[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Aug. 23



TAIWAN:

Taiwan will use death penalty cautiously: President Ma


President Ma Ying-jeou said Sunday that his government's policy is to retain 
the death penalty but use it cautiously, as it has been doing in recent years.

Addressing a national youth policy forum, Ma asked the participants about their 
views on the controversial issue of the death penalty.

Among the 85 participants at the annual forum that was organized by the 
Ministry of Education, 26 said they supported abolition of the death penalty 
law, while 46 said they did not.

One of the participants who expressed support for capital punishment said 
people who take others' lives should be punished.

Another participant said he could not support the idea of abolishing the death 
penalty because a member of his family had been a victim of homicide. The 
perpetrator received a prison sentence of 14 years, which was commuted to eight 
years, he said.

The killer eventually left prison, while the victim's family continues to 
suffer everlasting pain, said the young participant, who did not give his name.

Taking the other side of the argument, a participant said each life is unique, 
and one should not choose revenge after being hurt, but rather should choose 
forgiveness.

"A life for a life is too extreme," the youth said.

In response, Ma said that during his tenure as justice minister 1993-1996, more 
than 50 death-row prisoners were executed, but now there are only 5 or 6 
executions per year.

The government will not abolish the death penalty at this time but will use it 
with caution, Ma said.

The Ministry of Justice has been reviewing the policy and is disinclined to 
carry out such sentences. Justice Minister Luo Ying-shay, one of the many 
Cabinet members who attended the forum, said that while the death penalty is a 
thorny issue, it can be easily decided by legal means in a democratic country.

While all pacifists many want to see the death penalty done away with, this can 
only be done by means of a majority decision in society, the minister said.

The forum was also attended by Education Minister Wu Se-hwa and 85 
participants, ages 18 to 35, from around the country.

(source: Focus Taiwan news channel)






SAUDI ARABIA----execution

Saudi executes Yemeni for killing officer----The execution brings to 121 the 
number for this year in the kingdom


Saudi Arabia on Wednesday executed a Yemeni convicted of shooting dead a 
security officer who was trying to arrest him in the southern Jazan region, the 
interior ministry said.

The Yemeni, who was wanted by the kingdom's authorities, opened fire at the 
Saudi officer who was trying to arrest him, said the statement published by the 
official SPA news agency.

It provided no further details.

The execution brings to 121 the number for this year in the kingdom, compared 
with 87 for the whole of 2014, according to AFP tallies.

Amnesty International says Saudi Arabia is one of the world's most prolific 
executioners, along with China, Iran, Iraq and the United States.

Under the conservative kingdom's strict legal code, murder, armed robbery, 
rape, drug trafficking and apostasy are all punishable by death.

Executions in Saudi Arabia are almost always carried out by beheading.

The interior ministry has cited deterrence as a reason for carrying out the 
punishments but rights experts have raised concerns about the fairness of 
trials in the kingdom.

(source: Gulf News)






JAMAICA:

Manchester custos reiterates call for murderers to get the death penalty .

For more than a decade, Sally Porteous has been a strong advocate of the death 
penalty, and despite criticisms from some opposed to this form of punishment, 
the custos of Manchester is not backing down.

"I want to know how many more are to be killed before somebody says, 'Stop. 
It's enough'? I'm saying stop, it's enough! Get the gallows ready and hang 
them," Porteous told The Sunday Gleaner last Wednesday.

"They have to be taken out and I don't want to hear anybody come to me and say, 
'Oh, you know it doesn't prevent murder.' Well, if that's your argument, then 
we should let everybody out for robbery, rape and everything else. If you're 
going to kill somebody, you must pay for it with your life. They are destroying 
the whole country," charged Porteous.

According to the one-time Jamaica Labour Party activist, her call for a 
resumption of hanging should not be interpreted as a political position as it 
is a personal position endorsed by many well-thinking Jamaicans.

"I don't want to debate everybody in the whole world. That's my belief and that 
is also what people have come to me and said. When justices of the peace (JPs) 
and community people come to me and say, 'Custos, you need to talk more about 
what we want', then I must do that on their behalf."

