[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 30


YEMEN:

Yemen launches 1st conference on anti-juvenile death penalty


The 1st national anti-juvenile death penalty conference kicked off Wednesday in 
Yemen's capital city of Sanaa.

The 2-day conference was organized by the coordinator committee of 
non-governmental organizations in collaboration with the UNICEF and the 
European Union.

Participants including Yemeni and UN officials stressed the importance that the 
authorities and childhood organizations work as a team to protect child rights 
and address all child issues.

Chief coordinator at the coordinator committee for non-governmental 
organizations, Abdu Al-Harazi, said Yemen should have more forensic experts 
including those whose job is to check child age in order to prepare accurate 
reports to avoid execution of juveniles.

He urged the House of Representatives to finalize debate over all laws that 
concern juveniles.

In this context, Abdulmalik Al-Wazeer, head of the Sharia legislation committee 
at the house. at the House, said the juvenile punishment law which is currently 
discussed by the House addresses all child and juvenile issues.

Secretary General of the High Maternity and Childhood Council Mrs. Lamyaa 
Al-Eryani called for having child protection laws.

The representatives of the office of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and 
UNICEF delivered speeches in which they urged a reconsideration into Yemeni 
laws in order in include child rights in them.

At the event, 3 papers were delivered on juvenile execution, Yemeni experience 
in this field, inhumane punishments and anti-juvenile punishment efforts.

(source: Yemen Post)






CHINA:

Retrial may start for man wrongly executed for murder, rape


A court in China's Inner Mongolia may start a retrial for a 19 year-old man who 
was wrongly executed 18 years ago for murder and rape, according to newspaper 
Fazhi Wanbao.

In 1996, Qosiletu, a young Mongolian Chinese man, was arrested after reporting 
to police in Hohhot that he had found a dead body in a public toilet. The 
police questioned why he was in a woman's toilet to discover a corpse and soon 
charged him with her rape and murder.

Qosiletu was reported to have told the court that he was drunk at the time and 
had ended up in the woman's toilet by mistake. Yet his defence was in vain, and 
he received the death penalty 2 months later.

It took the police 10 years to realise that Qosiletu was wronged. In 2006, they 
arrested a serial killer and rapist who confessed to murdering a woman in a 
Hohhot a toilet in 1996 - and gave details of the crime scene that proved him 
to be the real culprit.

Chinese media reports showed that Qosiletu was arrested amid a nationwide 
crackdown on crime launched by the government. The guiding principal behind the 
campaign was to solve criminal cases quickly and punish offenders severely. 
Thus police involved in Qovsiletu's case did not conduct a thorough 
investigation and instead rushed to a conclusion.

Qosiletu's family spent years petitioning for their son after the truth came to 
light, but there has been no formal response from the local government so far.

Qosiletu is 1 of many such cases where innocent people have been executed for 
crimes they did not commit.

Another notable case was that of Nie Shubin, a young man from Hebei, who was 
sentenced to death for the murder and rape a year earlier than Qovsiletu.

Despite a man named Wang Shujin admitting to be the real perpetrator in 2005, 
Hebei's supreme court still upheld their original verdict last year, as it 
considered Wang's testimony not consistent with findings at the crime scene.

Following a number of well-publicised, wrongful convictions, China's Supreme 
Court starteted to review capital cases before sentences were carried out in 
2007.

Judges and scholars close to the Supreme Court say capital punishments have 
probabaly been reduced "by more than 1/3" since then, as the Supreme Court is 
now more inclined to deal with death sentences by offering reprieves, and 
demanding "clear facts" and "abundant evidence" for capital punishments, 
according to a recent report by the Southern Weekly.

In June, China's Supreme Court overturned the death sentence of a woman who 
killed and cooked her husband after suffering years of domestic abuse.

The total number of death penalty cases in China is classified as a state 
secret. San Francisco-based human rights group Dui Hua Foundation estimates 
that China executed around 2,400 people last year, based on published 
sentences.

(source: South China Morning Post)

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

Disgraced PLA Lt Gen Gu Junshan could face death penalty


Former People's Liberation Army lieutenant general Gu Junshan could be facing 
the death penalty, reports our Chinese-language sister paper Want Daily.

Political analysts say that Gu, 58, could soon be facing a trial after military 
prosecutors completed their graft probe into his mentor, ex-PLA general Xu 
Caihou, who has reportedly confessed to accepting "extremely large" bribes in 
return for favors and promotions. The case is now being turned over the 
judicial authorities, according to China's official Xinhua news agency.

Xu's case appears to have been expedited given that he was only placed under 
investigation in March this year and expelled from the Communist Party in late 
June. By contrast, Gu, whom Xu supported through his rise through the PLA 
ranks, was removed from his post in early 2012 but was not formally charged 
with embezzlement, bribery, misuse of state funds and abuse of power until 
March 31 this year.

Prosecutors have revealed that Xu, 71, has been under treatment for bladder 
cancer since last February. Analysts say if Xu is healthy enough, he will 
likely receive either life imprisonment or a suspended death sentence, 
typically commuted to a life sentence after 2 years.

As for Gu, the general consensus appears to be that the party will come down 
hard and that he could very well be sentenced to death.

