[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 17



BAHRAIN:

Death sentences for killing police officer upheld in Bahrain----Abdul Wahid 
Sayid Mohammad Faqeer's murder was 'calculated and carefully planned'


The Cassation Court in Bahrain on Monday upheld the death sentence for two 
defendants found guilty of killing an on-duty police officer and of attempted 
murder.

Police officer Abdul Wahid Sayid Mohammad Faqeer was killed on February 14 last 
year in the Dair area, in the northern part of Muharraq island.

"The Court of Cassation has upheld the decisions by the Higher Criminal Court 
and the Court of Appeal to sentence 2 of the individuals to death, in light of 
the calculated and carefully planned manner in which Abdul Wahid was murdered," 
Advocate General Nayif Yousuf said. "The Court also upheld the length of the 
prison sentences handed down to the other appellants."

The Public Prosecution's investigations, which included crime scene forensic 
evidence, mobile phone evidence, and witness testimonies, found that the 
defendants had lured security personnel to Al Dair area, where a remote 
Improvised Explosive Device (IED) had been planted. The explosive device was 
detonated upon the arrival of the security forces and killed Abdul Wahid and 
injured several other officers, the Advocate General said.

"2 of the defendants were found guilty of planting and detonating the explosive 
device, while 10 others were convicted of obtaining and manufacturing explosive 
devices with the intent to use them in terrorist attacks," the Advocate General 
said.

"The defendants had been provided with access to their legal representatives 
and all relevant evidence at every stage of their trial and appeal processes."

(source: Gulf News)






AUSTRALIA:

Aust seen as hypocritical on executions


Australia is perceived in Indonesia as having double standards over the death 
penalty.

That's because there was a huge outcry over the deaths of 2 Australian drug 
smugglers but none over the 2008 executions of the Bali bombers who killed 88 
Australians in 2002.

Speaking via video link to a Senate inquiry into the abolition of the death 
penalty, Indonesian human rights lawyer Ricky Gunawan said Australia's 
opposition to the death penalty was seen as hypocritical in Indonesia.

"To be honest, in terms of the death penalty, ordinary Indonesian people also 
see a double standard from Australia, because you were silent when we executed 
the Bali bombers," Mr Gunawan told the sub-committee, chaired by veteran 
Liberal MP Philip Ruddock on Tuesday.

He said Australia needed to reach out to ordinary Indonesians if it wanted to 
make any inroads in changing the nation's strict stance on the death penalty.

It must also stop publicly criticising the Indonesian government and instead 
engage in "quiet diplomacy" if it was to win Indonesia's trust.

He advised that developing a good relationship with local media was "crucial, 
because media influences public opinion".

"You can shape public opinion to show there are dark sides to the death 
penalty," Mr Gunawan said.

Reaching out to religious groups and giving voice to Indonesian academics 
opposed to the death penalty would also help.

After the hearing, Mr Ruddock conceded Mr Gunawan was "probably right that we 
were more focused on Australians on death row than Indonesian Bali bombers, 
because they committed serious terrorism offences".

"But I don't think it was top of the mind for most people to be protesting 
about letting the Bali bombers off," he told AAP.

(source: Geelong Advertiser)

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

Qld MP's death penalty calls 'insensitive'


Queensland's premier has ridiculed an opposition MP's repeated calls for the 
death penalty to be considered for terrorists.

Liberal National Party MP Dr Christian Rowan, who last week used a 
parliamentary speech to call for a conversation about the death penalty, 
renewed his push this week in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris.

"I find it quite insensitive and quite unbelievable that a member of parliament 
in this day and age in Australia would be calling for that," Premier Annastacia 
Palaszczuk said on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Ms Palaszczuk has reaffirmed the state's commitment to resettle 3500 
of the 12,000 Syrian refugees the Federal Government has offered to take in.

It comes amid calls, including from federal MP Bob Katter, for Australia to 
shut its doors to Syrian refugees for fear of terrorists, posing as asylum 
seekers, trying to enter the country.

At least 129 people were killed in simultaneous attacks in Paris at the 
weekend.

(source: Yahoo News)






CHINA:

China Bends Vow, Using Prisoners' Organs for Transplants


When a senior Chinese health official said last year that China would stop 
using prisoners' organs for transplants as of Jan. 1, 2015, human rights 
advocates and medical professionals around the world greeted the announcement 
with relief.

It seemed to end a decades-long form of human exploitation in which hundreds, 
perhaps thousands, of organs of executed prisoners were harvested each year.

But organs from prisoners, including those on death row, can still be used for 
transplants in China, with the full backing of policy makers, according to 
Chinese news reports, as well as doctors and medical researchers in China and 
abroad. "They just reclassified prisoners as citizens," said Huige Li, a 
Chinese-born doctor at the University of Mainz in Germany.

