[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

April 24


IRAN:

After 19 Months in Solitary, Death Row Inmate Finally Indicted


Kurdish political prisoner Behrouz Alakhani, currently being held in Orumiyeh 
Detention Center, is spending his nineteenth month in solitary confinemen. A 
local source told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that 
Alakhani has been sentenced to death for “cooperating with PJAK” and 
“participating in the murder of the Khoy Prosecutor.”

The source also told the Campaign that Alakhani, a 26-year-old Kurdish citizen 
of Salmas, is in grave condition and has been detained in Salmas, Khoy and 
Orumiyeh detention centers.

According to the source, Alakhani has been subjected to the most severe 
psychological and physical torture. During this time, despite his family’s 
appeal to Salmas and Orumiyeh judicial and security organizations, no responses 
have been provided to them about Alakhani.

“After 19 months, this young Kurdish man was transferred to Orumiyeh Central 
Prison. Because the political prisoner was in a poor psychological shape and 
evidence of torture was visible on his body, on orders from Orumiyeh 
Intelligence Office, he was transferred to the ward where drug-related 
criminals are kept,” said the local human rights source.

Authorities have prohibited Alakhani from telephone contact with his family and 
he has only been able to see his family once a month in the presence of 
security forces. “After near 20 months [in prison], the Prosecutor for Orumiyeh 
General and Revolutionary Courts indicted him on charges of ‘cooperating with 
The Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK),’ and ‘participation in the murder 
of Khoy Prosecutor’ and he was put on trial at Branch One of Orumiyeh 
Revolutionary Court. But due to his lack of mental balance and upon request by 
his court-appointed lawyer, his trial was delayed for several weeks.”

According the source, Behrouz Alakhani was detained in the Salmas Intelligence 
Office Detention Center immediately after his arrest. Two days later, 
authorities transferred him to Orumiyeh Intelligence Office Detention Center. 
On the third day of his arrest, security forces stormed the Kurdish citizen’s 
home and after searching the premises took several of his personal items with 
them.

The source told the Campaign that Alakhani’s original charges were “cooperating 
with PJAK.” After being interrogated for several months, he was additionally 
charged with “participating in the murder of Khoy Prosecutor.”

“During all phases of the interrogations, this Kurdish political prisoner 
refuted the charge of participating in the murder of Khoy Prosecutor,” said the 
source.

“The judge, however, found the defendant guilty of ‘participating in the 
murder’ and issued a death sentence against him based only on his own 
understanding and knowledge and testimony of a friend of this political 
prisoner, who has described him as “worried and anxious” on the night of the 
murder. Behrouz Alakhani’s case is now pending final ruling in the Supreme 
Court,” the source added.

“Eventually, on 14 October 2011, during a minutes-long trial session in the 
presence of a court-appointed lawyer, the Prosecutor’s representative, and a 
representative from Orumiyeh Intelligence office, he was sentenced to death on 
charges of ‘moharebeh (enmity with God) through effective cooperation with PJAK 
and participation in the murder of Khoy Prosecutor.’ In a separate case for 
‘possession of a rifle’ that never existed, he was also sentenced to an 
additional 10 years in prison. After his court-appointed lawyer appealed the 
decision, the case has been forwarded to the Supreme Court. This political 
prisoner’s health conditions are reported as serious and due to the sensitivity 
of his case, prison authorities have refused to transfer him to a hospital 
outside the prison,” the source told the Campaign.

Eyewitnesses told the local source that after his arrest, security forces had 
closed down the streets leading to Alakhani’s house for several hours, causing 
fear and intimidation in the neighborhood.

(source: Iran Human Rights)






ZIMBABWE:

Outlaw death penalty — Amnesty


International human rights body Amnesty International (AI) Zimbabwe has 
challenged leaders of Zimbabwe’s 3 main political parties to outlaw the death 
penalty in the new constitution, saying capital punishment violated the right 
to life.

In an open letter to President Robert Mugabe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai 
and Welshman Ncube, AI Zimbabwe executive director Cousin Zilala said the death 
penalty should not be included in the new governance charter currently being 
crafted.

“Amnesty International is urging party leaders in the inclusive government to 
provide leadership in shaping a new constitution that seeks to remove Zimbabwe 
from the ever-diminishing number of countries left in the world that apply the 
death penalty for all offences,” said Zilala.

“We challenge you as the leaders of Zanu PF and the 2 MDCs, whose parties are 
charged with coming up with a new constitution, to do the honourable thing and 
rest the spirits of Mbuya Nehanda, Sekuru Kaguvi and others who were victims of 
this inhuman and degrading form of punishment. This is no time for excuses.”

Zilala said the adoption of a new constitution provided Zimbabwe with an 
opportunity to improve its human rights record, to mark itself out as a 
progressive nation within the region and to align itself with the global trend 
towards abolishing the death penalty.

“Removing the death penalty from the new constitution will be a decisive step 
in removing one of the shackles left over from that period,” he said.

Zilala said the constitution-making Copac’s decision to restrict the death 
penalty to aggravated murder was not enough as the restriction retained the 
status quo for those currently on death row.

