[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

March 23


QATAR:

Qatar Upholds Death Sentence for British Teacher Murder



A Qatari court on Monday upheld a death sentence against a local man convicted 
of the murder of British school teacher Lauren Patterson.

Doha's Court of Appeal confirmed the sentence against Badr Hashim Khamis 
Abdallah al-Jabar as Patterson's mother Alison, who had traveled from Britain 
for the hearing, watched on.

Although the death penalty is still handed down as a punishment in Qatar, it 
has been 12 years since the last execution took place and they are usually 
replaced by long prison sentences.

The last person executed in Qatar was killed by firing squad.

Al-Jabar's accomplice Mohamed Abdallah Hassan Abdul Aziz also had his sentence 
of 3 years for helping to burn the 24-year-old's body and disposing of evidence 
confirmed at the same short hearing on Monday.

Both men are Qatari citizens.

Patterson, from Kent in southern England, was murdered in October 2013 after 
leaving a nightclub in central Doha with a female friend and the 2 convicted 
men.

The friend had previously told a court that she was dropped off by the men 
first who then assured her they would drive Patterson home.

That was the last time the teacher was seen alive.

She was sexually assaulted, stabbed and her remains burnt and found in a desert 
location outside the Qatari capital.

Both men were acquaintances of the young Briton.

During the original trial, a court said that Patterson had been stabbed twice.

Al-Jabar maintained he had accidentally stabbed Patterson after the pair had 
got into a fight which she had started.

The 2 men were originally convicted in March last year.

However they appealed their conviction on the basis that they had been tortured 
by prison guards and held in solitary confinement.

Prosecutors had also argued for a longer sentence to be handed to Aziz.

Patterson's mother was accompanied by friends and former colleagues of her 
daughter.

The case is 1 of 2 high-profile murder cases involving foreign teachers 
currently passing through the Qatari legal system.

Next month a verdict is expected in the long-running case of American Jennifer 
Brown, who was killed in November 2012.

The 40-year-old was allegedly murdered by a Kenyan security guard just 2 months 
after she moved to the Gulf.

Brown, originally from Pennsylvania, was also stabbed to death.

The American's family have asked for Qatar to waive the death penalty and hand 
down a sentence of life imprisonment in the case of a conviction.

The defense have asked for the court to consider a verdict of manslaughter 
rather than murder.

(source: neharnet.com)








UNITED KINGDOM/ETHIOPIA:

272 days and counting for Islington man on death row----In June 2014, political 
activist Andargachew Tsege was captured in Yemen and sent to a secret prison in 
Ethiopia.



The wife of a British national on death row has been fighting a long legal 
battle to free her husband after he was rendered by Ethiopian forces last year.

Islington resident Yemi Hailemariam has been petitioning Downing Street in 
order to put pressure on the Foreign Commonwealth Office, but says she has seen 
little improvement.

The political activist Andargachew Tsege was flying from Yemen to Dubai on 23 
June 2014 when he was captured in a Yemenese airport and sent to Ethiopia 
against his will. His family found out his whereabouts a week later when the 
Yemen government confirmed the operation.

Hailemariam said:

When I knew the truth, it was heart-breaking to say the least. It was the day 
that changed our lives.

Tsege has a long history of animosity with Ethiopian politicians. He flew out 
of the country in 1979 at the age of 24 as a political refugee and found 
shelter in England, where he gained British citizenship status. He settled in 
Islington, but continued campaigning and visiting Ethiopia.

He joined the movement GINBOT 7, which was formed in 2008 by politicians and 
activists in exile. The organisation was labelled a terrorist group by the 
Ethiopian government in 2011. Tsege has been charged with terrorism and 
sentenced to death in absentia twice, in 2009 and 2012.

The legal battle

Since her husband's imprisonment, Hailemariam has started a legal battle to 
free Tsege. Her campaign eventually gained the attention of Prime Minister 
David Cameron, who wrote to the Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn 
last October asking for consular access to Tsege and for the death penalty not 
to be imposed. Tsege was granted only two visits with the British ambassador, 
on 11 August 2014 and 19 December 2014, but has had no access to lawyers.

Ethiopia has also vetoed a visit from Tsege's MP, Jeremy Corbyn, who was 
scheduled to travel to the country on 13 February.

Hailemariam argues that the Ethiopian government has breached international 
law. She says:

It was an illegal procedure. Citizens have legal rights; they can't be removed 
from a country against their will without informing their embassy. That's 
kidnapping.

In its 2015 report, advocacy group Human Rights Watch called attention to 
Tsege's case: "The transfer violated international law prohibitions against 
sending someone to a country where they are likely to face torture or other 
mistreatment."

