[Deathpenalty]death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 23


ETHIOPIA:

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has leveled outrageous charges against 131
prominent Ethiopian patriots.


Professors, engineers, journalists, artistes, lawyers, consultants, human
rights activists and leaders of civic societies were formally charged
Wednesday with high treason, genocide and conspiracy to overthrow the
government of Ethiopia.

Leaders of the most popular party in Ethiopia, the Coalition for Unity and
Democracy, were herded into a packed and tense courtroom. The frail
Professor Mesfin Woldemariam, a prominent academic and human rights
campaigner, Engineer Hailu Showel, President of the CUD, Britukan Mediksa,
CUDs vice-president and lawyer, Dr. Berhanu Nega, a leading economist, Dr.
Hailu Araya, Dr. Yakob Hailemariam, Engineer Gizachew Shiferaw were among
the distinguished Ethiopians who appeared before court amid tight
security. The list of the accused seem a celebrity roll whose crimes was
challenging Meles Zenawi, who is widely accused of rigging the May
national elections and resorting to terrorism against his fellow
countrymen.

"These charges are shocking and outrageous," said Ann Cooper, Executive
Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. "They strike at the
heart of Ethiopia's journalist community by criminalizing essential work
of the press. The government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is using legal
means to suppress dissent, but it is increasingly behaving like an outlaw
regime," she said in her latest statement.

"I believe Meles Zenawi is doing a great disservice to himself and his
government by charging all his critics with treason. This courtroom drama,
backed up by extrajudicial killings, mass arrests, beatings and
intimidation, isnt about law and order. It is aimed at creating fear and
terror among the people of Ethiopia," said Abebe Tamrat, a lawyer who is
intending to leave the country soon. "In todays Ethiopia, there is no
constitution or rule of law. The present situation reminds us of
Cambodia's killing fields under Pol Pot. Those who are in jail for telling
the truth never deserve to be there for a single minute let alone months
and years. We know who the criminals are," he said with a quivering voice.

Voice of America Director David S. Jackson said in response to charges of
treason against five VOA journalists: "These charges are false and are an
obvious attempt to intimidate our broadcasters. The Voice of America has a
worldwide reputation for the quality and reliability of our journalism,
and we stand by our reporters." The VOA also accused the government of
Meles Zenawi of trying to jam its transmissions to Ethiopia.

Exiled Ethiopians are calling Western governments to take tougher measures
against Prime Minister Meles. Thousands of Ethiopians who recently staged
a peaceful rally in London urged Prime Minister Tony Blair to stop backing
"Ethiopia's Bin Laden."

Many of the accused live in exile after fleeing the persecutions under
Mengistus military junta. According to reliable sources, the list of
Ethiopians who are charged in absentia include: Professor Getachew Haile (
Academic, USA ), Professor Mamo Muchie ( Academic, Denmark ), Dr. Moges
Wolde-Mariam ( Academic, USA ), Dr. Taye Woldesemayat ( President ETA,
touring North America ) Mr. Aregawi Berhie ( Political activist/ academic,
Netherlands ), Mr. Solomon Kifle ( VOA journalist, USA ), Ms. Tizta
Belachew ( VOA journalist, USA ), Mr. Addisu Abebe ( VOA journalist, USA
), Mr. Nigussie Mengesha ( VOA, USA ), Ms. Adanech Fissehaye ( VOA
journalist, USA ), Mr. Abraha Belai ( Ethiomedia.com editor, USA ), Mr.
Elias Kifle ( Ethiopianreview.com editor, USA ), Mr. Tamagne Beyene (
Comedian, USA ), Mr. Solonon Tekalgne ( Artiste, USA ) and Mr. Kifle Mulat
( President of EFJA, currently in Kampala ).

(source: Newssire; Linda Milani is a freelance journalist and human rights
activist)






MEXICO:

Mexico Ends the Death Penalty----The Corrido of Death Row


Even as the United States celebrated its 1,000th execution since the
reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, Mexico has finally wiped its
own death penalty off the books. On December 9th, President Vicente Fox
signed off on constitutional amendments that abolished capital punishment
in both civil courts and military codes. Executions in Mexico have been
suspended for decades - the last Mexican to be executed went before a
military firing squad in 1961.

