[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 14



LESOTHO:

Too risky to arrest Lesotho coup leader - report


Lesotho's renegade army chief Lieutenant General Tlali Kamoli has resurfaced in 
the country's capital despite facing treason charges. However, he has not been 
detained as police say it is too risky to arrest him.

According to the Sunday Times, Kamoli, who was holed up in the surrounding 
mountains following his failed coup attempt on 30 August, has been seen in 
uniform and with a motorcade in several places in the city, including at 
military hospital and Maseru airport.

Lesotho police said a case of high treason is being investigated against Kamoli 
- a charge that carries the death penalty.

Following his unsuccessful coup attempt, Kamoli took to the hills with about 
200 soldiers and a large amount of weapons, including AK47s, grenade-launchers, 
an anti-aircraft gun and about 20 mortars.

Crisis summit deadlocked

Meanwhile, as reported by News24, Lesotho's deadlocked political parties failed 
to meet a Friday deadline for a fresh peace deal, prompting South Africa to 
call an emergency meeting of regional leaders.

After promising President Jacob Zuma that they would decide by Friday when to 
reopen Lesotho's parliament, rival leaders failed to resolve a crisis sparked 
two weeks ago by the aborted coup.

Reopening the legislature - which was shut in June - is seen as a key step 
toward restoring normality in the tiny mountainous state.

The attempted coup by Kamoli saw the military assault several police stations 
prompting the prime minister to flee the country.

1 Lesotho police officer was killed, and nine others injured in the unrest.

Prime Minister Tom Thabane has since returned, protected by South African 
guards, but a Pretoria-brokered peace deal quickly disintegrated.

On Friday rival party leaders failed to patch up their difference, instead 
calling for the 15-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) to step 
in.

"How can you open your own parliament when you still have foreign troops here, 
protecting you?" asked Thesele Maseribane, one of those who fled and is now 
under foreign guard.

"Everyone's interested in parliament, but what about what recently happened 
here? This is not a movie. This is reality. This was an attempted coup."

Deputy Prime Minister Mothetjoa Metsing's Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) 
party has been blamed along with Kamoli for the putsch.

Bloodbath

Kamoli has refused a prime ministerial order to resign and has apparently 
raided government armouries in preparation for a showdown. His allies have 
warned of a "bloodbath" if he is forcibly removed.

The SADC has so far been willing to play mediator, but rebuffed calls by some 
Lesotho leaders for military intervention, pressing instead for a political 
resolution.

Zuma visited Lesotho this week to try to end the stand-off, but Deputy 
President Cyril Ramaphosa was to travel to the country again on Friday.

A SADC troika will meet next week to discuss the crisis.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe - who currently holds the rotating 
chairmanship of the bloc - said a full 15-member summit will be held on 
Wednesday in Pretoria.

The leaders are sure to face more calls for military intervention, although 
locals say they are "praying for peace".

(source: news24.com)






IRAN:

Rouhani's Judicial Challenge ---- Iran's death penalty on the rise despite 
Rouhani's pledges for due judicial process


Every year, Amnesty International releases dozens of reports about the state of 
human rights in country's across the world. When it comes to Iran, 1 issue of 
particular concern for the organization is the country's approach to capital 
punishment. In its report on worldwide trends in the use of the death penalty 
in 2013, Amnesty International noted that Iran was 1 of 3 countries that were 
responsible for almost 80 % of all executions.

In particular, Amnesty International said that while Iranian media outlets 
reported that 369 people had been executed in Iran in 2013, there were grounds 
to believe that an additional 335 executions had been carried out, while close 
to 100 new death sentences had been imposed.

Following the election of moderate president Hassan Rouhani in June 2013, some 
signs of hope began to appear, particularly after he put forward his 
Citizenship Rights Charter. However, the reality is that the rate of executions 
escalated with 57 people executed in just the winter of 2014. This included the 
execution of political and cultural activists as well, according to reports.

While some people had hopes that the Rouhani government would be able to make a 
difference to the aggravated human rights situation in the country, others were 
not so optimistic given the strength of the Iranian judiciary. On September 9, 
Iranian Judiciary spokesman Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei criticized President 
Hassan Rouhani's administration for "interfering" in the process of 
ratification of judicial bills.