A Foreign Commonwealth Office (FCO) spokesperson has also declared that Tsege's 
rights have not been respected. "We remain deeply concerned that Andargachew 
Tsege is being detained in Ethiopia without being granted his rights to regular 
consular visits or access to a lawyer. We have repeatedly raised this with the 
Ethiopian authorities and will continue to do so."

70,000 strong petition

In February, Hailemariam handed a petition with more than 70,000 signatures to 
Downing Street to ask the British government to put pressure on Ethiopia. But 
she said that she is in the battlefield alone and that the FCO has been too 
lenient.

"The FCO is driven by pressure, not by principles. And it infuriates me."

But lenience might not be the only element in this diplomatic puzzle.

Ethiopia is an important economic partner for the UK and a strong ally on 
counter-terrorism activities in the region. In the next 2 years, the UK is 
investing ???303 million in the country.

"Ethiopia lies at the heart of an unstable region that has experienced almost 
continuous conflict and environmental shocks in recent decades", detailed the 
Department for International Development (DFID) in a document about investment 
in Ethiopia.

It concluded that "a stable, secure and prosperous Ethiopia is critical to UK 
interests".

"Ethiopian security forces are responsible for the kidnap, torture and death 
sentence of British national Andargachew Tsege"

For legal charity Reprieve, the British government is putting economic and 
security reasons above international law.

Maya Foa, director of Reprieve's death penalty team, said:

Ethiopian security forces are responsible for the kidnap, torture and death 
sentence of British national, Andargachew Tsege. Instead of dodging questions 
and then secretly shelving embarrassing programmes, DFID [Department for 
International Development] should be explaining why it was using taxpayers' 
money to fund these forces in the first place - and what safeguards, if any, it 
put in place to ensure this 'high risk' funding did not enable abuses of the 
kind suffered by Mr Tsege.

Despite the complexity of Tsege's case, Hailemariam says she has not given up 
hope.

"The only thing I see is that we cannot stop. I believe something will work out 
because we live in a society where I understand civil rights matter. That is 
very important. Even if the government doesn't believe so, society believes 
this kind of thing is unacceptable. I believe we can make progress."

The movement "Free Andargachew" is organising a protest in front of the FCO 
office this Friday to demand his immediate release. On Friday, Tsege will have 
spent 276 days in prison.

(source: islingtonnow.co.uk)



PAKISTAN:

Clamour to hang Shafqat Hussain reflects vengeful mood in Pakistan after 
Peshawar attacks----The dirt-poor youngster may have been a juvenile at the 
time of his alleged crime.



The case of Shafqat Hussain, tagged on social media as #SaveShafqat, highlights 
serious issues in Pakistan's criminal and juvenile justice systems, including 
the lack of access to a fair trial particularly for the poor and marginalised 
as well as the gaping differences of opinion about how to deal with terrorism 
and crime.

These issues have taken on a fresh urgency since the Taliban's barbaric attack 
on the Army Public School in Peshawar on December 16, 2014, which killed about 
140 students and 8 teachers. The widespread outrage and anger triggered by the 
attack led to Pakistan lifting its nearly 7-year moratorium on the death 
penalty

. Since then, in a knee-jerk reaction and burst of vengefulness, Pakistan has 
already executed 48 prisoners, nearly 1/2 of them in just 2 days; 12 were 
hanged on March 17 and another 9 the following day.

Pakistan's Juvenile Justice System Ordinance (2000) does not provide enough 
protection for juvenile prisoners - those who were under 18 when the crime was 
committed. Many have been subjected to corporal and capital punishment, 
including at least 1 on March 17 - Muhammad Afzal, 16 years old when he was 
sentenced to death. He had been involved in an armed robbery that went wrong.

Another convict, Shoaib Sarwar, said to be 17 in 1998 at the time of the murder 
for which he was sentenced to death, was due to be hanged on September 18, 
2014. His family says he was trying to protect his sister and her friends from 
neighbourhood harassment. The scuffle turned violent and the son of a police 
inspector was shot dead. Sarwar's execution was stayed at the last minute. 
Re-scheduled for February 3, 2015, it has again been stayed.

Some 800 of the more than 8,000 prisoners on death row in Pakistan are 
estimated to be juveniles, convicted of crimes committed before they were 18 
years old. Most are poor and unlettered, with little or no access to competent 
legal counsel.

What Mohammad Afzal, Shoaib Sarwar and Shafqat Hussain and so many prisoners 
have in common is that they are youth from the poorest, most vulnerable 
sections of society who did not receive proper counsel at the trial level.

