[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

June 18



SAUDI ARABIA:

100 Beheadings, 6 Months: Why the Saudi Kingdom Is on an Execution Spree



The Saudis are on a beheading spree, executing 100 'criminals' in the 1st half 
of the year. Blame a new king, a failed war, and a double jihadi threat for the 
gruesome upswing.

The Saudi government executed its 99th and 100th convicts of the year on 
Monday. A dubious local court system already had convicted a Syrian with 
trafficking drugs and a Saudi of stabbing a fellow citizen. Wearing black bags 
over their heads, the convicts were publicly executed - each beheading 
delivered with the single swing of a long sword.

Such executions have long been part of Saudi Arabia's criminal justice system. 
But the Kingdom this year is on a gruesome killing spree, taking off the heads 
of 100 people in just the 1st 6 months of this year. The toll has startled the 
world community and raised questions about the Kingdom's new blood thirst.

In 2014, there were 90 such deaths, according to Amnesty International, and 
just 26 in 2011, the year of Arab Spring. Roughly 1/2 of those killed this year 
are foreign nationals, with Pakistanis representing the most foreigners killed 
at 14, according to Human Rights Watch. At least 3 are under 18 years old. If 
such rates continue this year, Saudi Arabia will surpass its own record of 192 
executions, set in 1995.

Experts and U.S. officials watching events unfold believe the regional 
instability is leading to increased internal fears of jihadism, revolution, and 
rebellion seeping into the Kingdom. The rising Islamic State threat, regional 
instability, falling energy prices, a rising Iranian hegemony, and the 
Kingdom's failed assault on rebels in Yemen are aggravating already existing 
internal tensions.

"Given the changes in succession and ongoing conflicts in the region, it would 
not be surprising if the number of executions remains elevated as the continues 
its transition to new leadership while facing a range of security issues in the 
region," a U.S. official explained to The Daily Beast.

Fears of a rising ISIS threat in Saudi Arabia are not unfounded; hundreds, if 
not thousands, of ISIS fighters come from Saudi and return to their home 
country. Neither are fears that the Shiite minority residing in the oil-rich 
east will rise against a state that oppresses them. The enormous amount of 
instability around the region only exacerbates those fears, U.S. officials and 
experts have concluded.

"Many Saudis were worried the implications of a break in unity on the domestic 
front, especially at this time of growing extremism ... They don't want 
terrorist activity to infect their own country," said Lori Plotkin Boghardt, a 
fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "All these external 
challenges makes internal challenges much more complicated."

"It's bad enough that Saudi Arabia executes so many people, but to execute 
people convicted in nonviolent drug offenses shows just how wanton these 
executions are."

The opaque monarchy is not prone to publicly explain its actions. So the world 
is left to thread together the few details emerging from the Kingdom to 
understand the rising death tally. Perhaps the biggest question is how much the 
influence of the new king, Salman, is having on the rising number of 
executions. King Salman has only been in power since this year, upon the death 
of his half-brother King Abdullah in January. But in that time, King Salman 
already has made moves to suggest that he will be more aggressive than his 
half-brother who proceeded him. At home, bloggers who write benign critiques 
have received 1,000 lashes. Abroad, the king embarked within two months of 
taking office on an airstrike campaign in Yemen. "Decisive Storm" was meant to 
fend off the rising threat of Iranian-back Houthis on his southern border, but 
the Saudi campaign is now floundering. "The King and his very ambitious son 
have shaken up a lot in the in less than five months. They know the Yemen war 
has not brought the Decisive Storm it promised," Bruce Riedel, a former CIA 
analyst and terrorism expert at the Brookings Institution, explained in an 
email. "The Kingdom is a police state, one of the most severe in the world. It 
has 2 major terrorist threats, ISIS and AQAP [al Qaeda in the Arabian 
Peninsula]. This sends a signal that terrorism and dissent will not be 
tolerated."