"The government should not interfere in the ratification process of judicial 
bills. Judicial bills are sent either to the Majlis or Expediency Council," 
Ejei said.

Ejei's comments can be interpreted as an attempt to move the government away 
from playing an active role in shaping or amending the regulations government 
Iran's judicial system.

Most capital punishment cases in Iran are due to drug-related offenses. While 
the execution of juvenile offenders and political activists are also raising 
alarm balls among international human rights groups.

Individuals are reported to have been sentenced to death in the absence of fair 
trials or access to a lawyer, according to the UN Human right Rapporteur for 
Iran, Ahmed Shaheed's latest report. In addition to this, there is a 
predominance of cases where Iranian defendants have incriminated themselves, 
pleading guilty to charges that could result in their execution. International 
human rights groups say that confessions are obtained under duress.

Iran's Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli claimed in June 2014 that drug 
smugglers account for 80 % of all executions in the country. He defended 
capital punishment in Iran, saying: "These drug smugglers who are executed 
mostly commit armed robbery, money laundering, and terrorist operations which 
threaten world peace."

Iran is also one of few countries in the world that still execute juvenile 
offenders. At least eleven people were executed in 2013 for crimes they 
committed when they were minors. Although a new penal code has now been 
approved to prevent the execution of juveniles for drug-related crimes, they 
can still be executed for murder.

Ethnic and religious minorities - particularly Kurds, Arabs, and Baha'is - are 
over-subscribed among Iranian prisoners, and particularly those facing the 
death penalty for politically-motivated crimes. Aside from the sheer range of 
criminal offences carrying the death penalty, activists are often charged with 
crimes like moharebeh ("enmity against God") or acting against national 
security. Other criminal offenses include "propaganda against the state" and 
"endangering the security of the state."

The ability to convict people on such vaguely-worded criminal offenses frees 
the hands of state prosecutors to use allegations such as this to suppress the 
rights of activists and citizens.

Gholamreza Khosravi's case is a good example. On June 1, Iranian authorities 
executed after finding him guilty of moharebeh. In his case, his crimes were 
allegedly passing information, and possibly financial assistance, to a 
London-based television station affiliated with the banned Mujahideen-e Khalq 
organization.

Mahafarid Amir Khosravi, a former businessman is another example. He was 
allegedly accused of large-scale financial corruption and money laundering. 
Khosravi was hanged in Tehran's Evin prison on May 24, 2014 after being 
convicted of being responsible for a financial scam that was said to have cost 
Iranian banks nearly 2.6 billion US dollars.

Since people are convicted on such vague charges while unreported executions 
are carried out in the country, it is not easy for any campaigns or 
organizations to ascertain the precise number of political executions taking 
place in Rouhani's Iran.

Human rights activists suggest that there is a direct and obvious relation 
between the political situation in Iran and the number of executions taking 
place. In other words, executions are a means of sending a message to 
protesters and political activists during times of chaos.

A review of the number of executions reported in the national media showed that 
fewer executions were carried out - or at least reported - in the months 
leading up to the most recent parliamentary and presidential elections. Many 
analysts believe this represented implicit encouragement for Iranians to the 
polls. With Rouhani now in office, will he be able to burnish his moderate 
credentials by solving Iran's execution problem?

(source: Asharq Al-Awsat)






AFGHANISTAN:

Ulema Council wants immediate execution of Kabul gang-rape convicts


The Ulema Council of Afghanistan has demanded immediate execution of a group of 
men convicted in gang-rape of 4 women in Paghman district of capital Kabul.

The members of Ulema Council including the council???s chief Mawlavi Qeyamuddin 
Kashaf met with Afghan President Karzai on Saturday in ARG presidential palace.

Ulema Council members urged President Hamid Karzai to approve the death penalty 
for the convicts which was awarded by the primary court last week.

President Karzai said he will take immediate action once the trial of the 
convicts has been finalized by the other courts.

He said he approves the verdict of the primary court which sentenced the 
convicts to death.