GROWING CRIME WAVE

Custos Porteous, who broke down in tears during the service of thanksgiving for 
murdered businessman and JP Terence Green at the Kendal Conference Centre last 
Sunday, was calm and resolute as she spoke with The Sunday Gleaner about the 
impact of the growing crime wave and the need for action.

"It's not a complicated issue with me. I think that the country is way beyond 
terrified. I think that if Jamaica continues like this you will never see any 
more new investment.

"We've been far too high in the murder rate for far too long, and if you go 
abroad and sit among a group of people and ask them, 'Would you come to Jamaica 
to live or to invest?' They would tell you no, and the reason is because they 
are afraid of being killed," said Porteous.

She continued: "Now, when you have that from abroad and when you speak to the 
average Jamaican, they know that it's a question of time before some horrible 
crime will happen to them. There is small cadre of pathological, cold-hearted 
murderers killing our police and killing our good citizens and they cannot 
remain. They have to be taken out."

According to Porteous, the night before the gun-slaying of Green, two other JPs 
in the parish narrowly escaped being murdered.

"One was held up by a gunman in Montego Bay and heard the click of his weapon. 
It just didn't go off. The same night in Manchester, in Knockpatrick, another 
had a gun put to her head," said Porteous, who has long argued that the death 
penalty is the only answer for murderers.

The death penalty remains on Jamaica's law books and can be applied to persons 
convicted of the murder of a member of the security forces; judicial officers; 
witnesses; and murder for hire; murder in the course or furtherance of another 
offence such as robbery, rape or arson; or murder committed to further an act 
aimed at undermining the public peace. Double-murderers or repeat murderers are 
also punishable by death.

However, the last murderer to be executed in Jamaica was in 1988.

(source: Jamaica Gleaner)






CANADA:

ormer Olympian one of the last people to receive death penalty in Nova Scotia


The name Emmett Sloane was an alias for Inguald Bing Anderson, an American 
Olympic ski jump champion from New Hampshire, down on his money and luck and 
out of ideas and a job.

By February 1930, he had not worked for months and was staying at the Norfolk 
Hotel on George Street in Sydney.

He called the night clerk Oeblois Rehberg up to his room on the pretext of 
fixing his overhead light. Believing he had money on him, Sloane struck him a 
blow to the head with an iron bar. He went through his pockets and found no 
money.

He went downstairs but found another man at the desk. He left the Norfolk in a 
rush, walking in a terrible snow storm toward the railway tracks until he 
reached a lumber camp near Frenchvale.

He was given shelter and fed supper. Somebody said that it was too bad the 
radio wasn't working as they might learn about the storm. He said he thought he 
could fix it and started shifting tubes around. Suddenly it started to work and 
began broadcasting that a murder had occurred at the Norfolk Hotel.

It described the suspect as wearing a blue pencil-striped suit. A man named 
Neil MacPherson testified to this at the trial. He looked at Sloane, pulled on 
a pair of boots and went to the nearest house and called the police. Long after 
midnight, the chief of police arrived by horse and sleigh and took him to the 
lockup.

He gave Sloane a drink of rum to warm him up. He then asked him what he hit the 
victim with and was told an iron bar from 12 to 15 inches long that he picked 
up in the alley. It was disallowed in court because of the rum. Rumour had it 
that Clarance Darrow was coming to represent him but it failed to happen.

My father Rannie Hook remembered the trial vividly. His mother whose maiden 
name was Christena MacPherson was from Frenchvale and a sister to Neil at the 
lumber camp who had phoned the police.

On March 15, 1930, Sloane was found guilty. He was confined to a small cell at 
the old county jail on Welton Street for 3 months. He maintained to the end 
that he did not remember the murder and went to his death without confessing. 
According to press reports, it was felt he did not care to remember.

At approximately 1 a.m. on the night of May 20, 1930, the trap door was sprung. 
His head was swollen twice its normal size from the hanging. There were 60 
people who witnessed it from inside the jail and hundreds outside hoping to 
catch a glimpse. The hangman was told to get out of the city as quickly as 
possible. Sloane was buried in Hardwood Cemetery.

The ironic thing to note regarding the hangman whose name was Arthur Rioux from 
Montreal was that he stayed at the same hotel - Norfolk - as the accused.

Sloane was the 2nd last man hung in Cape Breton. The last was George Alfred 
Beckett on April 30, 1931. The last one in Nova Scotia was in 1937. The last in 
Canada was 1962.