The December announcement by Huang Jiefu, a former deputy health minister and 
chairman of the National Health and Family Planning Commission's Human Organ 
and Transplant Committee, was "an administrative trick," said Dr. Otmar 
Kloiber, the World Medical Association secretary general.

The association opposes the use of organs from prisoners in any country that 
has the death penalty, saying there is no way of knowing if such donations are 
truly voluntary.

The relabeling of prisoners has enabled Chinese officials to include them in a 
new, nationwide "citizen donation" system that China is building to reduce its 
longstanding reliance on organs from prisoners. The move has been described in 
multiple state reports quoting Dr. Huang and other officials.

In January, People's Daily reported that voluntary donations from citizens had 
become the sole source of organs for transplant. It quoted Dr. Huang as 
explaining: "Death-row prisoners are also citizens, and the law does not 
deprive them of their right to donate their organs. If death-row prisoners are 
willing to donate their organs to atone for their crimes, then they should be 
encouraged."

In March, Dr. Huang told The Beijing Times, "Once the organs from death-row 
prisoners who have voluntarily donated are included in our national 
distribution system, they are counted as voluntary citizen donations."

Dr. Kloiber said the World Medical Association was aware of reports that China 
was continuing to use prisoners' organs, in contravention of the association's 
ethical standards. The China Medical Association is a member of the world body.

The only exception under the association guidelines, Dr. Kloiber said, was 
donations for immediate family members.

"The practice there is unethical and should be changed to an ethical practice," 
he said of China. "Administrative tricks don't make it ethical."

The December announcement came at a meeting of the new China Organ Procurement 
Organization Alliance. It is one of several organizations set up in recent 
years to help transform China's system from one depending heavily on organs 
from executed prisoners to one of voluntary donation, as in many developed 
nations. The alliance, Dr. Huang and National Health and Family Planning 
Commission officials could not be reached for comment.

At the meeting, Dr. Huang said: "From Jan. 1, 2015, we will completely stop 
using death-row prisoners' organs as a transplant source. The only source will 
be organs from dead citizens who have voluntarily donated."

The discrepancy between that public statement and current practice is coming to 
light as doctors begin to speak publicly about what they call major changes in 
their country's troubled organ donation system.

Broadly, China is trying to construct a more transparent system with a central 
organ pool for all, amid public anger at corruption and lack of equal access.

Previously, multiple medical centers operated, often secretly, to procure 
organs from prisoners or poor migrant workers and supply them to politically 
well-connected or wealthy patients, according to officials and researchers. 
Now, the government says it is working to create a single pool that will be 
fairly managed with organs distributed according to medical need.

China began to solicit organs from the public in 2010. In a 2011 article in the 
medical journal Lancet, Dr. Huang said about 65 % of transplants in China had 
been done with organs from dead donors, of which more than 90 % were executed 
prisoners. The rest had been provided by living donors.

When Chinese officials said last year that they would no longer use prisoners' 
organs, that meant they would no longer systematically harvest organs from 
death-row inmates, Dr. Li said.

Dr. Huang "is separating dead prisoners' organs into 2 groups," Dr. Li added. 
"1 is the traditional style, 'I don't care if prisoners agree or not, we'll use 
them,'" which has been illegal since 2007, he said. That year, a new law on 
organ transplants banned trafficking in organs and removing them without 
written consent, although it did not mention prisoners.

"When he said, 'We will completely stop using prisoners' organs,' he meant stop 
using that illegal component," Dr. Li said.

Still, China deserves credit for trying to change the system by encouraging 
more voluntary donations outside prisons, Dr. Kloiber said. "We have to 
acknowledge they are willing to discuss this," he said.

Anecdotal evidence from Chinese doctors points to progress, but also suggests 
continuing problems.

Many Chinese are reluctant to donate organs because of Confucian traditions 
that consider the body a gift from parents to be buried or cremated intact. 
Also, many people have been reluctant to donate because of a widespread 
assumption that in a corrupt system their organs would not be fairly used.

"A majority of the lungs I transplanted last year came from convicts," said Dr. 
Chen Jingyu, a national transplant specialist and a surgeon at Wuxi People's 
Hospital. He said he and his team did 104 lung transplants in 2014.

He and many other surgeons expected that, with the announced policy change, 
they would face a severe shortfall. But after Jan. 1, he said, the feared 
decrease did not happen. He expects about 150 lung transplants in China this 
year, about the same as last year.

(source: The New York Times)






MALAYSIA:

Bill to abolish death penalty for drug offences on the cards, says law minister


Putrajaya plans to table a bill in March next year to abolish the mandatory 
death penalty in drug-related offences, de facto law minister Nancy Shukri said 
today.