On Tuesday, less than a week after the "rule of law" themed 4th plenum of 18th 
Central Committee, the party released a new document signaling plans to step up 
supervision of the military. The party said it would be laying out stricter 
supervision of the country's armed forces and pledged to reform its system of 
military discipline as part of broader efforts to fight corruption in its 
ranks.

The document said a system of legal advisers would be established and inserted 
at all levels of the armed forces to advise on important decisions, though few 
other concrete reform measures were mentioned.

(source: Want China Times)






QATAR:

Human trafficking? American couple in Qatar faces execution over adopted 
child's death


An American-Asian couple faces a death penalty sentence after a Qatari court 
alleged they were engaged in human trafficking when their adopted daughter 
died.

Matt and Grace Huang are scheduled to go to appeals court on November 30 to 
face a possible death sentence in a case that charges them with murdering their 
own adopted daughter in order to traffic her organs. The US government has 
tried to intervene but the Huangs remain under house arrest. They are not 
allowed to leave Qatar.

With the death penalty on the table, the Huangs believe the US government must 
act before their sentencing date.

"We want them to get us home before the 30th. On the 30th, we do not know what 
this court will do," Grace Huang told Katie Couric in an interview for Yahoo 
Global News.

The Huangs - originally from Los Angeles - moved to Qatar in 2012, when Matt, a 
Stanford trained engineer, was asked by his employer to oversee a major 
infrastructure project related to the 2022 World Cup, which will be hosted in 
Qatar.

The Qatari police suspected foul play, arrested the couple, and put their other 
children - 2 boys - in an orphanage.

The Huangs were subsequently charged with murdering Gloria and were told the 
motive was to harvest her organs or to conduct medical experiments on her, 
according to the California Innocence Project, which is assisting them in their 
case.

Gloria did have an eating disorder as a result of her childhood in Ghana, the 
Huangs said. They added that she would on occasion go for days without food, 
sometimes binging on junk food, rummaging through garbage, or stealing food and 
hiding it in her room. The defense argued that Grace has struggled with a 
variety of medical and psychological problems since she was adopted from Ghana 
at the age of 4. The judge was not swayed.

The Huangs spent a year in jail, going to court multiple times for hearings, 
and were eventually sentenced to 3 years in prison for undeclared reasons. The 
court did not find them guilty or not guilty of murder, or any other crimes for 
that matter.

"We have just been wrongfully convicted, and we feel as if we are being 
kidnapped by the Qatar judicial system," Matt Huang told reporters after the 
judge's decision.

(source: RT news)






GLOBAL:

UN Human Rights: Death penalty: Keep momentum on abolition


The UN Human Rights Committee is calling on States to ratify the Second 
Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 
aiming at the abolition of the death penalty. The use of capital punishment has 
declined significantly in the 25 years since the Second Optional Protocol was 
adopted. The Human Rights Committee, which monitors implementation of the 
Covenant, welcomes this progress but urges all States not merely to halt 
executions but to actively commit to abolishing this affront to human dignity 
and the right to life.

"On the 25th anniversary* of the Second Optional Protocol to the International 
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), aiming at the abolition of the 
death penalty, the Human Rights Committee, guardian of this treaty, continues 
to press for abolition.

Since the adoption of the Second Optional Protocol, progress towards the 
prohibition of executions has accelerated significantly. 81 States have 
ratified the Optional Protocol, while another 79 States have either abolished 
the death penalty, or do not practise it. The Committee recognises this 
international trend towards abolition and welcomes the ratifications this year 
by El Salvador, Gabon and Poland.

Even as early as 1982, the Committee was of the view that, "all measures of 
abolition should be considered as progress in the enjoyment of the right to 
life"**.

While the right to life article of the Covenant (article 6) does allow for the 
death penalty in certain very restricted cases, the Committee's experience 
demonstrates that it is extremely rare for any case to comply with the strict 
provisions of this article. In fact, most death penalty cases have also 
involved violations of other provisions of the Covenant, notably those relating 
to due process guarantees as well as torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading 
treatment or punishment. This issue is not, as some States persist in 
asserting, merely one of domestic criminal policy, but goes to the heart of the 
most fundamental human right: the right to life. That is why the world's 
abolitionist treaty obligation is contained in a protocol to a human rights 
treaty.

In its dialogues with States this year, the Committee has continued to 
encourage abolition and has systematically referred to the 25th anniversary in 
its Concluding Observations, while encouraging States to ratify the Second 
Optional Protocol. This includes States which have retained the death penalty 
in law but have a moratorium on the death penalty or are no longer carrying out 
executions in practice. Some such States were reviewed by the Committee at its 
latest session, and one committed to ratifying the Second Optional Protocol 
soon.

It is important that even States which no longer carry out executions ratify 
the Second Optional Protocol. This is because the treaty obligation would 
prevent them from easily restoring the death penalty in the future. It would 
require a State to withdraw from the Protocol before any reinstatement. 
Ratification helps it resist any public clamour for a return to this horrific 
practice.

The Human Rights Committee supports the aim for universal ratification of the 
Second Optional Protocol and encourages all relevant States to act upon the 
steady momentum towards abolition. In this context, the Committee decided at 
this session to adopt its next General Comment on the right to life (article 
6)."

(source: Scoop News)