Nonetheless, symbolic as abolition was. Fox's act contrasted starkly with
Mexico's neighbor to the north where a former gang leader turned
peacemaker who had been nominated for the Nobel Prize was executed by
lethal injection December 13th despite pleas for clemency to California
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a former action movie star, from a broad
rainbow of social justice organizations and celebrities. The execution of
Stan "Tookie" Williams was followed by that of John Nixon, 77, the oldest
man in U.S/ annals ever to be put to death ? both Williams and Nixon went
to their deaths proclaiming their innocence.

Despite the long-awaited demise of the death penalty here, Mexico still
has 46 citizens awaiting imminent execution on death row. In the United
States.

"The death penalty is the ultimate violation of human rights", the Mexican
president, a devout Catholic, noted in promulgating the official end of
capital punishment here. But with nearly half a hundred Mexican citizens
out of approximately 120 foreigners from 29 countries on U.S. death rows,
the Fox government is heavily invested in legal actions to prevent the
executions of its countrymen (there are no Mexican women condemned to
death in the U.S.) in El Norte.

In most cases, non-U.S. citizens on U.S. death rows share one common
grievance - they were denied contact with representatives of their country
as guaranteed under the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations which
obligates U.S. authorities to inform foreign detainees of his or her right
to contact the nearest consulate of their country.

Mexicans arrested in the U.S. are routinely kept in the dark about their
Vienna Convention rights, notes Sandra Babcock, a Texas death penalty
attorney who has been retained by the Mexican government in many capital
punishment cases. If they are consulted in a timely fashion, Mexican
consulates in the U.S. can provide legal assistance for its citizens in
trouble with the law, and denying them that right can result in flawed
convictions and in capital cases, even death.

In the past, when Vienna Convention rights have been denied and Mexicans
have later been executed, the U.S. response has been merely to apologize
and argue that the denial of consular contact had no impact on the final
judgment.

By 2003, Fox and his then-foreign minister Jorge Castaneda, were tired of
this song and dance and took the cases of 51 Mexicans on U.S. death rows
who had been denied Vienna Convention protection to the World Court in the
Hague and by a 14 to 1 decision, that tribunal, which operates under the
auspices of the United Nations, called upon Washington to rectify by
reviewing or reopening all 51 cases.

Of the 51 Mexican death row residents whose cases were decided by the
World Court, two had been kidnapped from Mexico by private bounty hunters
and brought to the U.S. to stand trial, a practice explicitly outlawed by
the U.S. Supreme Court.

When the World Court decision was handed down March 31st, 2004, Oswaldo
Nezahualcoytl Torres, a Mexican citizen from Nuevo Leon state, was only
days away from execution in an Oklahoma penitentiary but Governor Brad
Henry recognized the Hague edict (Torres was one of the 51 cases listed)
and commuted his death sentence to life in prison without benefit of
parole. Torres was convicted of a murder-robbery in Oklahoma in which two
Mexican citizens were killed he was not the shooter. Since Torres'
commutation, 5 other Mexicans have been removed from U.S. death row
rosters.

Jose Medillin, 18 at the time of the crime, was convicted of a gang
killing in Houston, Texas and sentenced to death for his part in the
double homicide and rape of two women. Although he repeatedly told police
that he was a Mexican citizen, he was never informed that he had a right
to call his country's consulate in Houston where he could have enlisted
legal defense. Later, his court-appointed attorney who, purportedly
unbeknownst to the court, had been suspended from practice, called no
witnesses on Medillin's behalf at his trial.

This past March, Medillin's conviction was appealed to the U.S. Supreme
court, the first Mexican death penalty case to reach that august body
since the World Court decision came down. Simultaneously, President George
Bush sent a letter to all U.S. governors urging them to comply with The
Hague. "We had the law, we had the president! I had to slap myself ? I
couldn't believe it," an elated Babcock, who had successfully represented
Mexico before the World Court, told reporters.

But, ultimately, the Bush order proved to be a subterfuge to blunt the
Supreme Court's hearing of Medillin, the 1st high court test case of the
applicability of the Hague decision. Instead, Medillin was sent back to a
Texas court for review.

Moreover, the Bush administration moved promptly to pull out of the
optional protocol, which gives the World Court jurisdiction over Vienna
Convention violations ? the U.S. had actually designed the protocol and
ratified it in 1969.