She said this would allow judges to use their discretion to choose between 
sentencing a person to jail and the gallows in non-criminal cases, such as 
drug-related offences.

"What we are looking at is the abolishment of the mandatory death sentence. It 
is not easy to amend and we are working on it," she told a press conference 
after a roundtable discussion on the abolishment of the mandatory death penalty 
in Parliament today.

"We can get rid of the word 'mandatory' to allow judges to use their discretion 
in drug-related offences."

She said Attorney-General Tan Sri Mohamed Apandi Ali was supportive of the 
move, adding the latter's interview with The Malaysian Insider, in which he had 
thrown support for the abolishment of the mandatory death sentence.

Apandi said, in the report published last Friday, that he would propose to the 
Cabinet that the mandatory death penalty be scrapped, adding that it was a 
"paradox", as it robbed judges of their discretion to impose sentences on 
convicted criminals.

"If I had my way, I would introduce the option for the judge in cases where it 
involves capital punishment. Give the option to the judge either to hang him or 
send him to prison.

"Then we're working towards a good administration of criminal justice," Apandi 
told The Malaysian Insider.

He said that this would be in line with the "universal thinking" of capital 
punishment, although he denied calling for the death penalty to be abolished 
altogether. "Not to say that I am for absolute abolition of capital punishment, 
but at least we go in stages. We take step by step."

A mandatory death sentence is imposed in Malaysia in cases involving murder, 
certain firearm offences, drug-trafficking and treason. Statistics from the 
Prisons Department showed 1.022 prisoners on death row as of October 6 and from 
1998 until now, 33 convicts had been executed and 127 have had their death 
sentences reversed to lighter punishments.

(source: themalaysianinsider.com)

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

Mandatory death penalty law for drug cases to be amended next March


The government will seek to amend the mandatory death penalty sentence for drug 
offences in March next year.

Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Nancy Shukri said the decision was 
reached after discussions with Attorney-General (A-G) Tan Sri Apandi Ali.

"I have discussed with the A-G and he agrees.

"I hope that it can be presented in the Dewan Rakyat next year in March."

Nancy spoke on the matter after the Parliamentary for Global Action (PGA) 
meeting on "Parliamentary Round Table on the Abolition of the Death Penalty in 
Malaysia" in Parliament today.

Tourism and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz, who was also 
present at the meeting, said the amendment will allow judges the ability to 
exercise their discretion when sentencing drug-related cases.

Mohamed Nazri, who was also PGA chairman, stated that the change would signify 
a positive trend towards the annulment of the mandatory death sentence in the 
country.

"As a start, we see the abolition of death by gallows for cases that do not 
involve criminal offences involving drugs.

"We have summarised that as a start we can eliminate the mandatory death 
sentence and the judges can use their discretion."

(source: The Rakyat Post)



BANGLADESH:

Mujahid's lawyers argue only against death sentence in review petition hearing


Death-row war criminal Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid's defence has not raised any 
point regarding the charge for which the Jamaat-e-Islami secretary general has 
been sentenced to life in prison in the hearing of his review petition.

At the hearing of the review petition before the Appellate Division of the High 
Court on Tuesday, Mujahid's lawyers only presented arguments against the charge 
for which the Al-Badr commander has been sentenced to death.

"At least his neck will be saved," was the response of his main counsel 
Khandaker Mahbub Hossain to a bdnews24.com query on the matter.

The International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) sentenced Mujahid to death on 3 charges 
of crimes committed against humanity during the 1971 Liberation War.

The Supreme Court upheld his death sentence on the charge of plotting the 
murders of intellectuals.

His death sentence on another charge was commuted to life term imprisonment. He 
was acquitted of 1 other charge.

A 4-member Appellate Division bench headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar 
Sinha heard Mujahid's plea for a review of the appeals on the verdict on 
Tuesday.

It is set to issue the verdict on Wednesday.

Asked what his expectations were of the verdict, Mujahid's counsel Hossain 
said, "We expect an acquittal of the accused whenever we file any case."

"But here, we did not go against all the charges. He was sentenced to life on 
another change and to five years in jail on another. We don't have anything to 
say on these," Hossain said.

"We have something to say against only 1 charge - for which he got the death 
penalty. We've argued that it was unlawful to sentence him to death in line 
with the witnesses' depositions and evidence," he added.

The review is the last stage of the legal battle. The only other option to 
evade the death sentence is through seeking presidential clemency, if the death 
penalty is not changed in review.

It is clear from Mujahid's chief lawyer's comments that the defence team has no 
worries about his life term imprisonment or any other penalty.

