[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

July 16



TAIWAN:

Taiwan prosecutors seeking death penalty for suspect in schoolgirl stabbing


Prosecutors said they will seek the death penalty for Kung Chung-an, whom they 
have indicted for the murder of an 8-year-old girl. The Shilin District 
Prosecutors Office said Kung should be sentenced to death to improve Taiwan's 
social atmosphere and to protect law and order. They are also requesting the 
lifetime deprivation of his civil rights.

Prosecutors said the method with which Kung killed the girl was so fierce that 
he has caused great suffering to the victim's family and society as a whole.

On May 8, Kung allegedly assaulted an 8-year-old girl surnamed Liu after 
jumping a wall into the Wenhua Elementary School in Beitou District of Taipei 
City. The girl suffered a fatal knife injury to her neck.

Kung had said the reason he intruded into his alma mater to commit the crime 
was because he suffered from workplace pressures and auditory hallucinations.

In June, Kung was sent to receive several psychiatric examinations at the 
Taipei Veterans General Hospital Department of Psychiatry.

The hospital has found that Kung did not have a mental disturbance or defect 
when allegedly committing the crime, according to the authorities.

(source: Asia One)






INDIA:

Wanted: Hangman to execute 1993 blasts convict Yakub Memon


Officials at Nagpur's Central Jail are looking for a hangman after the 
Maharashtra government announced that 1993 blasts convict Yakub Memon will be 
hanged on July 30, if the Supreme Court rejects his mercy plea on July 21.

Neither Nagpur Central Jail nor Yerwada Central Jail in Pune - the 2 prisons in 
Maharashtra that are equipped to execute convicts - has an executioner.

The last execution at the Nagpur jail was carried out in 1984 when the Wankhede 
brothers from neighbouring Amravati were hanged for murder. For the most recent 
execution carried out in the state, that of 26/11 terror attack convict Ajmal 
Kasab on November 21, 2012, officials at Yerwada jail had to call in a retired 
hangman.

Officials in the state's home department, however, said that getting a hangman 
would not be a problem. Nagpur jail superintendent Yogesh Desai said even 
though they do not have a hangman on the rolls, the prison has the necessary 
facilities to hang convicts and can carry out the execution.

"We had increased the remuneration for hangmen ahead of Kasab's hanging in 
November 2012 and managed to arrange for one to hang him at Yerwada jail," said 
an officer in the home department.

Sources said prison officials now have 2 options: they can either bring in a 
retired hangman from within in the state, as they did in Kasab's case, or get 
one from a neighbouring state such as Madhya Pradesh.

"This decision will be taken by the state home department and prison 
officials," said an official, who did not wish to be named.

Hindustan Times reported on Wednesday that the state government plans to hang 
Yakub in the Nagpur jail on July 30 if the Supreme Court turns down his mercy 
plea on July 21. The government initiated the process of Yakub's execution 
after the apex court on April 9 rejected a petition seeking a review of his 
death sentence by a trial court.

Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis told Hindustan Times that the process of 
Yakub's execution was initiated in line with the SC order and the government 
has informed his relatives about it. When asked about Yakub's curative 
petition, scheduled for hearing on July 21, Fadnavis said there were no 
directives about it from the apex court, which is yet to admit the petition.

Asked why the government did not wait for the SC's decision on his curative 
petition, Vijay Satbir Singh, principal secretary (home) said on Wednesday, 
"All procedures are being followed as per the jail manual and court orders. 
After getting an order from the TADA court, the government initiated the 
procedure on April 29. Memon's curative petition was moved in May though it has 
not been admitted by the Supreme Court yet. The court has not even stayed the 
execution or the lower court's order."

Singh added that the date and time of Yakub's execution were finalised after 
consultations with the law and judiciary department. He also claimed there was 
no dearth of hangmen and that Nagpur jail is well-equipped to carry out the 
execution. He added that the state administration will soon identify a hangman.

Officials in the home department said Yakub's relatives in south Mumbai have 
been informed of his impending execution on Tuesday.

"According to a Supreme Court directive, relatives must be informed 15 days 
before the execution. The death warrant was issued on Monday and served to 
[Yakub's] relatives on Tuesday. Jail authorities in Nagpur also have been 
informed to allow them to prepare for the hanging," said an official from the 
home department, who did not wish to be named.

Yakub himself was expected to be informed of the state's decision by Wednesday 
evening, once jail superintendent Swati Sathe reached Nagpur, said a source in 
the state home department. Sathe, who is superintendent of Yerwada jail, 
currently has the additional charge of Nagpur prison.

Yakub, a chartered accountant, is the brother of fugitive terror mastermind 
Ibrahim Mushtaq 'Tiger' Memon. According to the Central Bureau of Investigation 
(CBI), which investigated the case, Tiger Memon got Yakub involved in planning 
the serial blasts, which killed 257 people and injured about 700 on March 12, 
1993.

Yakub was sentenced to death by a designated TADA court in 2007 after it found 
him guilty of playing a key role in the criminal conspiracy. The CBI alleged 
that the blasts were planned by Dawood Ibrahim, Tiger Memon and others.

