[Deathpenalty] death penalty news---worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 6


CHINA:

Is China Slowly Chipping Away At The Death Penalty?----Though China remains the 
world leader in use of capital punishment, for the 2nd time in 3 years, the 
list of capital crimes may be reduced. But authorities may face popular 
backlash.


Under a recently released "Criminal Law Amendment draft," China's leaders are 
expected to cancel the death penalty for nine types of crime. Many academics 
and legal professionals have expressed their support, and I firmly support this 
revision of the regulations.

But I am also convinced that China still has much further to go in reducing 
capital punishment.

The intended withdrawal of the 9 capital charges, rarely applied in judicial 
practice, are the smuggling of weapons and ammunition, the smuggling of nuclear 
material, the smuggling of counterfeit money, the counterfeiting of money, 
fundraising fraud, organizing prostitution, forcing a person into prostitution, 
obstruction of the execution of military duties, and spreading rumors in war 
time.

I have consistently advocated reducing the instances where the death penalty is 
applied. It is still true that such advocacy is perhaps still unrealistic in 
China when it comes to the crime of manslaughter. However, I believe that for 
non-violent crimes, such as corruption, embezzlement and other economic crimes, 
the death penalty should now be cancelled.

This amendment would signal a great step forward for China's legal justice 
system, where economic crimes, in particular conviction for financial fraud and 
illegal use of public deposits, will no longer be subject to capital 
punishment, even with reprieve, but to a maximum of life imprisonment.

This proposal comes in the wake of the case last year of Zeng Chengjie, an 
entrepreneur convicted of illegal fundraising, whose execution came under 
questionable legal procedures and sparked widespread public concern.

This Criminal Law Amendment draft also intends to raise the threshold for 
executing prisoners who've received a "death sentence with reprieve." Currently 
for an inmate who has been given this sentence, and who commits another 
intentional crime, "the execution will be approved by the Supreme People's 
Court once the evidence is verified."

In the submitted draft, the execution is to apply only if the current crime is 
considered serious or "aggravated." Certain intentional offenses can be slight, 
for example, there is no need to pursue the execution of a prisoner who 
inflicts minor injuries on a fellow inmate.

If the draft law is adopted, there will still remain 46 capital crimes in 
China. From a legislative perspective this number still ranks relatively high 
on a global scale. In terms of the real number of executions, China is and will 
most likely remain the world leader.

China has much room to go in further reducing the application of the death 
sentence. For instance, drug-related crimes such as drug trafficking and 
transporting are still capital crimes and executions are relatively frequently 
carried out. In contrast with the rest of the world, the non-violent offenses 
of corruption and taking bribes are capital crimes. In the face of the fervor 
stirred up by the Chinese authorities' current anti-corruption campaign, 
changing this would most likely to face enormous public opposition.

By adding to the 13 capital crimes abolished in the last criminal law amendment 
in 2011, China will now have cancelled 22 capital crimes in the last 4 years. 
We hope that eventually China's execution data, so far regarded as a state 
secret, will also become public. That change may take years to arrive.

(source: Op-Ed; *Beijing legal scholar Xu Lanting's views were gathered and 
edited by Caixin's Lin Yunshi----WorldCrunch)






JAPAN:

Freed death row prisoner brings new life to group fighting capital punishment


A former death row inmate cleared of murder is giving new life to a fund that 
tries to help those facing execution secure a retrial.

Masao Akahori, 85, spent more than 30 years on death row for the murder of a 
6-year-old girl in Shimada, Shizuoka Prefecture. He was acquitted in 1989 and 
is now an ardent campaigner against capital punishment.

"I was able to avoid being hanged for a crime I didn't commit, but the 
important thing is to end the death penalty," Akahori said in a video message 
at a recent meeting in Tokyo of campaigners against capital punishment.

Akahori is donating a significant amount of money to a private fund that helps 
people on death row get legal assistance, the fund's organizers said.

Created in 2005 with a Y10 million bequest by anti-death penalty campaigner 
Sachiko Daidoji, the Daidoji Fund covers some of the fees that death row 
inmates incur as they seek a retrial.

It also operates a program encouraging people on death row to write and draw, 
awarding them prizes. The fund recently held a public exhibition in Tokyo to 
show that even convicted murderers have a human soul.

The fund was supposed to have been wound up this year, but Akahori's gesture 
will enable it to continue for another 5 years, said Masakuni Ota, a senior 
board member. The size of Akahori's contribution has not been disclosed.