Hangings were quite common in England and known as the bloody code. At one time 
during the 1800s, there were 250 crimes punishable by death. In the short span 
of 60 years from 1770 to 1830 more than 7,000 people were publicly executed. 
All this showed that what was intended as a deterrent failed miserably. Anyone 
caught stealing anything with a value of more than 5 schillings could be 
hanged. A woman could claim pregnancy to avoid a hanging.

Another way of claiming benefit of clergy where the convicted could read a 
passage from the Bible to avoid the noose.

The gallows was a simple but effective instrument of death. It was abolished in 
Canada in 1976.

(source: Ron MacDonald; Cape Breton Post)



IRAN:

British minister's visit to Tehran amid mass executions and meeting with 
officials responsible for 120,000 political executions encourages more 
executions and betrays human rights and democratic values


The visit of Mr. Philip Hammond, the British foreign minister, to Tehran and 
his meeting with leaders of the religious fascism ruling Iran encourages the 
clerical regime to continue and intensify torture and killing and export of 
terrorism and fundamentalism. This visit and similar ones are against the 
national interests and the will of the Iranian people to overthrow the regime 
and establish democracy and popular sovereignty in Iran.

The clerical regime leaders whom Philip Hammond will meet are among the 
officials responsible for 120,000 political executions including the massacre 
of 30,000 political prisoners in the summer of 1988 and the execution of more 
than 2000 prisoners during Rouhani's tenure. During this period, in addition to 
the increase of executions, repression of and discrimination against women and 
ethnic and religious minorities has been intensified in an unprecedented way.

Amnesty International said in its July 23 statement that in the 1st half of 
2015 at least 694 prisoners have been executed and this "paints a sinister 
picture of the machinery of the state carrying out premeditated, 
judicially-sanctioned killings on a mass scale ... we are likely to see more 
than 1,000 state-sanctioned deaths by the year's end."

The people who will be meeting Mr. Hammond in Tehran are the highest 
authorities responsible for export of terrorism and fundamentalism and massacre 
of innocent people in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. Meeting with such 
individuals who must be tried on charges of crimes against humanity for crimes 
inside and outside Iran only provokes hatred of the Iranian people.

While the justification for this trip and similar trips is the nuclear 
agreement of the mullahs with the world six powers, the regime's highest 
officials stressed that they don't have any commitment to observe the UN 
Security Council resolutions stemming from this agreement. On Saturday, August 
21, the mullahs' president Hassan Rouhani said Resolution 2231 "is not an 
obstacle for our work and we buy and will buy weapons wherever we feel 
necessary and we will not wait for anyone and any approval by anyone and we 
will not look at any resolution. If somewhere we need to sell weapons, we will. 
We will sell our weapons without any consideration, without any resolution."

The Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran 
calls on all defenders of human rights and democracy and all supporters of 
peace and tranquility in the region and the world to condemn this visit and 
take immediate action to cancel it.

(source: National Council of Resistance of Iran)






BANGLADESH:

Govt to seek review for Sayedee's death


The government will move a review with the apex court seeking death for 
convicted war criminal Delwar Hossain Sayedee, Attorney General Mahbubey Alam 
said today.

"We will file a review plea with the Supreme Court seeking his death penalty 
after obtaining the full verdict," he told reporters at his office.

However, he could not shed light on when the SC might release Sayedee's full 
verdict.

The top court on September 17 last year commuted the death penalty of Sayedee 
to imprisonment until death for crimes committed against humanity during the 
country's Liberation War in 1971.

Earlier on February 28, 2013, the International Crimes Tribunal-1 sentenced 
Sayedee to death for war crimes.

The SC commuted his punishment to imprisonment until death following an appeal 
filed by the Jamaat-e-Islami leader against the ICT-1 judgement.

Attorney General Mahbubey Alam also hoped that the SC would release a full 
verdict on another war criminal Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed soon.

The SC on June 16, this year upheld the death penalty of Mojaheed for crimes 
against humanity in 1971.

The government can start process for executing Mojaheed after getting the full 
judgement. Mojaheed can seek a review of the verdict after receiving the full 
text of the judgement.