Cause celebre

Shafqat's case has generated an unprecedented storm of outrage - both for and 
against his execution, thanks to the controversy around his age that has been 
put in doubt by the "hang Shafqat" squad, consisting of those who believe that 
human rights activists deliberately misrepresented this in order to save him 
from the gallows.

Hailing from a desperately poor family in Neelum Valley in 
Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir, Shafqat had dropped out of school and 
went to Karachi for employment when he was about 13 years old, according to his 
family. The Karachi police arrested him in 2004 for the kidnapping and murder 
of a 7-year-old boy.

The non-profit human rights group that highlighted Shafqat's case, Justice 
Project Pakistan, linked to the UK-based Reprieve, says that his confession was 
obtained after 9 days of police torture.

His family is so poor that his sister borrowed clothes from a neighbour to meet 
a BBC reporter for an interview. Quoting his brother, the report also mentions 
the torture Shafqat endured: "Police took 3 of his fingernails out. He still 
has cigarette marks on his body," his brother says. "When I asked him about 
torture in custody, he started shivering and wet his pants. He put both his 
hands on his head and starting crying, saying, 'Don't ask, I can't tell you 
what they did.'"

Shafqat was tried under the Anti-Terrorism Act on the grounds that the murder 
spread terror in the neighbourhood. In contrast, even though the Islamabad High 
Court upheld the death sentence to Mumtaz Qadri who assassinated Punjab 
Governor Salmaan Taseer it said at the same time that the case did not amount 
to terrorism and could not be tried under the Anti-Terrorism Act .

The irony is that a man who kills in public in the name of religion, whose act 
of violence leads to a wave of fear around the country as the 'religious' 
organisations and banned terrorist organisations openly glorify him and uphold 
him as a hero, is not tried under the Anti-Terrorism Act , while a boy held for 
kidnapping and manslaughter with no links to any terrorist organisation, whose 
guilt is established primarily from a confession, which human rights activists 
say was obtained under torture, is tried under Anti-Terrorism Act .

Legal experts have questioned the criteria of classifying cases under the 
Anti-Terrorism Act , including Shafqat's. His case, and many others, they say, 
should not have been tried under the act. Cases tried under the act tend to 
have a higher rate of capital punishment and do not allow victim's families to 
pardon the perpetrator either of their own will or after accepting blood money, 
as is possible with civilian cases, thanks to the controversial Qisas and Diyat 
Ordinance. Mohammad Afzal and his co-accused had obtained pardon from the 
victim's family but were hanged anyway as their case came under the ATA.

After Peshawar

After the Peshawar attack, Shafqat was one of the first condemned prisoners in 
Pakistan set to be hanged, on December 23, 2014. I wrote a blog-post then, 
titled "Who is Shafqat, why is he being hanged, and why should we care?"

Public outcry and hectic behind-the-scenes lobbying led to his execution being 
postponed. A new date was set in January but the execution was stayed again. 
After a 3-month lull, on March 11, 2015, the matter re-erupted when jail 
authorities approached an anti-terrorism court seeking orders for the 
execution.

The court obliged with a fresh black warrant the following day. Shafqat's 
hanging was scheduled for March 19, 2015.

Shafqat's elder brother, who was up with him all night praying, told Reuters 
that Shafqat had been dressed in a white uniform in preparation for the 
execution and told to write his will. "He wrote: 'I am innocent. They want to 
hang me for a crime I have not committed, to save others who have been freed.'"

A presidential order staying Shafqat's execution came just hours before his 
scheduled march to the gallows. The stay came on the heels of a storm of 
protest online as well as on the ground. An online petition by Reprieve 
garnered over 10,000 signatures the day before Shafqat's impending execution. 
Major political parties as well as many prominent Pakistani individuals took up 
cudgels on behalf of Shafqat.

The grandchildren of Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged by 
military dictator General Zia ul Haq's regime on trumped up murder charges in 
1979, wrote strong op-eds on the issue, both published on March 17 - Fatima 
Bhutto in the New York Times and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Jr., on Scroll.in.

A moving little video released online the day before his impending execution 
titled "#SaveShafqat - What were you like when you were 14?" was "a desperate 
plea to prevent misuse of the death penalty". In the video, prominent activist 
and lawyer Mohammad Jibran Nasir describes Shafqat's trial a "trial of 
Pakistan's justice system".

Justice system on trial

Many Pakistanis disagree with Amnesty International's stand that the "death 
penalty is always a human rights violation". But even they would have a hard 
time refuting the assessment that "the serious fair trial concerns that riddle 
Pakistan's justice system makes its use there even more troubling", as David 
Griffiths, Amnesty International's Deputy Asia Pacific Director, said in a 
press statement.