Since its advent, the U.S. has generally ceded jurisdiction to the World
Court in international disputes ? indeed, President Jimmy Carter went to
that court for redress under the Vienna Convention after U.S. hostages
were taken in Iran in 1979. But since the court condemned the Reagan
administration for mining Nicaraguan harbors in 1986, Washington has
refused to recognize The Hague's standing in anything other than Vienna
Convention disputes, a jurisdiction the U.S. now no longer recognizes.

The Vienna Convention has, in fact, been liberally utilized by the U.S. to
protect its citizens traveling in the world. Bush's abandonment of the
protocol provoked the New York Times to issue an editorial entitled
"Travel Advisory", cautioning U.S. citizens abroad that, in effect, their
Vienna Convention safeguards had been retired: "increasing global
hostility towards Americans makes the Vienna Convention more important
than ever."

The U.S. rejection of the World Court as arbiter for Vienna Convention
violations will also prevent Mexico from appealing to The Hague in future
death penalty cases involving the denial of consular contact, considers
Michael Snedeker, a San Francisco attorney representing a Mexican citizen
currently on California death row whose Vienna Convention protections were
not honored.

Bush's request to the states to conform to the World Court decision in
favor of the 51 Mexicans met with disdain from Texas governor Rick Parry,
the President's successor in that statehouse. In insisting that the
decision did not apply, Parry argued that Texas had not signed the Vienna
Convention. The governor was merely reiterating a previous position taken
by Bush's lawyer and clemency officer Alberto Gonzalez, now the U.S.
Attorney General. Bush and Gonzalez signed off on more than 30 death
warrants including those of three Mexicans, while they occupied the Texas
governor's mansion.

The execution of Mexicans in U.S. prisons incites much anger here. After
Governor Bush presided over the death of Irenio Tristan in 1997, residents
of Tamaulipas, Tristan's home state, lined the roads chanting, "Bush!
Asasino!" ('Bush Is A Killer!') as the coffin rolled by on its way to a
final resting place. In 2002, Fox canceled a visit to the Bush ranch in
Crawford Texas after Governor Parry declined to intervene in the execution
of still another Mexican, Javier Suarez.

Defending Mexicans in capitol punishment cases before U.S. courts can be a
frustrating responsibility. When Babcock won the release of Mexican
citizen Ricardo Aldape after years on death row at Huntsville's notorious
Walls, he returned to Mexico and was killed within a week in an automobile
crash. Babcock has said that she is sometimes chastised by prosecutors for
taking the appeals of Mexicans who have been convicted of murder. One
government attorney boasted that he worked "for my country and my
president", insinuating that Babcock was unpatriotic.

For Michael Snedeker, who is handling the appeal of Tomas Verano Cruz, an
indigenous field worker from the impoverished outback of San Luis Potosi
state convicted of killing a police office, the logistics of locating
witnesses who can provide mitigating evidence are xomplex and often
involve multiple visits to the defendant's hometown. "The Mexican
government has been more than helpful in facilitating the gathering of
this information - for Mexico, the death penalty is a moral issue."

Another frustration for death penalty lawyers working with Mexican inmates
is that even if they do rescue their clients from execution, like Oswaldo
Torres, they often wind up buried alive under sentences of life
imprisonment without benefit of parole. The author of this article has
been unable to ascertain just how many Mexicans commuted from death row or
plea-bargained by lawyers into unappeasable sentences have been salted
away in U.S. prisons for the rest of their natural lives - but legal
observers venture that there could be as many as a thousand such inmates.
The "buried-alive" syndrome is "the next frontier" in these capital cases,
suggests Snedeker.

Through all of this legal tragedy, one thread runs like a long, nagging
corrido (Mexican border ballad): Innocence. Recently, reporter Lies Olsen
of the Houston Chronicle revisited the 1993 execution of Ruben Cantu by
the state of Texas. Cantu had been convicted in 1984 of murdering an
undocumented Mexican worker on San Antonio's crime-ridden south side when
he was 17, a case that appeared to be a typical "Cholo" (young
Mexican-American) murder-robbery of a hapless migrant worker for the few
bucks Jose Gomez had been able to pull together to send to his family back
home in Mexico. Cantu's family was also from Mexico but he was born on the
U.S. side of the border.