(source: The Daily Star)






INDIA:

Supreme Court on Death Penalty to Kidnappers


Rising incidents of kidnapping and abduction for ransom not only by ordinary 
criminals but even by terrorists necessitate a stringent punishment for those 
indulging in such activities, the Supreme Court has said while upholding death 
sentence under section 364A of IPC."

The gradual growth of the challenges posed by kidnapping and abductions for 
ransom, not only by ordinary criminals for monetary gain or as an organised 
activity for economic gains but by terrorist organisations is what necessitated 
the incorporation of Section 364A of the IPC and a stringent punishment for 
those indulging in such activities."

Given the background in which the law was enacted and the concern shown by 
Parliament for the safety and security of the citizens and the unity, 
sovereignty and integrity of the country, the punishment prescribed for those 
committing any act contrary to Section 364A cannot be dubbed as so outrageously 
disproportionate to the nature of the offence as to call for same being 
declared unconstitutional," a 3-judge bench headed by Justice T S Thakur said.

The apex court's verdict came on a petition filed by a convict, who was awarded 
death sentence in a kidnapping-cum -murder case, challenging the constitutional 
validity of section 364A of IPC.

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

The quality of mercy: Restorative justice has started to make its impact in 
India----What does it take to forgive someone who has done a grievous harm? And 
does it really help one forget? Even though the idea of restorative justice is 
yet to find a firm foothold in India, those who have experienced it say the act 
is twice blessed.


If anyone had asked 6-year-old Avantika Maken what she wanted to do when she 
grew up, it would had taken the little girl an instant to reply: "Kill the 
person who killed my parents."

It was a sentiment that festered in her as she grew up, with anger, loneliness 
and helplessness compounding her immeasurable loss. Her wallet always carried 
photographs of her parents Lalit Maken, Congress leader and MP and his wife 
Gitanjali, daughter of former president Shankar Dayal Sharma. Except that these 
were not happy family photos, but those of their bullet-ridden bodies. In her 
wardrobe, tucked in a corner was a blood splattered locket - the one her mother 
had been wearing on that fateful day of July 31, 1985.

She'd been 10 days short of her 6th birthday, when 3 men waylaid her father, 
then 35 years old, as he stepped out of their house in west Delhi's Kirti 
Nagar.

As the men opened fire, Maken tried running back inside the house. Gitanjali 
stepped out to shield her husband. A few minutes later, Maken's mother would 
reach the spot to find her son dead and her daughter-in-law fatally wounded. 
Gitanjali would later die in the operation theatre.

Avantika realised something was wrong when someone from her maternal 
grandfather's office came to pick her up from school that afternoon. "That day 
as I was getting ready, my mother scolded me over something and said they would 
not come to pick me up after school. But my father smiled and said, of course, 
they would," says Avantika, now 36 years old. Shankar Dayal Sharma was then the 
governor of Andhra Pradesh and she was taken to Andhra Bhavan where he broke 
the news to her.

"He said, 'Promise me you won't cry' and I didn't," says Avantika.

But the loss left her ravaged. "I missed my parents, especially my father. 
Initially, both sets of grandparents went to court to get custody of me, but by 
the time the judgment came, they all agreed that I would be better off in a 
hostel. That made me feel unwanted. I didn't have any siblings to turn to or a 
home of my own. I was studying in Modern School in Delhi when my parents died. 
Afterwards, I was sent to Maharani Gayatri Devi hostel in Jaipur and then to 
Welham in Dehradun. At 18, I opted to get married just so I could stop living 
in relatives' homes. But the marriage didn't last. I feel a lot of my 
personality was shaped by the loneliness and the insecurities of my childhood," 
she says. Avantika is now married to Haryana Congress MP Ashok Tanwar and the 
couple have 3 children.

The 3 men who had murdered her parents were eventually caught. Ranjit Gill aka 
Kuki, Harjinder Singh Jinda, Sukhdev Singh Sukha were extremists out to avenge 
the 1984 violence against the Sikh community after the assassination of prime 
minister Indira Gandhi. Lalit Maken's name had figured in a 31-page booklet 
released by the People's Union for Civil Liberties called "Who are the Guilty?" 
that had names of Congress leaders involved in the carnage in Delhi's colonies. 
Sukha was arrested in 1986 and Jinda in 1987 - both were later sentenced to 
death for the murder of General Arun Vaidya, architect of Operation Bluestar 
and hanged in 1992.