"Probably the only point of National Action Plan (against terrorism) being 
religiously implemented is the one dealing with the executions of death 
convicts," caustically wrote the well-known human rights activist Marvi Sirmed 
in her op-ed, 'Save Shafqat' on March 18.

She was among the small group of mostly women, including journalist Quatrina 
Hosain and activist Tahira Abdullah, who tried to march to the presidency in 
Islamabad on March 18 to deliver the mercy petition. Blocked by the police, 
they refused to leave until someone received the petition. Photos of Hosain 
sitting down on the street in front of a posse of grinning policemen in riot 
gear made the rounds on social media. (See my Storify). "It's not just about 
Shafqat," she told me later. "We have to fight to change the system".

"Yesterday, journalist Quatrina Hossain sat in front of the Police cordon 
refusing to move till she gets to speak to the Ministers to stop Shafqat's 
execution. It's because of commitment like this from so many Pakistanis that 
the Government was forced to stay his execution," reads the caption to the 
photograph posted on the Facebook page Never Forget Pakistan.

This is the campaign launched by Jibran Nasir and others after the Peshawar APS 
attack to "ensure that we remember the thousands of brave souls Pakistan has 
lost due to terrorism and religious extremism."

'Hang Shafqat' camp

But many voices are also clamouring for Shafqat to be hanged. They say he was 
not a minor when the crime was committed. Certainly in the photos they have 
obtained and are circulating he looks much older than Shafqat's lawyers say he 
is. But then again, poverty, torture, and 10 years on death row will age 
anyone.

The "hang Shafqat" squad is also drumming up public opinion against him by 
claiming that he raped the victim. However, this was never mentioned in the 
original chargesheet. Shafqat was never charged with rape or attempt to rape, 
and has already completed his 5-year prison term for involuntary manslaughter.

These people also accuse the government and NGOs of pandering to a foreign 
agenda. What and whose foreign agenda is fulfilled by saving the life of a 
poor, marginalised young Pakistani, is not made clear.

Jibran Nasir has effectively refuted these points in his piece "Why am I 
speaking for Shafqat Hussain?" in The Express Tribune.

Rehabilitation and reform

What Shafqat Hussain's case highlights broader issues that Pakistan needs to 
examine. These include, as Lahore-based human rights advocate Asad Jamal says, 
the need for rehabilitation and reform versus harsh punishments that will not 
reduce the crime rate.

"Pakistan needs to look into how juvenile trials should be conducted, along the 
lines of what India has done. There is a reason why there's an international 
consensus on the age for juveniles and why they should not be awarded the same 
punishment as adults."

The question is: if re-examination proves that Shafqat is not a juvenile, that 
he was not a minor at the time of the crime, should he still be hanged? The 
humane answer, fulfilling the norms of justice, is no.

There are too many doubts about the fairness of the trial - conducted with an 
uninterested defence lawyer - as well as Shafqat's confession obtained under 
torture.

"Many jurists also consider poverty to be a mitigating factor," said Jamal, who 
believes this case should be used to highlight the basic problems of the 
system, under which the "poorest of the poor are denied access to a fair 
trial".

"It's not just Shafqat. Poor people rarely have access to a competent counsel, 
so their right to a fair trial is undermined."

Needed: hearings for sentencing

Also missing in Pakistan is the concept of holding hearings for sentencing - 
separate proceedings at the end of a trial in which the defence and prosecution 
mount arguments about the pros and cons on the sentence, notes Jamal. "At 
present, sentencing is very arbitrary and left to the discretion of the judge."

Leaving aside the individual case of Shafqat Hussain, whose age verification is 
still pending, the controversy could still lead to a positive outcome, if not 
for him as an individual, but for other cases in the pipeline.

If the Pakistan government and all those calling to hang Shafqat or to save him 
are serious about the dignity and rights of all humans, including the poorest 
and most vulnerable sections of society, this is what the focus must be.

(source: scroll.in)

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

The tale of 2 non-hangings



The tale of the 2 non-hangings is the tale of a criminal justice system largely 
discredited and irrelevant. Why is the state nurturing a penchant for quick 
convictions at the expense of our justice system's safety? Why are we picking 
sides not principles, and confusing revenge with justice? Why are those in 
power strengthening the cynical belief that given our system breakdown only 2 
wrongs can make a right in Pakistan?

The #SaveShafqat campaign resonated with many not because Shafqat's innocence 
has been definitively proven by the Justice Project. It resonated because the 
evidence presented created reasonable doubt whether Shafqat was an adult at the 
time of his offence and conviction. If this evidence bears out, Shafqat's trial 
and sentence would be miscarriage of justice. The reaction of those eager to 
see Shafqat hang without further inquiry is inexplicable. Wouldn';t 
verification of facts about Shafqat's age after his execution be largely 
pointless?

