"They killed my son and somebody should get rid of them," screamed Joan
Maharaj, the mother of taxi-driver Chandranath Maharaj, murdered in
January 1995.

The woman who helped kill him, Natasha De Leon, 29, was awaiting
execution.

Maharaj, a father of 2, of Jaipaulsingh Road, Lengua, was hijacked by De
Leon and her boyfriend Darren Thomas.

She wanted money to attend the Panorama Finals and Maharaj was taken to
Mosquito Creek, La Romaine, stabbed and dumped in the sea.

He began swimming out to sea but had to return to shore where he begged
for his life while being stabbed to death.

His mother said: "That is not right. That is not fair. He had 2 little
children. He had a wife. I cannot feel happy. To think what my son passed
through. He didn't deserve this kind of death but she does."

Cyrus Brathwaite, 51, the man who stabbed and burnt to death 2 little
girls in August 1996, after slashing their mother and sister, lost his
appeal against the murder convictions early this year.

Kelly Ann Sylvester, who witnessed her sisters' deaths, said: "I thought
we could now move on. This should have come to a conclusion. He should pay
for what he did to my sisters. I miss them plenty."

Dhanwatee Sookoo was joyful on learning that her killer daughter
Chandroutie London would be leaving death row.

Chandroutie and her husband Kenrick London were found guilty of murdering
their 8-month-old baby girl by burying the child alive, and with murdering
her sister Meena Sookoo, in 1999.

Dhanwatee Sookoo said yesterday: "I always had this hope. My daughter did
not do this deliberately. She was under that man's spell. She was afraid.
He beat her. I know she will be glad and God will set her free one day."

(source: Trinidad & Tobago Express)