The SC subsequently upheld Yakub's death penalty while commuting the sentences 
of 11 others to life imprisonment. President Pranab Mukherjee had turned down 
Yakub's mercy plea last year.

Meanwhile, sources said Yakub has been keeping a low profile at Nagpur Central 
Jail. He was shifted there in August 2007 from Yerwada jail as part of a move 
to ease overcrowding in the Pune prison.

(source: HIndustan Times)

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

Political blackmail and the death penalty


Should Yakub Memon, a convict in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case, be hanged? 
The Bombay high court, the Supreme Court, and the President have all ruled that 
he should, so there's little doubt on the legal verdict thus far. A curative 
petition is pending before the Supreme Court, and is likely to come up for 
hearing before his planned execution on July 30. It may commute his sentence, 
or not.

And yet, there's a lot of debate over the planned execution. The public 
arguments over the death penalty are not so much over legalities. They are over 
emotions and involve questions of politics and morality.

After 2004, when a rapist and murderer named Dhananjoy Chatterjee was hanged in 
Bengal, India carried out no execution until 2012. That year, Mumbai terror 
attack convict Ajmal Kasab was hanged. The following year, Parliament attack 
convict Afzal Guru's death sentence was carried out. Now, Memon may be next.

It has not escaped everyone's notice that other criminals who have been found 
guilty of terrible crimes and sentenced to death have evaded the hangman's 
noose.

Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar, a Khalistani terrorist who was convicted for a 1993 
car bomb attack in Delhi, had exhausted all legal options by 2011. He was 
allowed to file an unprecedented 2nd appeal in the Supreme Court. His death 
sentence was upheld a 2nd time. He's still alive, and what's more, his death 
sentence has been commuted to life via a 2nd curative petition. He was moved to 
Amritsar jail from Delhi last month.

The case of the killers of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi is older, and 
more shocking. Rajiv Gandhi was killed in 1991. The Supreme Court upheld the 
death sentences of Murugan, Santhan, and Perarivalan in 1999. Their mercy 
petitions were rejected by the President in 2011. A date was set for their 
hanging: September 9, 2011, in Vellore jail. That ought to have been the end of 
the road for them. Instead, the Tamil Nadu assembly passed a resolution seeking 
commutation of their death sentence. Last year, their death sentence was indeed 
commuted to life imprisonment.

There's more. Balwant Singh Rajoana, a Khalistani terrorist who killed former 
Punjab chief minister Beant Singh in 1995, was sentenced to death on August 1, 
2007, just 4 days after Yakub Memon had been sentenced to death. His execution 
was scheduled for March 31, 2012. He's still very much alive.

It would appear that the political heft of Punjab and Tamil Nadu, and public 
sentiment in those states, played a part in saving these terrorists from the 
gallows. This does no credit to India as a country. A clear position on the 
death penalty is preferable to a habit of succumbing to blackmail. If the 
country lacks the stomach to implement the death penalty evenly then it should 
simply knock it off the statutes.

>From a moral standpoint, the death penalty is problematic. The state should not 
take anyone's life, except in self-defence. Soldiers are allowed to shoot 
enemies of the state in defence of the nation, not to satisfy any "collective 
conscience".

Unfortunately, in the neighbourhood we as a country inhabit, self-defence may 
require keeping the death penalty among the options, to be exercised in the 
rarest of rare cases. Most Indians haven't forgotten the IC 814 hijack. That 
aircraft was hijacked to secure the release of terrorists, including Masood 
Azhar from prison. Keeping a terrorist like Kasab in jail indefinitely would 
have put all Indian flights at risk of hijack.

Therefore, we may not be in a position to get rid of the death penalty just 
yet. The only alternative is to implement death sentences without allowing 
politics to influence the process. A presidential pardon is the only legitimate 
way for political intervention. Anything else is plain wrong.

(source: Asian Age)




KUWAIT:

Kuwait seeks death for 11 mosque bombing suspects: newspaper


Kuwait seeks the death penalty for 11 out of 29 suspects being prosecuted for 
their alleged role in a deadly suicide bombing in a mosque last month, 
newspaper al-Qabas reported on Wednesday.

The Gulf state launched a security crackdown on Islamist militants after the 
June 26 attack claimed by Islamic State, when a Saudi suicide bomber blew 
himself inside a Shi'ite Muslim mosque, killing 27 worshippers.

The interior minister said this month the country is at war with hardline 
militants and officials have said the bombing, Kuwait's worst militant attack, 
was aimed at stoking sectarian strife in the majority Sunni state, where the 2 
sects have traditionally coexisted in peace.<> "An informed source told 
al-Qabas that the public prosecutor demanded the execution by hanging for 11 
defendants in the report it sent to the court," the newspaper said.

State news agency KUNA said on Tuesday 29 people had been indicted on terrorism 
charges in relation to the attack, among them Kuwaitis, Saudis, Pakistanis and 
stateless residents. The charges ranged from premeditated murder to possession 
of explosives.

KUNA did not say whether a date had been set for the trial of the suspects.

(source: InterAksyon)