This debate isn't about the utility or wisdom of the death penalty, or whether 
the killer of an innocent seven-year old should be punished, or the pain of the 
victim's unfortunate parents. The simple question is whether we should execute 
someone who might have been 14 when accused of committing a heinous offence or 
desist from inflicting death till we have confirmed the disputed facts one way 
or another.

The primary objects of a punishment system are retribution, deterrence and 
reform. Retribution is based on the eye-for-eye logic. If you wrong a fellow 
citizen, the state on behalf of the one wronged will settle the score. 
Deterrence aims at societal control. If everyone is convinced of the certainty 
of punishment for wrongdoing, those with a delinquent gene will be dissuaded. 
The logic of reform is supported by belief in the basic goodness of humans: the 
state must try to reintegrate into society even those who go wayward.

All these objects are rooted in the notion of human agency and rational choice: 
every person is free to choose his actions and those whose actions harm others 
ought to bear the consequences. Exceptions? Those who are either not free to 
choose or unable to understand the consequences of their actions. Thus you 
don???t chop off the hand of a starving man who steals bread to stay alive and 
you don't hang a lunatic who inadvertently causes death. Likewise you don't 
kill minors even for heinous offences because of their limited human agency.

Social and economic inequalities load our criminal justice system against the 
poor.

Legal systems are meant to ensure legal equality. But they don't. Social and 
economic inequalities load our criminal justice system against the poor. It is 
commonplace for police to round up domestic help if a crime is committed in an 
affluent household. What follows is generally torture. To find clues to crime 
our system relies on the subjective judgment of the police and their extensive 
experience of beating up suspects. In a nutshell we don't have an 
investigation-driven but a torture-induced confession-based prosecution system.

The argument against inquiring into Shafqat's age is that the issue wasn't 
raised during his trial. Shafqat's mother didn't have the money to travel to 
Karachi to see her boy 1 last time before he swings. If he were indeed a minor 
at the time of offence, what resources could this youth-labourer commit to a 
half-decent defence? Many of us can't empathise with him because we have never 
been caught at the wrong end of the system. And we only relate to the innocent 
7-year old because our kids aren't destined to be 14-year old watchmen.

The story of Saulat Mirza, the other death-row convict whose noose came off 
last minute, is more dramatic. Reportedly, while held at Attock Fort Nawaz 
Sharif requested jail authorities to switch off the light above his cell to 
enable him to sleep at night, to be told that it was against the jail manual. 
But notwithstanding this manual we have had Saulat Mirza filmed days before his 
hanging, his incriminating choreographed video simultaneously released across 
TV channels to a dumbstruck nation hours before his execution, which was then 
suspended.

Saulat Mirza has said on screen what is urban legend. MQM-led Karachi functions 
under a reign of terror, with politics of fear, extortion and censorship deeply 
entrenched. MQM???s representative credentials are not in question. But neither 
is the public perception about MQM's brutal and deathly ways, which augments 
the party's influence and control further. PPP (with its Uzair Balochs) and ANP 
might have followed in MQM's stead. But MQM contrived and perfected this form 
of politics.

Saulat Mirza has corroborated what Zulfiqar Mirza alleged, what innumerable JIT 
reveal and what Supreme Court insinuated in a Karachi law and order case. This 
brand of politics - of blood, fear and extortion - must be extinguished. But 
has it existed thus far without the establishment's collusion? One general 
decided in the 1980s that MQM needed to be propped up, another in the early 
1990s that it needed to be shut down or a rival MQM-H created, and another in 
the late 1990s that it needed to be rejuvenated and Karachi handed over to it.

What are today's generals thinking? That this brand of politics is to be 
decimated or MQM's present leadership? The 2 suspects in Dr Imran Farooq's 
murder have allegedly been in ISI custody for some years, but not handed to the 
Brits. The Baldia-related JIT languished in ISI/Rangers' custody for over a 
year and half before making it to court. Why isn't the law allowed to take its 
course to bring Karachi to peace and justice? If the content of Saulat's 
allegations is true, why make it suspect by delivering it in a sneaky manner?

We need a UK-style Criminal Cases Review Commission to investigate and send 
cases marred by fears of miscarriage of justice, such as that of Shafqat 
Hussain, back to the Supreme Court for reconsideration. But what we need more 
is unmolested rule of law. We need to build the capacity and credibility of our 
criminal justice system instead of delegitimising it further by using media 
trials to substitute formal legal processes as in the Saulat Mirza case.