Kuki says he now realises that violence is never the right response to any 
injustice Kuki says he now realises that violence is never the right response 
to any injustice.

Meanwhile, Kuki fled to the US and was arrested by Interpol in New Jersey, USA 
in 1987. He was deported to India in February 2000 and sentenced to life 
imprisonment in 2003. Later that year, a petition was filed asking that his 
life sentence be commuted on the ground that the fatal shots hadn't been fired 
by him. But it hinged on Avantika's consent.

The volcano of bitterness that had been building up in Avantika finally found 
its vent in 2008, but in a manner no one quite expected. That year, Avantika 
met the then Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit and asked her to agree to the 
petition that had been moved. She then went to Kuki's house and had a meal with 
his father.

As Kuki's sentence in prison ended and he was set free, it was Avantika who 
finally found a release.

Restorative justice, where criminals either meet their victims or are forgiven 
by them, may still be a rarity in India as compared to the West, but it has 
slowly started to make an impact. Much of its importance lies in the fact that 
what it unarguably does is to facilitate the most difficult task of any tragedy 
- bring a closure to a painful chapter in one's life. It was what Priyanka 
Vadra Gandhi had admittedly sought when she travelled to Tamil Nadu in 2008 to 
meet Nalini Sriharan lodged in Vellore jail for her complicity in the 
assassination of her father, former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. It was also 
what made Gladys Staines, widow of the Australian missionary Graham Staines, 
publicly forgive the man who burnt to death her husband and 2 sons in Orissa in 
1999. And it was what Avantika received in return for her generosity of heart 
and spirit.

"My father was my hero - he was good-looking, charming and sang well. But he 
was also a victim of politics," she says.

HS Phoolka, senior advocate of Delhi High Court, human rights activist and 
author, known for spearheading one of the longest and torturous legal battles 
to gain justice for the victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and fighting 
individual cases on the involvement of politicians in the riots, says little is 
known about the nature of Maken's involvement in the anti-Sikh riots. "I have 
no first hand evidence of his involvement other than having read his name in 
the report," says Phoolka.

Avantika had other unanswered questions too: Was Gill the one who pulled the 
trigger? What were her parents' last thoughts? When Kuki's petition came up, 
Avantika had been in Ludhiana campaigning for her colleague Manish Tiwari for 
the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. "There was a journalist who knew both Kuki 
and me. She asked me if I would be open to meeting him," says Avantika. Her 
anger hadn't subsided, but she agreed to meet him so she could hear his version 
of the accounts of that day.

The meeting took place in Ludhiana in May 2004. "I told her that it was a 
political fallout, that I had certainly been involved in the conspiracy, but I 
wasn't the one who had pulled the trigger that killed her parents. She asked 
me, why my parents? I told her that her father's name had been on that list, 
but her mother's death was an accident. She came in front of her father during 
the firing and that I was deeply sorry about it. Looking back now, I realise 
that violence is a shortcut and not the proper way to express resentment at an 
injustice," says Kuki, 55, who now lives in Ludhiana with his wife and daughter 
and writes a weekly blog navjawani.com.

That meeting changed things for Avantika. Kuki had been a gold medallist at the 
Punjab Agricultural University at Ludhiana, where he had studied genetics and 
crop science. His incarceration had not been easy for him either. "Kuki came 
across as a well-educated, soft-spoken person. I went to his house and met his 
parents and suddenly, images of how I had seen my grandparents pine for their 
son and daughter and cry all the time flashed before my eyes. I realised I 
didn't want another family to go through the same pain," she says. She was 
moved by the anguish of Kuki's parents. "My maternal grandparents, the Dayals, 
were in politics, so they still had their public life to hold them together. My 
paternal grandparents were especially devastated because they were a 
middle-class family whose lives revolved around their children," she says.

Her decision, when it came, didn't take long. "I thought he had suffered 
enough. Our jails are worse than death. You die every day there instead of that 
one day, and I wasn't sure his death would make things better for me. My loss 
could never be replaced, but if, because of me, another family's loss could be 
stemmed, I felt I needed to take the step," she says. Her family, all except 
her eldest son, supported her decision. "What is the point of holding on to a 
grudge if it gave me no peace? Now I can finally say I am happy. I have my own 
home and family and am at peace with myself," she says.