(source: Newsday)






(in) CANADA:

Advocate for abolition of death penalty gives stirring talk at Guelph gathering


Faith must be lived and shared.

Spoken fervently and affectionately in a Louisianan twang, that was the alpha 
and omega idea of a stirring presentation by renowned author and spiritual 
guide Sister Helen Prejean Monday in the city.

Prejean is best known as the author of Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account 
of the Death Penalty in the United States, which became an Academy Award 
winning film starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon in 1995. Prejean is a 
leading American advocate for the abolition of the death penalty.

Prejean agreed to be the spiritual adviser to convicted killers Patrick Sonnier 
and Robert Lee Willie in the 1980s — coming to realize that neither man was 
“the sum total of the worst thing they had ever done,” but were instead capable 
of faith, honesty and redemption. Both died on the electric chair.

Prejean said after witnessing Sonnier’s death in 1984 she first vomited, then 
she resolved to fight for the abolition of the death penalty in the United 
States. She has not relented from that commitment since.

Speaking to a gathering of hundreds of Wellington District Catholic School 
Board teachers and staff members assembled for the annual Spiritual Development 
Day, Prejean’s eloquent and moving stories of the death row inmates she 
befriended, prayed with, and walked with to their deaths, garnered tears, 
laughs, gasps, and a standing ovation.

Prejean, 73, is a nun, devoted to a life of spiritual service — a life of 
living the example set by Jesus Christ. But for the first years of her life as 
a nun, she freely admitted, she was asleep spiritually, unmoved by grace, 
unmoved by the suffering of the poor and oppressed.

“I was not awake, and when you’re not awake, you’re not awake,” she said. We 
cannot enlighten ourselves, she said. We must be graced with enlightenment.

A person of faith, she said, is in a constant state of self-questioning, 
because faith is a moving, changing reality. And, she said jokingly, “God is 
sneaky, sneaky, sneaky.” There is no telling when the spark of grace will 
enter, or the path of service it will take you down.

“What more could I do? How can I go deeper? How could I be happier?” she said. 
“There is all of this questioning of the spirit. Will I ever know Jesus, really 
know Him and live the Gospel of Jesus before I die?”

These, she said, are the endless questions of a life of faith, and there is 
great value in sharing this search, and these questions with others in our 
faith communities, because all ask the same questions and all are together in 
the same search.

“Search is just part of being human,” she said. “And when we come together in 
groups like this, we blow on the coals of our faith and stir to flame, as St. 
Paul says, the gift of God.”

In her early days as a nun, Prejean knew 3 chords on a guitar. She brought the 
entire crowd to laughter when she mimicked her butchery of the Bob Dylan song 
Blowing in the Wind. But that, she said, was as close as she came to the civil 
rights movement.

She grew up in the south, where the segregation of blacks and whites was a 
cultural phenomenon that few questioned. Culture is a very strong force in 
people’s lives, she said.

When her faith was awakened, only then did she question the racism of the south 
— only then did she truly see that 50 per cent of the population of Baton 
Rouge, where she grew up, were poor people. And only then did she embrace 
Christ’s urging that His followers must be “on the side of the poor.”

Inspired by a talk by a fellow nun, she suddenly woke up spiritually, 
attributing her renewal of faith, and her resolve to serve the poor and 
condemned wholeheartedly, to the infusion of grace that entered her heart when 
it was open.

That moment grace changed the “spiritual trajectory” of her life. She was soon 
steered into a challenging service as a friend to criminals condemned to death 
— service that would test her faith and change her life. She became an 
activist.

In America, and increasingly in Canada, Prejean said, we deal with our poor by 
putting them in prison. North America’s “tough on crime” policies have been 
particularly tough on the underprivileged and the young.

Such policies are not true to the gospels of Jesus, she indicated, but are 
often justified with Old Testament teachings. Once during a radio talk show, a 
caller challenged Prejean’s stance on capital punishment by quoting “an eye for 
an eye” from the Hebrew Bible. She countered by saying the Old Testament also 
calls for death by stoning for adultery. Did the caller want that enforced as 
well?

The idea of retribution, of getting even, runs deep in the human psyche, she 
indicated. Jesus abrogated such practices and called for mercy and forgiveness 
in their place. The death penalty would be abolished in the U.S. if the 
teachings of Christ were truly followed. Instead “the Bible-belt is the 
death-belt” in the southern states.

“There is a great need for Biblical literacy,” she said, pointing out that a 
recent study showed that 10 per cent of Americans believe that Joan of Arc was 
Noah’s wife.

Don Drone, director of education for the Wellington District Catholic School 
Board, said the power of Prejean’s presentation resided in the stories she told 
and was rooted in her firsthand experience with death-row prisoners.

The themes of forgiveness and reconciliation, and how those related to the life 
of Jesus, he said, where central subjects of discussion at Spiritual 
Development Day. He found Prejean’s ideas about being courageous in faith 
particularly relevant.

“As humans we have all experienced not stepping up when we should have,” Drone 
said. “We try to do that by way of social justice, and obviously by talking to 
students about doing the right thing.”

(source: Guelph Mercury)