(source: Babar Sattar; The writer is a lawyer----Dawn.com)

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

A grave blunder



On the 84th anniversary of the execution of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru 
in Lahore, we reproduce our Editorial from the issue dated March 24, 1931

The news of the execution of Bhagat Singh and his 2 comrades, accused in what 
is known as the Lahore Conspiracy Case, will come upon the public as a rude 
shock. For, although the petition for mercy made on their behalf had been 
rejected by the Viceroy, applications had been made before the High Court with 
a view to get a judicial pronouncement on the legality of the Local 
Government's attempts to carry out the sentence on the prisoners in spite of 
the fact that the Court which, in the opinion of Counsel for the prisoners, was 
the only one competent to issue the death warrant, had ceased to exist. The 
issue raised by Counsel was obviously so complicated and the arrangements made 
on behalf of the prisoners to get the verdict of the highest tribunal available 
so advanced that the public felt that for some time at any rate...the execution 
could not come off and...there was still hope of the prisoners being saved from 
the extreme penalty of the law. That the Government had every need to proceed 
with caution will be evident if one recalls the extraordinary circumstances 
connected with the trial of the accused.

The accused were put up for trial before a Special Magistrate 20 months ago for 
the offence of conspiracy to wage war against the King by murder, dacoity, 
manufacture and use of bombs and other methods and, so far as Bhagat Singh was 
concerned, of having murdered a police officer, Mr. Saunders of Lahore. 
Subsequently, on the ground that the police ill-treated them, the accused 
refused to appear in Court... the Lahore High Court... refused to be a party to 
dispensing with the committed proceedings ...the case was withdrawn from the 
jurisdiction of the ordinary courts, placed before a special tribunal and 
provision was made for the trial of the accused in their absence. In spite of 
these extraordinary arrangements, the accused attended the court of the special 
tribunal for a few days, but following an incident the police handcuffed them 
and indulged in a lathi charge in the court premises - proceedings which moved 
one of the judges of the tribunal openly to express his disgust at the police 
action.

The accused thereafter refused to attend the court and the trial was proceeded 
with in their absence. The trial went on in their absence without any counsel 
representing them; without any cross examination of the approvers and without 
testing the evidence of other witnesses. Nor should it be forgotten that 2 of 
the 7 approvers subsequently retracted their earlier story. To carry out a 
sentence of death passed as the result of a trial in such extraordinary 
circumstances will have been in any case to incur a very grave responsibility. 
But in this case the additional point had been raised that there was legally no 
authority competent to give effect to the sentence... By the indecent haste 
with which they have proceeded in the matter they have defied public opinion 
and exasperated it in a manner that it is difficult to envisage the gravity of 
the reactions in this country to their latest blunder. As Gandhiji says, the 
Government "have lost a golden opportunity of winning over the revolutionary 
party. It as their clear duty, in view of the settlement, at least to suspend 
indefinitely the execution. By their action they have put a severe strain upon 
the settlement and once more proved their capacity for flouting public 
opinion".

(source: The Hindu)








CHINA:

Lawyers question evidence, execution date in high-profile rape-murder case



Lawyers involved in a high-profile rape-murder case are planning to reexamine 
the evidence after finding discrepancies in case files, including an appeal 
application dated 16 days after the man's execution.

The date written on Nie Shubin's appeal was May 13, 1995, while he was 
reportedly executed on April 27, 1995, Li Shuting, one of Nie's attorneys, told 
the Global Times.

A native of Hebei Province, Nie was convicted by the Hebei High People's Court 
for raping and murdering a woman surnamed Kang in a cornfield on the outskirts 
of the provincial capital of Shijiazhuang in 1994.

However, Wang Shujin, who was separately convicted for the rape and murder of 3 
other women, confessed in 2005 that he was responsible for Kang's death. Wang 
was also sentenced to death but has yet to be executed.

Li raised doubts about the date of the execution, since Nie's handwriting on 
the appeal is consistent with other documents but the date was not marked on 
the photo of his execution.

Li said he thinks it's unlikely that Nie incorrectly wrote the date, given the 
gravity of the situation.

Nevertheless, Nie's other lawyer, Chen Guangwu, said he believes it's more 
likely the result of a slip of the pen, writing "May" instead of "April." "Nie 
may not have been in the right frame of mind under pressure from the death 
penalty," Chen told the Global Times.

In addition, Li found that at least 6 signatures from Nie on the documents were 
not similar, suspecting that his signatures may have been forged or that the 
court documents were filed after the case was closed.

Questioning Kang's actual cause of death, Chen said that they plan to reexamine 
the evidence, including a shirt that was believed used to strangle Kang to 
death, which Wang did not mention in his confession, as well as the victim's 
body if still available.