But if it took Avantika 23 years to arrive at forgiveness that took away the 
searing pain she had nursed till then, for American national Kia Scherr, the 
move was almost instantaneous. In November 2008, Kia's husband Alan and their 
13-year-old daughter Naomi were shot dead in Mumbai's Oberoi hotel during the 
terror attack of 26/11. Kia was at that time in Florida spending the 
Thanksgiving weekend with her parents; she had dropped out of the trip at the 
last minute. As she sat with her family watching the aftermath of the attack on 
television, she saw the grainy image of the lone terrorist who had survived - 
Ajmal Kasab - flashing across the screen . She was numb with sorrow, but 
remembers that her first reaction was to turn to her family and say, "We must 
forgive them." Scherr counts that among the most difficult moment of her life. 
"Despite the shock and outrage, the moment I uttered those words out loud, I 
felt a ray of peace," says the woman who became a life skills teacher 
afterwards with the organisation she founded, One Life Alliance, that teaches 
people love and tolerance.

While their meeting gave both Avantika and Kuki a sense of closure, for Kia, 
seeing Kasab on screen meant the beginning of a whole new journey. "I knew that 
if I could forgive the terrorists, I could go on living and loving. There is 
already enough hate," says Kia. She even wrote a letter to Kasab in 2012, but 
it remained undelivered.

Kia says her decision to forgive was prompted as much by her religion as that 
of her faith in a modern spiritual organisation Synchronicity, of which she and 
her husband had been members. Synchronicity uses technology to promote a 
message of oneness and sacredness of life around the world. In fact, it had 
organised that trip to India in 2008 to spread the foundation's message. 
"Forgiveness serves to free us from holding on to hatred, resentment, anger and 
feelings of revenge. This does not mean any of us pardon those actions or 
condone in any way what they (the terrorists) have done. We all agree that 
actions have consequences and the law of the land must be upheld," says the 
59-year-old, who comes to India regularly and visits the Oberoi hotel, the 
place where she lost her family.

Anup Surendranath, director at the Centre of the Death Penalty at National Law 
University, New Delhi, and one of the most vocal anti-death penalty crusaders 
in the country, says that while everyone has their own moral and philosophical 
stance on capital punishment, there needs to be a debate on two other fronts. 
"One is that given our political and economic realities, whether we as a 
country are in a position to administer the death penalty in a fair and 
constitutional manner. And the second is the idea of forgiveness and 
compassion. It's very surprising that in a society like ours, this idea has not 
taken off the way it should have. There is a strong cultural ethos for this 
debate to take place. A very strong marker or indicator of the way a society 
has evolved is how it treats its prisoners or those condemned by that society. 
Forgiveness and empathy need to be an integral part of our criminal justice 
system. The whole idea of reformation is sorely missing," says Surendranathan.

Sometimes, forgiveness can indeed set one on the path of reformation. On 
February 25, 1995, Rani Maria, a Roman Catholic nun, was travelling from 
Udainagar to Indore in Madhya Pradesh, by bus when she was attacked. Samundar 
Singh stabbed her 54 times and dragged her body out of the bus. A trial court 
sentenced Singh, then aged 22, to life imprisonment. At prison, Singh met 
Michael Purattukara, a Catholic priest who visited inmates. Purattukara, now 
known as Swami Sadanand, is the founder of Sachidanadan Ashram in Narasinghpur 
in Madhya Pradesh. He began counselling Singh. "In the beginning, Singh was 
unrepentant and wanted to take revenge on the person who had hired him to kill 
Maria. He told Sadanand that he had been paid Rs 10,000 by a local leader. 
After realising that Singh had been used as a pawn, the priest began working 
for his release," says Stephen, Maria's elder brother.

Sadanand informed the nun's family in Kerala about Singh's role in the crime, 
and they were willing to forgive him. Maria's younger sister Selmi, also a nun 
working in Indore, met Singh in jail. "She met him in the 8th year of his term. 
She tied a rakhi on his wrist as a mark of accepting him as her brother. In the 
next 2 years, she visited him several times," says Stephen.