But Boghardt noted that there have been spikes in executions before Salman, 
first in the '90s and again after Arab Spring and the rise of ISIS. In the 
first 20 days of August 2014, as ISIS rapidly took territory across Iraq, Saudi 
Arabia executed 19, people including one for sorcery.

The increase in capital punishment in Saudi Arabia mirror trends throughout the 
Arab world. While no other Arab state has conducted so many executions, let 
alone beheadings, many have been carrying out authoritarian practices, like 
mass arrests and crackdowns on freedom. In Egypt, for example, President Abdel 
Fatah al Sisi has presided over a crackdown on journalists, thousands of 
arrests of Islamists and liberals alike. More recently, there have been reports 
of activists disappearing all together. The argument across the Middle East is 
that it is better to live under brutality than for the state to devolve into 
Libya, Iraq, or, worst of all, Syria. For many Saudis, public executions are a 
means to deter would be jihadists or rebels, experts said.

Among Saudis, there has been little outward criticism of the increased 
government beheading or increasingly strident rulings by judges. Last month 
Sunni Saudi Arabian activists condemned an ISIS attack on a Shiite mosque that 
killed 21 people. National unity, they suggested, was more important than 
sectarian unity.

Saudi Arabia is governed by a strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law. The 
Quran allows for hudud, or the execution of those who commit specific crimes 
identified in the holy book. And the Saudi judiciary permits the execution for 
eye-for-eye retribution murders, or qisas, as well as tazir, or general 
offenses designated as death penalty cases by Saudi law.

But the majority of executions are for crimes that more legally murky than 
hudud. According to a tally compiled by Human Rights Watch, based on reports 
from the Saudi Press Agency, only 14 of the 100 executions were for hudud 
offenses, compared with 30 under qisas and 56 under tazir. Most of those 
executed for tazir offenses are drug crimes. Evidence is often spurious and 
confessions are often obtained through torture, HRW found.

"It's bad enough that Saudi Arabia executes so many people, but to execute 
people convicted in nonviolent drug offenses shows just how wanton these 
executions are," said Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW Middle East and North Africa 
director, in a press statement.

On Monday, Ismael Al-Tawm smuggled "a large amount of banned amphetamine pills 
into the Kingdom," the Interior Ministry said in a statement, according to the 
Saudi Press Agency. He was executed in the northern Al-Jouf Province. Rami 
Al-Khaldi was convicted of stabbing a Saudi citizen to death and was executed 
in the western city of Taif.

The next day, 2 more Saudis were sentenced to death, according to local 
reports, raising the latest tally to 102.

(source: The Daily Beast)








EGYPT:

Egyptian justice system is broken, Amnesty International says



Amnesty International condemned the sentences handed down to the 1st freely 
elected Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and more than 100 of his aides and 
supporters, the Anadolu Agency reported yesterday.

"To stop the death sentences, we will organise widespread protests throughout 
our offices all over the world," Amnesty spokeswoman in Sweden Elisabeth 
Lofgren said. "These sentences prove that the justice system has broken down in 
Egypt," she added.

Deputy Director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa 
Programme Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui told Anadolu: "These entire legal proceedings 
have been a mockery of justice and the death sentences must be thrown out."

She added: "Mohamed Morsi and his aides must be released or retried in civilian 
court in line with Egyptian law and international fair trial standards without 
recourse to the death penalty."

Meanwhile, the French Human Rights League (LdH) slammed the trials for being 
unfair, saying: "Everyone is entitled to a fair trial and the various trials 
underway in Egypt, whether they concern the Muslim Brotherhood or the 
democrats, do not have anything fair and are therefore not acceptable, let 
alone when there are death sentences."

Yesterday, an Egyptian court sentenced former President Mohamed Morsi to death 
over jailbreak charges. The court also sentenced five leaders of the Muslim 
Brotherhood, including Mohamed Badie, to death on charges of taking part in a 
mass jailbreak in 2011.

Nearly 100 others were sentenced in absentia, including prominent Muslim 
scholar Yusuf Al-Qaradawi.