Now Juan Moreno, who survived the attack but was grievously wounded, says
he was coerced by San Antonio police into fingering Cantu. Then an 18
year-old new arrival from Zacatecas, Moreno was threatened with
deportation unless he identified Cantu ? there was no physical evidence
tying the accused boy to the murder. Olsen has since recounted how San
Antonio police sought to frame the young Cantu after he was involved in a
pool hall shooting of an off-duty officer. In an open letter to "the
people of San Antonio" before he was executed, Cantu insisted he was being
railroaded.

Ruben Cantu was a troubled, taciturn teenager. His alibi for the night of
the killing? He had been up in Waco stealing a pick-up truck. When offered
his last meal in the death house in Huntsville, Ruben ordered bubble gum.

Olsen reports that his request was denied.

(source: CounterPunch - John Ross is back in Mexico pounding away on his
latest Zapatista opus "Making Another World Possible--Zapatista Chronicles
2000-2006" to be published next year by Nationbooks)






LIBYA/BULGARIA:

Libya, Bulgaria agree to fund for HIV children


Bulgaria and Libya have agreed to set up a fund for families of Libyan
children with HIV, as the international community tries to save 5
Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death for infecting youngsters with the
virus.

The United States, Britain and the European Commission have all signed up
to the fund, Bulgaria's Foreign Ministry said Friday.

Libya has sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to
death by firing squad after convicting them of deliberately infecting 426
children with HIV in a hospital in the Mediterranean port of Benghazi.
About 50 of the infected children have died.

The nurses say their confessions were made under torture. AIDS experts
told a Libyan court the outbreak started before the nurses arrived and was
probably caused by poor hygiene.

Bulgaria, the European Union and United States have all denounced the
verdicts, and the case has become a hurdle to Libya's attempts to end its
international isolation.

Libya's Supreme Court has scheduled an appeal hearing for Sunday although
officials do not expect a final ruling until January.

"The international fund will be set up to support the families in Benghazi
as part of international efforts to find a solution acceptable to all
parties following the tragic HIV outbreak in Benghazi," the Foreign
Ministry said in a statement.

It declined to specify the size of the fund, but an official of the
Gadhafi Charity foundation, chaired by the influential son of Libyan
leader Moammar Gadhafi, Saif al-Islam, said in Tripoli:

"The Libyan and Bulgarian sides will meet next Wednesday, December 28, to
work out an agreement on the precise amount of compensation to the
families of the HIV-infected children."

The official added: "The 2 sides also will try to agree on details about
the medical care and welfare of the sick children."

Libya has in the past suggested the verdicts could be quashed if the
children and their families receive ample humanitarian aid. The charity
official insisted however the "court is independent and its decision will
not be influenced by the agreement."

Sofia has said the establishing of the fund would not automatically
trigger the release of the medics, who have been in jail in Libya since
1999.

"For the moment we do not have a reason for optimism, because we have yet
to see what the court will rule on Sunday," said Foreign Ministry
spokesman Dimitar Tsanchev.

He said the fund was intended only to help the families of the sick
children and reiterated Bulgaria's position that the nurses are innocent
and that it will not pay compensation that could be seen as an admission
of their guilt.

The fund will coordinate the distribution of financial aid to the families
of the infected children. It also will provide treatment for the children
and help modernize the Benghazi hospital.

It appeared to meet demands made last year by the Libyan Children's
Families Association. However, only the Libyan judiciary has the authority
to change the verdicts.

The fund will be run by a board including representatives of the Gadhafi
foundation, Bulgaria and the EU Commission, and AIDS experts from Libya
and the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas.

Earlier Friday, Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov said he expected a
breakthrough in talks for the release of the medics, the daily 24 Chasa
reported.

The paper quoted him as saying in an interview to be published Saturday
that he hoped this Christmas would be the last the medics spent in Libya,
but that their release would come at a high price.

It said he had declined to elaborate as talks were at such a delicate
stage.

EU External Relations spokeswoman Emma Udwin said: "This is in line with
the work we've been doing on an action plan to try and improve the
capacity of the Libyans to deal with AIDS/HIV."

Libyan Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdel-Rahman Shalgam said last month that
a humanitarian aid package arranged by Bulgaria and its Western partners
could resolve the dispute.

Relatives of the Bulgarian medics met the news nervously.

"We are afraid to hope, after so may years. ... It is almost impossible to
predict what will happen in Libya," said Ivan Nenov, husband of nurse
Nasya Nenova.

(source: Reuters)