Both lawyers said that it may take longer than expected to file an appeal to 
the High People's Court of Shandong Province, which was appointed to review the 
case in December 2014.

They originally planned to submit it in 7 to 10 days.

(source: Global Times)








SAUDI ARABIA:

Saudi Justice, Harsh but Able to Spare the Sword



The murder that almost cost Bandar al-Yehiya his head started with an old debt 
to a close friend.

Struggling to raise the cash, Mr. Yehiya invited the friend to his home and 
offered him a rifle as payment. But when the friend refused, Mr. Yehiya got 
angry and shot him in the chest, leaving him dead on the living room couch, the 
slain man's brother, Faleh al-Homeidani, said.

Mr. Yehiya confessed to the murder, so under Saudi Arabia's strict 
interpretation of Islamic law, he would face the punishment that has made Saudi 
justice notorious around the world: beheading in the public square.

But the execution never happened.

Saudi Arabia's justice system is regularly condemned by human rights groups for 
violating due process, lacking transparency and applying punishments like 
beheading and amputation. Criticism has grown as Saudi cases have made news 
abroad: a liberal blogger caned for criticizing religious leaders; activists 
jailed for advocating reform; a woman held without charge for more than 2 
months for driving a car.

Such rulings have prompted comparisons to the Islamic State, which regularly 
beheads its foes and also claims to apply Shariah law.

But Mr. Yehiya was saved because of checks in the Saudi system on the use of 
harsh punishments. His case wound its way through a yearslong odyssey of law 
and tradition. Mr. Yehiya reformed in prison, sheikhs and royals appealed for 
his life, and he was ultimately spared by a daughter of the man he had shot 
dead.

Mr. Yehiya's reprieve was the product of a justice system little understood 
outside the kingdom, one that is based on centuries of Islamic tradition and 
that prioritizes stability and the strict adherence to Islamic mores over 
individual rights and freedoms.

"The punishments that are in the Quran - after Allah, the gracious and almighty 
- are what preserve security in this country," said Faisal bin Mishaal bin Saud 
bin Abdulaziz, the prince of Qassim Province, where Mr. Yehiya's crime took 
place.

"If there were no retribution," Prince Faisal said, "there would be total 
chaos."

But built into the system as well, he said, are avenues for mercy.

Some crimes and their punishments are clear in the Saudi system, like execution 
for murder, amputation for grand theft, and lashes for premarital sex or the 
drinking of alcohol. The Saudi state also has modern laws for offenses like 
drug trafficking and weapons use, as well as for cybercrime and terrorism, 
which human rights groups say the government often uses to punish nonviolent 
dissidents.

But many crimes and their punishments are not clearly defined, including 
unarmed carjacking, attempted robbery, sex acts that fall short of intercourse, 
harassment and fraud. This gives great autonomy to judges, who are trained in 
Shariah and not bound by judicial precedent, to define crimes and issue 
punishments.

Saudi lawyers complain that the lack of a definitive penal code results in 
vastly different rulings for similar crimes.

Abdulaziz al-Gassim, a Riyadh lawyer, said he had seen rape cases lead to 
prison terms ranging from 2 years to 18 years.

"That is a huge difference," he said.

No aspect of Saudi justice draws more attention than punishments like beheading 
or amputation. But Saudi legal practitioners say that penalties are on the 
books to deter crime and that the system limits their use.

In Saudi jurisprudence adultery and apostasy merit death, but executions for 
either are rare because the law makes it hard to secure convictions. Adultery, 
for example, can be proved by the testimony of witnesses, but they must be 4 
Muslim men who see the sex act itself - proof nearly impossible to obtain.

And while the Quran says the hands of thieves should be cut off, amputations 
are rare because of conditions put on the crime and because judges find it 
distasteful, said Ahmed Juhaimi, a Riyadh lawyer and former prosecutor. Just 1 
amputation for theft was reported in 2014, for example.

A Riyadh judge recalled a case of 4 thieves who had broken into someone's 
living room and stolen the furniture, television and refrigerator. The crime 
met the conditions for amputation, but the judge allowed them to confess to a 
lesser charge and sentenced them to 2 years in prison and 100 lashes each.

"The goal is not to carry out these punishments, but to scare people," said the 
judge, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to 
speak to the news media.

Observers say this discretion guided by deep conservatism often leads to harsh 
punishments for those seen as threatening the religious nature of the state, 
like liberals.

Many Saudi lawyers believe the case against Raif Badawi, a liberal blogger who 
was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes, was made because he 
attacked the religious establishment, an act believed to be more destabilizing 
than adultery, or even murder.