The women were initially abducted while they were returning from a wedding 
ceremony and were repeatedly raped besides their belongings were robbed by a 
gang of 10 people.

Police arrested four of the perpetrators from capital Kabul while 3 others were 
arrested from eastern Ghazni proivnce late Monday after they managed to flee 
Kabul city.

(source: Khaama Press)






PAKISTAN:

Keep the death penalty moratorium


With an age-old record of convicting people over fabricated charges, it is 
simply embarrassing that the justice system of Pakistan has the audacity to 
hand out a sentence as severe as that of death. That the Lahore High Court 
ordered the immediate execution of a Haripur jail inmate in the coming week on 
charges of murder not only makes light of the informal moratorium on death 
penalties by the PML-N regime, but also conveys a sense of self-assuredness 
which hardly becomes a judicial apparatus warped in chronic politicisation, 
bias and corruption. It is quite alarming that convicts - specially those 
charged with non-lethal crimes such as blasphemy or drug trafficking - are 
being handed down black warrants by a police and court system which can neither 
guarantee the absolute veracity of charges nor claim complete transparency of 
trial.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, in its statement of September 11, only 
echoes the alarm over the court's haste in hanging the Haripur prisoner to 
death. Despite an informal moratorium which, incidentally, came through a 
quick, almost perfunctory announcement in the Lower House, prisoners across 
Pakistan continue to be condemned to death and several thousand on death row 
continue to languish in solitary confinement, suffering ghastly prison 
conditions, their lives at constant risk. Why, if at all, are death sentences 
being tossed around by the lower courts in the wake of an indefinite stay on 
capital punishment? For how long can an inmate languish in solitary 
confinement, anticipating his/her death? The crippling mental trauma that 
accompanies the anticipation of death probably exceeds the intended severity of 
punishment but alas, these sensitivities are alien to a system which has been 
completely ossified in the colonial era and remains resistant to reform.

Most of the death warrants are given by the lower courts and there is universal 
acceptance that this tier of the judiciary is plagued by endemic corruption and 
miscarriage of justice. Part of the problem, also, is the 'informality' of the 
moratorium. Steady legislation needs to be written into the books to firstly, 
completely do away with capital punishment and secondly, to fine-tune the 
justice system and bolster its credibility.

(source: Editorial, Express Tribune)






INDIA:

New anti-hijack bill to include death penalty


The government will present a new anti-hijacking bill in the next Parliament 
session that proposes stricter punishments, including the death penalty, to 
deter hijackers, a civil aviation ministry official told HT.

Under current laws, the maximum sentence that can be awarded to a hijacker is 
life imprisonment. The new Anti-Hijacking Bill, 2014, will increase the scope 
of punishment by awarding the death penalty for hijacking that involves the 
death of a hostage or security personnel. The Bill also allows a hijacker's 
property to be confiscated.

"There will be great deterrence towards hijacking because of the death penalty 
provision," said union civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju.

Awarding the death penalty for hijacking was first considered after terrorists 
hijacked an Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu to Kandahar in 1999. After 
the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in the US, the 
government felt the need to amend the existing Anti-Hijacking Act, 1982, and 
introduced the Anti-Hijacking (Amendment) Bill in the Rajya Sabha in 2010.

A ministry official said the new Bill proposes to increase the net on 
perpetrators. "The Bill will enable India to register a case against hijackers 
if any Indian is hijacked in any aircraft anywhere across the world," he said. 
Currently, the offender has to be an Indian citizen or the aircraft has to land 
in India for a case to be registered.

The Bill also broadens the definition of hijacking by introducing an 
"in-service" clause. Hijacking is currently limited by an "in-flight" 
definition, which means the period after the doors of a plane are closed for 
take-off. Under the new provisions, an aircraft shall be considered to be 
"in-service" from the beginning of pre-flight preparations by ground personnel 
to until 24 hours after it has landed.

Another area the Bill proposes to change is trials of offenders. It provides 
for speeding up hijackers' trials by allowing state governments to designate a 
sessions court to hold such trials with permission from the chief justice of 
the state's high court. The designated court will try to hold the trial on a 
day-to-day basis.

(source: Hindustan Times)