(source: Middle East Monitor)

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

Qatar urges release of Mursi



The White House is blasting Egypt for upholding the death sentence of ex- 
President Mohamed Morsi.

Earlier Tuesday, the same judge sentenced Morsi to life in prison over charges 
of conspiring with foreign groups, including Hamas.

The judge confirmed the ruling after consulting with the country's religious 
authority as required by Egyptian law in cases involving the death penalty.

The statements came after a Cairo court on Tuesday upheld the death sentences 
issued for the alleged plotting of jailbreaks and attacks on police during the 
2011 revolution.

The ruling will automatically be appealed.

The judge also confirmed death sentences for 5 other jailed leading members of 
Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, including Mohammed Badie, the group's leader, and 
Saad el-Katatni, the head of its short-lived political party. United Nations 
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed deep concern over verdicts he said "may 
well have a negative impact on the prospects for long-term stability in Egypt", 
U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said.

94 other co-defendants were also sentenced to the gallows, in absentia, on 
similar charges, including prominent Muslim scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

Morsi was forced out of office in July 2013 by the military amid massive 
protests demanding his resignation.

3 more senior members of the organization - Khairat Al Shater, Mohamed Beltagy 
and Ahmed Abdel Alaty - were sentenced to death by hanging.

The Attorney-General is entitled to appeal or challenge only death sentences 
for attending convicts.

Meanwhile, Iran has also condemned the harsh rulings, saying it is concerned 
about the fate of the former president who was elected in "free and competitive 
elections".

"Military government is looking for legitimacy but they can not have it as long 
as they are in power", he said.

"We call on the worldwide community to act to withdraw these death sentences, 
given under the instructions of the coup regime, and to put an end to this path 
which could seriously endanger the peace of Egyptian society", he said.

Since Morsi's removal, the Egyptian authorities have launched a crackdown on 
dissent that has largely targeted Morsi supporters, leaving hundreds dead and 
thousands behind bars. In 2010, there were no more than 93 death sentences 
issued, all in criminal cases, he said.

(source: Gulf Times)








PAKISTAN:

Blasphemy in Pakistan: The case of Aasia Bibi----Exclusive access to sealed 
court transcripts raises serious concerns about the trial of the only woman on 
death row



June 19 marks 6 years since the arrest of Aasia Noreen, also known as Aasia 
Bibi, the only woman to be sentenced to death for blasphemy in Pakistan. In her 
village of Ittan Wali, in the province of Punjab, it is the season for berries 
again. In 2009, Aasia (many Christians in Pakistan are known by their 1st name) 
was plucking falsa, a kind of berry, in the fields when she got into an 
argument with a group of women working beside her. They were Muslim, and Aasia, 
Christian. The women refused to drink water from the cup that Noreen had 
touched, contending it was unclean. In the heat of the quarrel, they said, 
Noreen made blasphemous remarks against the Prophet Muhammad, a charge that can 
lead to the death penalty in Pakistan.

Asma and Mafia, sisters who each go by one name, as some do in parts of 
Pakistan, were witnesses to the alleged incident. They reported the altercation 
to the village cleric, Qari Saalam, who filed a police report against Aasia on 
charges of blasphemy 5 days later. State vs. Aasia Bibi was heard in a lower 
court in the nearby city of Nankana Sahib, and in November 2010, Aasia was 
found guilty and sentenced to death. Now, the former daily wage laborer and 
mother of 2 remains in solitary confinement on death row in the women's jail in 
the southern Punjab city of Multan.

Her case has drawn widespread criticism, and calls for her release have come 
from as far away as the Vatican; international human rights organizations such 
as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have championed her cause. 
Aasia's case is just 1 of hundreds in Pakistan based on the infamous blasphemy 
laws, which carry with them a virtually mandatory death sentence or life 
imprisonment and, activists say, are often used as cover to settle personal 
disputes, especially with members of religious minority groups.