When bdnews24.com spoke to him about the matter, Hossain again said, "We have 
sought review of only one charge."

"The scope is very limited in a review. For that reason, we've said that the 
penalty for charge No. 6 is 'not in accordance with law'; this penalty cannot 
be given under the corresponding section in line with the witnesses' 
depositions and the evidences presented during the trial," he said.

About the other charges, he said, "We are not challenging the others."

"And the Appellate Division decisions on the others are 'in accordance with 
law'. We can't say that the penalties were not in line with the law," he added.

After the hearing, Hossain told reporters that Mujahid had not been named in 
the 42 cases filed earlier over the murders of intellectuals.

He also claimed the investigators did not find Mujahid's name in any list of 
Al-Badr force.

"We've shown that the Al-Badr command was army command. We have shown it from 
an interview of Mr Niazi (Gen Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi of the Pakistan Army) 
published in a book of Muntassir Mamoon. Mr Niazi said Al-Badr and Al-Shams 
were under direct army command," he said.

Hossain claimed the charge for which Mujahid was sentenced to death was not 
specific.

"In other cases, there were specific charges against the accused persons - like 
the accused carried out the murder at some specific place and tortured specific 
people. But the charge against Mr Mujahid is not specific," he said.

"The charge was...the killings of intellectuals...as he was the secretary of 
Islami Chhatra Sangha, he will have to take the responsibility for these 
(killings) - what is known as superior command.

"We have argued that the Al-Badr force was directly under the army, under 
Niazi," Hossain said.

(source: bdnews24.com)

***********

Hearing on Nizami appeal resumes


Hearing on the appeal of Jamaat amir Matiur Rahman Nizami has resumed at the 
Appellate Division of Supreme Court on Wednesday.

On September 9, a 4-member bench started hearing on the appeal filed by Matiur 
Rahman Nizami.

International Crimes Tribunal-1 on 29 October last year gave the 
Jamaat-e-Islami leader death penalty on 4 charges, including murdering 
intellectuals.

On 23 November last year, Jamaat chief Nizami challenged the death penalty in 
the Appellate Division.

(source: prothom-alo.com)

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

4 get death penalty for raping, killing girl


A Dhaka court has awarded death sentence to 4 persons for raping and killing 
13-year-old girl Zakia Akter Champa of Faridpur in 2012. Dhaka Speedy Trial 
Tribunal 4 Judge Abdur Rahman Sarder passed the order on Tuesday.

The convicts who got the death penalty were Md Shamim Mandal, Md Babul Hossain 
alias Rajib, Zahidul Hasan alias Jazid and Akash Mandol. Of the convicts, Rajib 
and Akash are on the run.

The court acquitted Mousumi of the charges.

According to the verdict, on December 13, 2012, the victim was taken away from 
a wedding ceremony of her sister by the convicts in Faridpur town. Later, they 
killed her and hanged the body with a tree.

On December 15, the victim's brother Md Hasibul Islam filed a murder case with 
Kotwali police station accusing 5 people.

Police submitted the charge sheet on May 20, 2013.

(source: Dhaka Tribune)






IRAN----executions

Pakistani Citizen Executed Southest Iran, 5 Other Prisoners Executed in the 
Northwest


>From Thursday November 12 until today, Iranian authorities have executed at 
least 6 prisoners in 2 different prisons. Most of the hangings were carried out 
for alleged drug offenses.

On Saturday November 14, a Pakistani citizen, identified as Younes Jamaloldini, 
was reportedly hanged at Zahedan Central Prison on alleged drug charges. 
According to close sources, Jamaloldini was around 35 years old and had been 
transferred from his prison ward to solitary confinement in preparation for his 
execution.

"Currently there are at least 9 Pakistani citizens in Zahedan Central Prison, 5 
of them are sentenced to death for drug trafficking, the rest of them are 
sentenced to life in prison. Aside from one of them, the youngest is being held 
in the juvenile ward, the rest are being held in ward 7. There are also more 
than 15 Afghan citizens in the same ward, most are sentenced to death," says an 
informed source who has requested to be annonymous.

On Thursday November 12 and Monday November 16, a total of 5 prisoners, 
incuding 1 woman, were reportedly hanged at Tabriz Central Prison. According to 
the Kurdistan Human Rights Network, the prisoners on Thursday were executed on 
drug related charges and have been identified as: Mohammad Ali Zamani, Jafar 
Azizi, Mohammad Panahvand, and Hagar Safari. The prisoner on Monday was 
reportedly executed on murder charges and has been identified as Saeed Rahimi.

Iranian official sources have been silent on the recent executions in Tabriz 
and Zahedan prisons.

(source: Iran Human Rights)