One change will be the fund's name, becoming the Daidoji-Akahori Fund for 
Abolition of the Death Penalty.

Over the 9 years of its existence, the fund has received around 360 paintings 
from death row prisoners in Japanese jails, along with some of their writings. 
Most of the images were put on display in a Tokyo gallery for 10 days in 
September.

Around 4,000 visitors saw the exhibition, many of whom wrote down their 
impressions afterward for the organizers.

"I cried. I wondered how those who could create these beautiful and heartfelt 
pictures could commit such crimes," one said.

Another wrote that perhaps the pictures conveyed the prisoners' hopes "to 
return to the past, before they committed their crimes, and to express their 
feelings - if only a little - in restricted circumstances." Not all were 
sympathetic. One visitor wrote it was "unfair" that death row convicts were 
free to create artwork given that their murder victims could never come back 
and that the victims' families would continue to grieve.

But at least one visitor reported a change of mind: "I was pro-capital 
punishment, but I have come to realize that human beings are attractive. It's 
shocking, but I now believe we had better not keep the death penalty."

Ota said the exhibition achieved an important form of outreach.

"Although the visitors and the death row inmates cannot directly meet with each 
other, these notes suggest the start of a mutual exchange through the 
pictures," he said. The messages will be sent to the prisoners, he added.

The fund's organizers are delighted that Akahori's donation will enable them to 
continue their work.

"Prisoners on death row have come to depend on our activities, and therefore we 
cannot stop," Ota said.

"We will also continue working to end capital punishment," he added, saying 
what the group wants above all else is immediate abolition.

The so-called Shimada Case, in which Akahori was wrongfully convicted, was 1 of 
4 retrials in the 1980s that acquitted people on death row.

The cases highlighted defects in Japan's criminal investigation system, 
including an over-dependence on confessions. The revelation that so many 
individuals would have been executed for crimes they did not commit stirred 
expectations that the death penalty might be abolished.

But decades later, Japan retains the penalty and was one of only 22 countries 
to execute prisoners in 2013. Amnesty International says 140 countries, or 70 % 
of the world's total, have no death penalty, ending it either by law or in 
practice.

While a government survey shows more than 80 % of Japanese people support 
capital punishment, the U.N. Human Rights Committee has urged the nation to 
"give due consideration to the abolition of the death penalty."

Another death row inmate was released this year after DNA evidence caused a 
court to order the reopening of a case from 1966 in which 4 relatives were 
murdered. The freed man, Iwao Hakamada, is now awaiting a retrial before he can 
be formally exonerated.

(source: Japan Times)


BANGLADESH:

Wait until review petition disposal: Kamaruzzaman counsel


Saying that death-row war criminal Muhammad Kamaruzzaman will seek review of 
his punishment, one of his counsels today expressed hope that the government 
would not execute him until disposal of the petition.

Kamaruzzaman will file the petition after getting certified copy of the full 
verdict of the Supreme Court that upheld the death penalty awarded to him by 
the International Crime Tribunal-2, Khandaker Mahbub Hossain said.

"It will be illegal, if the government executes him before the SC releases its 
full verdict," Hossain said while addressing a press conference at the SC Bar 
Association auditorium in Dhaka.

The 4-member bench of the Appellate Division has awarded Kamaruzzaman the 
capital punishment on charges of mass killing at Sohagpur village, known as 
Bidhaba Palli (village of widows) in Sherpur by majority view.

"It means that a judge has deferred to the death sentence and Kamaruzzaman may 
get justice in this dissenting point," he added.

***********************

NIZAMI DEATH PENALTY ---- Dhaka protests Pak home minister's comment


The foreign ministry today summoned the acting high commissioner of Pakistan to 
Bangladesh and strongly protested a recent statement of its home minister on 
death sentence of Jamaat-e-Islami chief Motiur Rahman Nizami.

Additional Foreign Secretary Mizanur Rahman also handed Ahmed Hussain Dayo a 
protest note in which the government termed the statement of Chaudhry Nisar Ali 
Khan as interference in the internal affairs of Bangladesh.

Terming the comments as unwarranted an inappropriate, the additional foreign 
secretary said: "They amounted to directly interring with the internal affairs 
of Bangladesh."

Earlier on Saturday, the Pakistan interior minister expressed concern over the 
death sentence to Nizami, reports APP.