And now transcripts of her trial, previously sealed and recently obtained by Al 
Jazeera America, raise further questions about how Aasia's case was handled by 
the court. There are numerous and serious inconsistencies in the witness 
accounts provided by the prosecution; the cleric who brought the case against 
Aasia wasn't even present during the alleged incident; and her legal counsel 
appears to have been incompetent.

The Lahore High Court upheld Aasia's death sentence, a move that human rights 
lawyer Asad Jamal believes was gravely in error. He thinks that the high court 
should have dismissed her case instead. "I think there was an element of social 
prejudice there because the woman is a low-caste, Christian woman. The judge 
should have considered the social discrimination over religion and caste."

But in Ittan Wali, there seems to be little sympathy for her plight. "She 
insulted Islam and the Holy Quran," says Naseem Akhtar, a college student who 
heard about the incident from others. "The punishment for blasphemy is the 
death penalty." Sitting on a charpoy in the courtyard of her red-brick house, 
Akhtar discusses the case with complete certainty about where the blame lies. 
"There had never been any problems between Christians and Muslims living here. 
It was Aasia who created them."

Muhammad Imran lives one street away from Aasia's old house, and he was also 
out of the village when the argument happened. But he is just as sure as Akhtar 
that justice has been served. "There is no other way to punish her. She should 
be hanged to death." As an afterthought, he makes reference to Aasia's "bad 
character."

Imran and Akhtar's view of Aasia seems to be shared by other villagers 
interviewed by Al Jazeera America. None of them witnessed the confrontation in 
the berry fields. The cleric - who was the plaintiff in the case - was away and 
could not be reached by telephone. The sisters have since married and left 
Ittan Wali. Some interviewees appeared hostile on questioning, and this 
reporter had to leave the area hastily for fear of jeopardizing her safety.

Aasia's husband, Ashiq Masih, spoke to Al Jazeera America by phone from an 
undisclosed location; her family fled the village after she was arrested. "We 
believe in all prophets. We believe in Jesus like we believe in Muhammad. Why 
would she ever use disrespectful language for Prophet Muhammad?"

In Pakistan, repeating blasphemous remarks can also be construed as blasphemy, 
so the comments attributed to Noreen are not being repeated here. They can be 
found in the court documents.

Pakistan's blasphemy laws were inherited from its British colonial rulers. 
Introduced in 1860, the laws were meant to reduce tensions and prevent riots 
between Hindu and Muslim communities in undivided India. For more than a 
century, only 7 cases of blasphemy were ever reported. In the 1980s, however, 
under the military regime of General Zia-ul-Haq, the laws were expanded and 
stricter penalties imposed in a controversial period known as "the decade of 
Islamization." In the 3 1/2 decades since, more than 1,000 cases of blasphemy 
have been reported to the police, according to the National Commission for 
Justice and Peace, a human rights advocacy group. While the punishment for 
blasphemy used to be 2 years' imprisonment for blasphemy, the maximum penalty 
is now death. And the additions to the law apply only to Islam, as opposed to 
all faiths. There is no definition of what constitutes blasphemy, so the laws 
are applied broadly and charges can be brought on weak evidence, human rights 
lawyers say.

Aasia was charged under 295-C, the section of the Pakistan Penal Code that 
deals with "Use of derogatory remarks, etc., in respect of the Holy Prophet" 
and the only one among the blasphemy laws that carries the death penalty. That 
sentence, or life imprisonment, may be given to "Whoever by words, either 
spoken or written, or by visible representation or by any imputation, innuendo, 
or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy 
Prophet Muhammad."

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, or HRCP, condemns the blasphemy laws, 
arguing that they can be used to settle personal scores and applied very 
broadly. In addition, charges can be brought on the thinnest of evidence.