After 11 years and 6 months, the Madhya Pradesh government accepted his mercy 
plea which had been endorsed by Maria's family, and Singh was released on 
grounds of good conduct. But there was no home to return to - his family and 
wife had abandoned him after he was convicted and his only son had died while 
he was in prison.

In April, 2012, Sadanand took Singh to Kerala to meet Maria's parents. His 
friends in Udainagar warned him not to go; but Singh decided to go to 
Pulluvazhy anyway. "My father was bed-ridden at the time. Singh came home and 
threw himself at my parents' feet, seeking forgiveness for his crime," recalls 
Stephen. In a remarkable act of kindness, Maria's mother, 88-year-old Vattalil 
Eliswa told Singh that the family was accepting him as member of the family and 
a 3rd son.

Today, Singh is a farmer and lives in a village 20 km away from Udainagar. His 
family had left him his share of the land. Every year, on the eve of Maria's 
death anniversary, Singh visits her tomb in Udainagar, offering his harvest. He 
regularly visits the convent where Maria had lived and meets Selmi who works 
there. In 2013, the story of Singh and Maria's family was chronicled in a movie 
titled Heart of a Murderer, directed by Australian-Italian filmmaker Catherine 
McGilvray. "If the mother and the sister of his victim were able to forgive him 
and love him as a son and a brother, it means that we too can forgive 
everything: forgiveness is the ultimate freedom for every human being," said 
McGilvray in interviews at the time of the film's release.

Does forgiveness bring peace? Surendranath says, "When people have suffered the 
loss of their loved ones, for the longest time they get caught up with the idea 
that the elimination of the person responsible will bring them a sense of 
closure. It's been well documented abroad that when that does happen, it's very 
rare that any sense of closure is felt by the victim's kin. In fact, they are 
still left grappling with their loss. It's then that they need to face up to 
what is it exactly that they had been bottling up or what does closure really 
entail."

5 years ago, in September 2010, a fugitive Mujeeb Rahman and his wife 
Khayarunneesa were found dead inside the forest at Thampuran Estate near 
Nilambur in Malappuram in Kerala. Rahman had fatally wounded SI Vijayakrishnan 
of Kalikavu police station 2 days ago when he had come to his residence at 
Chokkadu with a police team to execute a warrant issued by a family court on 
the basis of a complaint filed by his 4th wife. The sub-inspector later 
succumbed to his injuries and Rahman committed suicide after killing his wife. 
His 2 children were sent to an orphanage.

Cut to 2013. At a ceremony held at the school, the two children - Dilshad and 
Mohsina, 15 and 10 respectively, were gifted a house in the village built by 
donations from the staff and students of the school. Even more heart arming was 
the arrival of a special guest at the ceremony - Vishnu, son of the 
sub-inspector whose father had been killed by Dilshad and Mohsina's father. It 
was Vishnu who welcomed the children into the house with the words, "I am here 
for you as an elder brother, and you are not orphans." Vishnu, who has also 
joined the police force, described the gesture more as doing a favour to 
himself than to anyone else. "I tried to forget the incident, but I couldn't. 
Then I decided to forgive the killer and reached out to his children as they 
were innocent. They had not committed any crime. But they too have suffered 
like me. Doing that has helped me put my painful past behind me," he says.

Like it did for Kia. "Forgiveness is the bridge to peace, the bridge to freedom 
from the past. It simply means acceptance of the reality of the situation and 
letting go of the incident, which cannot be changed," she says.

(source: Indian Express)

**********

Should India retain the death penalty? Law panel report next week----The report 
assumes significance as it comes days after a debate was generated over the 
hanging of Mumbai serial blasts convict Yakub Memon.


Days after its consultation process saw a majority opposing death penalty, the 
Law Commission will submit its report on the much-debated subject to the 
Supreme Court next week recommending as to whether capital punishment should be 
retained or done away with.

The law panel will submit its report to the Supreme Court "sometime" next week 
on whether India should continue with death penalty or abolish it. A copy will 
also be handed over to the Law Minister as any call on changes in penal 
provisions will be taken by Parliament.

The report assumes significance as it comes days after a debate was generated 
over the hanging of Mumbai serial blasts convict Yakub Memon.