In a statement, he said that though what happened in Bangladesh was that 
country's internal matter, yet Pakistan could not remain divorced from 
references to 1971 and its aftermath.

He said it was highly unfortunate that almost 45 years after that tragic chain 
of events, the Bangladeshi government still seemed to be living in the past and 
totally ignoring the time-tested virtue of forgive and forget.

He said one failed to understand why the Bangladeshi government was hell-bent 
on digging the graves of the past and reopening old wounds.

The minister said it seemed obvious to any independent observer that recent 
events in Bangladesh were a manifestation of serious political violations which 
are being inflicted on Bangladesh's Jamaat-i-Islami for events before the 
independence of Bangladesh.

He added that he was deeply saddened to receive this shocking news and believed 
that the government of Bangladesh had misused the process of law as a political 
tool against the Jamaat leader.

Earlier on October 29, Nizami was awarded death penalty for war crimes 
committed during the country's Liberation War in 1971.

**********************

Death row convict Huji man held


The Rapid Action Battalion has arrested a fugitive death row convict in Ramna 
Batamul carnage case, about 13 years after the incident which claimed 10 lives.

Maulana Abu Bakar Siddique alias Hafez Selim Hawlader, 35, is a top leader of 
the banned Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (Huji) and also an accused in the August 
21 grenade attack case, said Rab officials.

He was captured around 2:30am on Wednesday from Keraniganj, and was paraded 
before the media at the Rab headquarters in the capital's Uttara yesterday.

At the press briefing, Rab Media Wing Director Commander Mufti Mahmud Khan said 
Siddique was a close associate of top Huji leader Mufti Abdul Hannan, another 
death row convict in the Ramna carnage case.

Siddique had been living in Keraniganj after hiding his identity, added the Rab 
official.

A Dhaka court in June handed the death penalty to 8 Huji operatives, including 
Hannan and Siddique, and life term imprisonment to 6 others in the Ramna 
carnage case. The carnage took place during the Pahela Baishakh celebrations in 
2001.

During primary interrogation, Siddique told the elite force that he got 
acquainted with Mufti Hannan in 1992 when he was a student at Gawhardanga 
Hafizia Madrasa at Tungipara in Gopalganj.

"He [Hannan] used to visit the madrasa frequently and give lectures on his 
experience with Afghan militants. He used to motivate the students and 
teachers," Siddique told the briefing.

Rab official Mahmud said thus motivated by Hannan, Siddique actively took part 
in both the Ramna carnage and the 21 August grenade attack in 2004.

Siddique protested his innocence in both the cases.

He, however, said he was at the August 21 rally on Bangabandhu Avenue in the 
capital. He came to Dhaka from Kishoreganj around 12:30pm that day after a 
certain Kajal Ahmed called him for an "important job".

"I sat about 5 feet away from the barricade. Suddenly I heard huge blasts. I 
ran away and took shelter at Baitul Mukarram National Mosque. After offering 
Maghrib prayers there I headed for Kishoreganj," said Siddique.

He said he got introduced with Kajal, a Huji leader, at Baitul Mukarram mosque 
earlier that year.

***********************

Ramna blast: Condemned convict held


Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) personnel arrested a condemned convict in Ramna 
Batamul carnage case in Dhaka early this morning.

Maulana Abu Bakar alias Selim Hawlader, a top leader of banned outfit 
Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (Huji), was picked up from his Keraniganj resident 
around 2:30am, said Mufti Mahmud Khan, director at the Rab's legal and media 
wing.

Mufti Mahmud was speaking at a press briefing at the elite force's Uttara 
headquarters in the afternoon.

Abu Bakar is also a charge-sheeted accused in the August 21 grenade attack 
case, Captain Maksudul Alam, assistant director of Rab's Legal and Media Wing 
said.

Alam said he was also a close associate to Huji top leader Mufti Abdul Hannan, 
who was sentenced to death in the case filed for killing 10 people in the 
attack during Pahela Baishakh celebrations at Ramna Batamul on the 1st day of 
Bangla year in 2001.

A court in Dhaka on June 23 awarded death penalty to 8 operatives of Huji 
including Hannan and Abu Bakar and life term imprisonment to 6 others in the 
case.

In the press briefing, Abu Bakar claimed he was not involved in the Ramna 
Batamul carnage and August 21 grenade attack cases.

(source for all: The Daily Star)