Among those jailed on blasphemy charges is Bahauddin Zakariya University 
professor Junaid Hafeez, for a post written by someone else that he had shared 
on his personal Facebook page in May 2013. It had allegedly contained 
disrespectful content about the Prophet Muhammad's wife. One year later, Rashid 
Rehman, the lawyer defending Hafeez, was shot dead in Multan. Hafeez remains 
imprisoned in a Multan jail, while Rehman's killers remain at large.  At 
different times in the country's history, people have attempted to amend the 
blasphemy laws, but with no success. In 1998, the bishop of Pakistan's 
3rd-largest city, Faisalabad, tried to repeal the laws over a death sentence 
handed down to a Christian man, Ayub Masih, for blasphemy. When he failed, 
Bishop John Joseph committed suicide in front of a court building in nearby 
Sahiwal, in protest.

Others who have challenged the misuse of these laws or have defended those 
charged with blasphemy have been shot dead or otherwise silenced. In January 
2011, Punjab Gov. Salmaan Taseer, who had advocated for Aasia's release, was 
shot by his own bodyguard in an upscale market in Pakistan's capital, 
Islamabad. The killer, Mumtaz Qadri, received the death penalty. 3 months after 
Taseer's assassination, Shahbaz Bhatti, the federal minister for minorities 
affairs, who had been commissioned by the federal government to investigate 
Aasia's case and review the blasphemy laws, was also assassinated. The Taliban 
claimed responsibility for the attack, and suspects were arrested for Bhatti's 
murder, but no one, so far, has been convicted.

In his investigation, Bhatti had found the case against Aasia to be "baseless," 
he had said.

Aasia's case is currently pending with the Supreme Court. In its verdict 
upholding her death sentence, the Lahore High Court found the evidence 
"consistent, coherent and confidence inspiring."

But a copy of the trial proceedings obtained by Al Jazeera America reveals 
serious inconsistencies in witness accounts. In his statement to the court, 
Saalam changed his testimony about how and when he found out about Aasia's 
crime 3 times.

In her testimony, Aasia pointed out the close relationships between the 3 prime 
witnesses (one of the sisters, Asma, was the student of Saalam's wife) and said 
that Mafia and Asma had conspired with him to bring a "false, fabricated and 
fictitious case" against her.

According to the court documents, Saalam accused Aasia of uttering blasphemous 
remarks twice, the first time in the berry fields and then five days later, on 
June 19 - the day of her arrest - in front of a gathering of villagers. But in 
Aasia's memoir, dictated to her husband from the confines of her prison cell, 
she says she was beaten by a mob to the point of losing consciousness and was 
asked to convert to Islam. When she refused, begging for mercy, the police 
arrived, "threw me in their van, to cheers from the angry crowd, and a few 
minutes later I was in the police station."

Saalam said Aasia confessed to her crime in front of a hundred people, all 
villagers, but in her statement, Mafia put this number at a thousand, while her 
sister Asma said 2,000 people were present. Yet another witness, villager 
Muhammad Afzal, who also said he witnessed the confession, said there were 200 
to 250 people. All the prosecution witnesses, including the 2 sisters, also 
cite different locations for where this confession took place. Asma told the 
court that it happened at their neighbor's house, while Mafia said Aasia 
confessed at their father's house. The witness accounts vary in other instances 
as well. In another example, Asma said that the village gathering lasted 15 
minutes, while Afzal said it lasted from "2-2.5 hours." But the Nankana Sahib 
lower court found the witness accounts to be coherent. The court discounted 
perjury by prosecution witnesses because, "In our society, normally the ladies 
avoid to indulge in criminal cases ... particularly the parents of unmarried 
and young girls never allow their daughters to go to police stations." So, 
reasoned the judge, if the 2 sisters did take all these measures, it must have 
been because "they could not bear the blasphemy."

In her defense, Aasia said, "My forefathers are living in this village since 
the creation of Pakistan. ... I am uneducated. ... There is no church in the 
village so being ignorant of Islamic thought, how can I use such clumsy and 
derogatory remarks about the beloved Prophet Mohammed."