The Commission is working overtime to complete the report as its 3-year term is 
coming to an end on August 31.

The Supreme Court, in Santosh Kumar Satishbhushan Bariyar vs Maharashtra and 
Shankar Kisanrao Khade vs Maharashtra, had suggested that the Law Commission 
should study the death penalty in India to "allow for an up-to-date and 
informed discussion and debate on the subject.

In a consultation paper released on May 22 last year, the Law Commission had 
said that at this juncture, an exhaustive study on the subject would be a 
useful and salutary contribution to the cause of public debate on this issue.

Such a study will also provide a definitive research-backed orientation to the 
lawmakers and judges on this very contentious issue, it had said.

The Commission said the study would have to address queries and concerns of 
courts and present an international perspective on the issue.

Former President late A P J Abdul Kalam and DMK MP Kanimozhi were among the 
people who had supported abolishing death penalty while responding to the 
consultation paper.

A discussion held last month on a Law Commission consultation paper on whether 
capital punishment should be retained or abolished saw most of the participants 
opposing capital punishment.

(source: Indian Express)

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

Death Penalty for Heinous Crime Not Barbaric, Says Supreme Court


In the wake of the debate over the death penalty following the execution of 
Mumbai attack convict Yakub Memon, the Supreme Court has said capital 
punishment is not inhuman or barbaric and will not violate the right to life 
and liberty in heinous crimes.

The observation came on Friday from a three-judge bench which was hearing the 
appeal from a murder case convict who has been given the death sentence.

Vikram Singh, who had been convicted for abducting and killing a 16-year-old, 
had challenged his death sentence, arguing that capital punishment is 
applicable only to terrorists.

The bench of Justices TS Thakur, RK Agrawal and AK Goel said, "A sentence of 
death in a case of murder may be rare, but if the courts have found it is the 
only sentence that can be awarded, it is difficult to revisit that question..."

What was important, the top court said, was that the punishment should be 
should be proportionate to the crime.

"Death penalty in a case of kidnapping or abduction will not qualify to be 
described as barbaric or inhuman so as to infringe the right to life guaranteed 
under Article 21 of the Constitution," the court said.

While death penalty is awarded in the rarest of the rare cases, the last few 
persons to be executed were people convicted on terror charges - Afzal Guru, 
who was convicted in the 2001 Parliament attack case and Ajamal Kasab, the lone 
Pakistani terrorist caught for the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai.

But it was Yakub Memon's execution that not only triggered questions from the 
civil society about his punishment, but also on the larger debate on death 
penalty.

Vikram Singh had been arrested for the abduction and murder of school student 
Abhi Verma in 2005.

He was awarded the death sentence by the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which 
was later confirmed by the Supreme Court. He had challenged the death sentence 
given for the crime he was booked under - kidnapping for ransom (Section 364A).

Punishments under the section include death sentence, life imprisonment and a 
fine.

(source: NDTV)






EGYPT:

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood chief gets new life term


Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie, who has been sentenced to 
death, was handed another life term in prison Saturday for an attack on a 
police station.

A criminal court sentenced Badie, the Islamist movement's spiritual leader, 
over the attack in the northeastern city of Port Said on August 16, 2013.

Eighty-eight co-defendants were also handed life terms, which in Egypt is 25 
years in jail. Only 18 of them were in court with Badie, however, and the rest 
were sentenced in absentia.

Twenty-eight others received 10 years in prison and 71 were acquitted.

The attack came two days after a bloody crackdown by security forces in Cairo 
on supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi that left hundreds 
dead in Rabaa al-Adawiya Square.

In June an Egyptian court upheld death sentences against Morsi and Badie for 
plotting jailbreaks and attacks on police during the country's 2011 uprising.

He had already been sentenced to death in April, and has been handed life 
sentences in 5 other cases.

Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected president, was ousted in 2013 by then army 
chief and now President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi after mass street protests against 
his year of rule.

An ensuing police crackdown targeting his supporters has left hundreds dead and 
thousands jailed.

Hundreds more have been sentenced to death after spee dy trials criticised by 
the United Nations.

The Muslim Brotherhood, which made major political gains following the 2011 
overthrow of longtime Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, was designated a 
"terrorist group" in late 2013.

(source: al-monitor.com)