"The judges are very conservative, so they tend to use their autonomy to give 
very conservative rulings that sometimes embarrass the royal family 
internationally," said Stephane Lacroix, an associate professor at the Sciences 
Po university in Paris who studies Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Yehiya's murder of his friend, Mutlaq al-Homeidani, in 2002 shocked the 
people of Qassim, a province of sand dunes and scattered towns in central Saudi 
Arabia, where tribal ties are strong and residents are proud of their 
conservatism.

The 2 men had often visited each other's homes, and Mr. Homeidani, an officer 
in the National Guard, had a wife and 6 children who lost their breadwinner. 
Both men were also from prominent tribes, raising the specter of revenge 
killings if the slain man's kin did not feel that justice had been served.

"We have nothing but the rule of Shariah," said the victim's brother, Faleh 
al-Homeidani. That meant the public beheading of Mr. Yehiya.

Since Mr. Yehiya's life was at stake, his case took a path through the courts 
established for harsh punishments. A 3-judge panel convicted him of murder, 
prompting an appeal to a 5-judge panel, which affirmed the ruling and passed it 
to 5 judges on the high court.

If a majority of the judges at any level had doubted his guilt, the execution 
would have been stayed. But none did, so the case went to the royal court for a 
final review before the king could sign the execution order.

Mr. Yehiya was sentenced to death as retribution, meaning that only the 
victim's heirs could pardon him. But he was spared immediate death because 
every one of the heirs must agree, and the victim's youngest son was only 3, 
making him years short of the legal age for consent, which is 15. So Mr. Yehiya 
went to prison to wait for the boy to grow up before he could agree to have his 
father's killer's head cut off.

Many Muslims believe that saving a life, even that of a murderer, earns one 
rewards in heaven, so the possibility of a pardon by the victims' heirs has 
opened a realm of activism aimed at stopping executions.

After Mr. Yehiya's conviction, his family campaigned on his behalf, and he 
became a religious leader in prison, earning the respect of clerics, who took 
up his cause. Much of the job fell to Sheikh Rashid al-Shalash, a wide-eyed, 
chatty cleric who heads a committee in Qassim Province that campaigns for 
pardons.

During an interview, Sheikh Shalash defended beheadings on what he called 
humanitarian and social grounds. For the condemned, he said, decapitation 
brings death faster than lethal injection or the electric chair.

And instead of apologizing for its gruesomeness, he said gore was the point 
because it deterred crime.

"When you see the sword hit someone, don't you get disgusted?" Sheikh Shalash 
asked. "There are those who want to kill, but when they see that killing, they 
stop."

But for religious reasons, he strives to secure pardons by visiting victims' 
families and raising money to pay those who choose to pardon. And since pardons 
are possible until the sword falls, cases sometimes end with high drama in the 
public square.

Saudi Arabia executed 88 people in 2014, while 35 people were executed in the 
United States. Thirty of the Saudi executions were retribution sentences for 
murder, according to Human Rights Watch. While statistics on pardons are not 
publicly available, Sheikh Shalash has secured them in 13 out of 17 cases he 
has taken in recent years. About 1/2 of those involved no money, while some 
families received hundreds of thousands of dollars, he said. In one case, the 
heirs were paid $1.3 million.

Word of Mr. Yehiya's case spread as the slain man's youngest son approached 
adolescence, and prominent clerics pleaded for mercy from the heirs.

Royal family members visited and sent representatives, and powerful tribal 
leaders offered blank checks, said Mr. Homeidani, the victim's brother.

His response never changed: "If it's about money, the man will die."

But since any one of the heirs can grant a pardon, Sheikh Shalash investigated 
all 9 of them until he found a hint of sympathy: the victim's daughter Noura.

Sheikh Shalash asked the principal of Noura's high school to sound the girl out 
and arranged to speak with her by phone, he said. She later signed an official 
pardon, when she was 17. Her family members knew nothing of it and were shocked 
when they found out, Mr. Homeidani said, but they accepted that it was her 
right.

"If they kill him, how will it benefit my father?" he said Noura had told him. 
"God willing, there will be a reward for my father and he'll go to heaven."

Sheikh Shalash worried that despite the pardon, the slain man's family could 
seek revenge if Mr. Yehiya was released, so his committee gave the family 
$800,000, with an additional $130,000 going to Noura because of her good deed.

Noura is now a 2nd-year university student; her family declined to make her 
available for an interview.

Mr. Yehiya, who left prison in 2011 at age 33, also declined to comment. He 
recently was married and earned a law degree.

On a coffee table in Sheikh Shalash's living room sits an ornate silver and 
gold sword with a plaque thanking him for "saving the neck of the young man, 
Bandar al-Yehiya."

The 2 men keep in touch.

(source: New York Times)