While Aasia has denied the charges in court, she admits to having exchanged 
"hot words" with Asma and Mafia. The court presumed that since the quarrel 
started when Muslim women refused to drink water from the hands of a Christian, 
the exchange must have been blasphemous.

Aasia's lawyer in the trial, Muhammad Nazim Shehzad, does not appear to have 
challenged the inconsistent testimonies of prosecution witnesses. What 
complicates the question of competent legal counsel, says Jamal, is that there 
are few lawyers willing to fight blasphemy cases: "Threats are so high that no 
one is willing to defend a blasphemy accused, whereas there would be a 100 
people willing to defend a killer of a blasphemy accused."

She has a new lawyer now, Saiful Malook, who will be representing her before 
the Supreme Court. Malook says the case could be heard in as little as a few 
days, or it could take months. He says he has learned to live with the security 
threats. "We live a life of fear. My family, our days of being happy, feeling 
free are long gone."

He says the high court was unjust in upholding Aasia's sentence on such weak 
evidence. Malook is in a position to judge; he also served as special 
prosecutor in the murder case of Taseer.

When Aasia's case hit the headlines, Ali Dayan Hasan was the Pakistan director 
of Human Rights Watch, or HRW. He fought for her to be pardoned, he says, and 
was in confidential talks with senior government officials as early as November 
2010, when Aasia was first sentenced. He was given to understand that 
then-President Asif Ali Zardari would pardon her and she would be sent out of 
the country on the next flight. But before the pardon could be issued, and just 
3 weeks after the lower court gave her the death sentence on November 8, 2010, 
the Lahore High Court passed an order prohibiting the president from issuing a 
presidential pardon.

"Nobody had anticipated that any court of the land could ban the president from 
pardoning her. This was brazenly unconstitutional," says Hasan. "Aasia's case 
is an example of judicial bigotry and institutionalized maliciousness on part 
of the Lahore High Court."

At the time, Khawaja Sharif was the chief justice of the Lahore High Court and 
the person responsible for barring the presidential pardon (though he did not 
himself hear Aasia's case). After he retired in December 2010, he defended 
Qadri, Taseer's assassin, who had confessed to the crime. Sharif has no doubt 
that justice has been served in Aasia's case. "The evidence was concrete and 
proved in both the lower court and the high court. If there was conflicting 
evidence, the high court would have set aside the death penalty." He also 
disregards the conflicting testimonies, saying only, "A very competent police 
officer conducted the investigation, and there is no doubt that blasphemous 
remarks were made."

Hasan says when Aasia's case emerged there was hope for change. There was a 
quiet agreement in Parliament that blasphemy laws had gotten out of hand, he 
says. Human rights groups had planned to petition for the abolition of 
blasphemy with the understanding that religious parties would object and ruling 
party parliamentarian Sherry Rehman would take the middle ground and submit a 
bill for reform, which she did. "But after the assassinations of Salmaan Taseer 
and Shahbaz Bhatti, the government backed down in its efforts and Rehman had to 
withdraw the bill," Hasan recalls.

After this setback, repealing the laws became virtually impossible, says Hasan, 
and the subject of blasphemy grew more untouchable. Now, Aasia is just 1 of at 
least 19 people on death row on charges of blasphemy, according to HRW.

Back in the quiet and picturesque hamlet of Ittan Wali, meanwhile, there are no 
non-Muslims left. Aasia's family, who had lived in the village all their lives, 
went into hiding after her arrest, and their house was taken over by a Muslim 
family. The only other Christian family in the village left soon after.

Aasia's husband, Ashiq Masih, is still unsure why the altercation in the berry 
fields happened at all. "People would have occasional arguments in the village. 
Arguments would happen over water all the time, but I don't understand why the 
villagers falsely accused her. Maybe it was a quarrel I may have had with 
someone and this was done as revenge. I don't know."

In her memoir, Aasia sounds bitter. "I'm guilty only of being presumed guilty. 
I'm starting to wonder whether being a Christian in Pakistan today is not just 
a failing, or a mark against you, but actually a crime."

(source: Aljazeera America)

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

Pakistan Ramadan reprieve for death row inmates from Friday



Pakistan's proposed ban on executions during the holy month of Ramadan is to 
come into force this week, officials said on Thursday, after the hanging of 
nearly 170 death row inmates so far this year.

"Nobody will be sent to gallows in reverence of the month [Ramadan]," said an 
Interior Ministry official who asked not to be named.

Ramadan, the most revered month of the Islamic lunar calendar in which Muslims 
fast, is to begin in Pakistan from Friday, said Mufti Muneeb-ur-Rehman, head of 
an official committee.

Pakistan has been executing convicts since lifting a 6-year moratorium on the 
death penalty after December's massacre of school children by gunmen with the 
extremist Islamist Taliban.

The pace of the hangings has drawn widespread criticism from the United 
Nations, European Union and international rights groups with all calling for a 
reinstatement of the moratorium.

Last week, the authorities hanged a man who was convicted of murder at the age 
of 15.

Another death row inmate whose family insisted he was a teenager at the time of 
his conviction is awaiting the gallows after his appeals were rejected by the 
Supreme Court.

(source: dalje.com)








BANGLADESH:

Dhaka court upholds death penalty for former minister over war crimes



The Bangladesh Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of Jamaat-e-Islami 
leader Ali Ahsan Muhammad Mujahid, drawing loud cheers from the secularists and 
dealing another blow to former Premier Begum Khaleda Zia in whose cabinet he 
had served as a senior minister from 2001 to 2006.

Mujahid, who was the Jamaat secretary general till his arrest in 2011, was 
found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the independence 
war against Pakistan in 1971.

The 67-year-old former Al-Badr commander, a Pakistan-backed militia accused of 
atrocities on people taking part in the Liberation War, will be hanged if the 
same court doesn't review its judgment or if he doesn't get a presidential 
clemency.

Immediately after the country's highest court announced its verdict - a war 
crimes tribunal had sentenced Mujahid to death in July 2013 - the secularists 
started celebrating at Shahbag Square, central Dhaka, while the Jamaat called a 
24-hour strike tomorrow.

(source: legalera.in)








JAPAN:

Death penalty sought for man over random killings in Osaka in 2012



Prosecutors demanded the death penalty Thursday for a 36-year-old man indicted 
over the fatal stabbing of 2 pedestrians in random attacks in downtown Osaka in 
2012.

Prosecutors sought the capital punishment for Kyozo Isohi in a court hearing at 
the Osaka District Court, arguing that the defendant was fully competent and 
the number of victims warrants a death sentence.

The random killings are one of "the most malicious" types of murder where 
anybody can be a victim, prosecutors said in their closing statements, adding 
that Isohi, who became desperate over not being able to get a job he wanted, 
had "strong intent to kill" by stabbing the victims repeatedly and without 
mercy.

Defense lawyers for Isohi, meanwhile, asked for leniency, claiming the 
defendant was in a state of diminished responsibility when he attacked the 
victims with a kitchen knife due to past use of stimulant drugs.

Isohi, who pleaded guilty in the 1st court hearing at his lay-judge trial last 
month, has said he stabbed the victims following auditory hallucinations 
telling him to do so.

According to indictment documents, Isohi murdered music producer Shingo 
Minamino, 42, and restaurant manager Toshi Sasaki, 66, on a busy street in 
downtown Osaka by stabbing them with a kitchen knife in broad daylight on June 
10, 2012.

After the closing statements of the prosecutors, lawyers representing the 
bereaved family members of the victims stated that they demand capital 
punishment for Isohi, claiming that the defendant shows "no signs of regret."

Isohi's acquaintances, joining the court as witnesses for defense, meanwhile, 
have asked the court to avoid the death sentence, saying they wanted Isohi to 
pay for his crime through living.

(source: The Mainichi)