[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 14




INDIA:

TN contractor sentenced to death for setting ablaze 3 workers


A local court today sentenced a contractor from Tamil Nadu to death for killing 
6 of his workers by setting them on fire in their room here 6
years ago, holding that it would fall in the category of "rarest of rare" case.

Thomas Alva Edison (28) from Tuticorin district in Tamil Nadu killed 3 of his 
workers- Dassi, Vijay and Suresh - in February, 2009 for monetary gain of 
avoiding paying wage arrears due to them, according to the prosecution.

Andrews, another person, also from the neighbouring state, survived the murder 
attempt.

Awarding the capital punishment, Additional Sessions Judge E M Muhammad Ibrahim 
found that the "multiple murder" committed by the convict would come within the 
category of "rarest of rare" case which warranted death penalty as argued by 
the Additional Public Prosecutor.

The court said that going by materials available on record, "it is clear that 
the accused has committed multiple murder with deliberate intention and this is 
a gravest case of extreme culpability."

"The accused is a threat to the society as he used to create problem wherever 
he works," the judge said.

Though Edison was an young man of 24 years as on the date of offence, the court 
said the three deceased persons were younger than him or in the same age group.

They were roasted alive and they succumbed to burn injuries while another young 
man, who survived, suffered more than 65 % burns, the court said.

The court said it was clear from the available evidence that the multiple 
murder was "premeditated, diabolic and a planned one" and committed in an 
extremely brutal manner.

His lawyer K P Madhu said an appeal will be filed against the verdict in the 
Kerala High Court soon.

(source: Press Trust of India)

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

Kochi: Contractor gets death penalty for killing 3


An additional district sessions court in Kochi on Wednesday awarded capital 
punishment to a contractor for killing three workers by setting them on fire.

The convict, Thomas Alva Edison, 28, had killed the 3 persons, natives of Tamil 
Nadu, in their room in Kochi in February, 2009.

Edison set the migrant workers on fire in their room when they sought wages. 
Edison, hailing from Tamil Nadu, too had sustained burns as he was at the room, 
where the workers were burned alive.

Edison had got bail in 2012 but went into hiding at the time of trial. He was 
arrested in April this year.

(source: Indian Express)





RUSSIA:

Communist MP proposes reintroducing death penalty for terrorists


A key member of the Communist caucus in the State Duma has urged fellow 
lawmakers to allow the death penalty for terrorists as an extraordinary measure 
and “a supreme measure of social protection.”

“All activities of any terrorists are aimed at murdering innocent people. They 
are perfectly aware of the criminal nature of their actions,” MP Vadim Solovyov 
said in a parliamentary speech on Tuesday. “These killers must know that we 
will apply to them the harshest measure of social protection which is the death 
penalty.”

Solovyov suggested that reintroducing the death penalty would help to bring 
down the terrorist threat in the country, adding that this threat can increase 
in connection with Russia’s active participation in the operation against 
Islamic State terrorists in Syria.

“Unfortunately, I fear that the terrorist underground could step up its 
activities in connection with the Syria events and civilians would become their 
victims. Our government is guided by some Western values that are 
incomprehensible to me and they just cannot decide on the cancellation of the 
death penalty moratorium. But we need to return to capital punishment, the 
sooner the better,” the Moskva news agency quoted Solovyov as saying.

The comment came a few days after Russian security services reported that they 
had managed to thwart a major terrorist attack in Moscow, adding that the 
plotters had connections with Islamic State (IS, previously known as ISIL and 
ISIS).

Russia introduced a moratorium on the death penalty in 1999 as it sought 
membership in the Council of Europe. The Constitution still allows it for 
especially grave crimes and after a guilty verdict by a jury court.

Many Russian politicians and officials, including the Interior Minister and the 
head of the top federal law enforcement agency urged to return to capital 
punishment as a measure against terrorists and criminals who target children. 
Opinion polls held in 2013 and 2014 showed the majority of people supported the 
return of the death penalty as an exception and for especially grave crimes.

In late 2013 an MP from the nationalist-populist LDPR party proposed to execute 
convicted terrorists, pedophiles and people who involve children in illegal 
drug use. The Lower House rejected the bill without a hearing.

(source: rt.com)




SRI LANKA:

A little light administrative duty for Sri Lanka's new hangmen


Sri Lanka said on Wednesday it has hired 2 new executioners to replace
the previous hangman, who quit soon after seeing the gallows for the
1st time, even though capital punishment has not been carried out there for 
almost 40 years.

No one has been executed in the tropical South Asian nation since 1976 and the 
role of executioner is described as "light administrative work only", even 
though there are 1,116 convicts on death row.

"It doesn't matter whether the government wants to execute or not," said 
Prisons Commissioner General Rohana Pushpakumara.

"In the event the government wants to carry out executions, we should be 
prepared," he told Reuters.

Death sentences have been routinely commuted to life in jail since 1976, even 
though Sri Lanka only officially acknowledged last month it was no longer 
carrying out capital punishment.

More than 1/2 of those who are on death row have lodged appeals against their 
sentences, Pushpakumara said.

The predominantly Buddhist Indian Ocean nation has witnessed a sharp rise in 
child abuse, rape, murder and drug trafficking since the end of a 26-year civil 
war with Tamil Tiger separatists in 2009, political analysts have said.

That has prompted some lawyers and politicians to call for the reinstatement of 
the death penalty.

The position of executioner fell vacant in March 2014 when the previous hangman 
quit weeks after he was hired, citing stress, soon after he saw the gallows in 
the capital, Colombo, for the 1st time.

2 other hangmen hired in 2013 failed to show up for work.

(source: channelnewsasia.com)






BANGLADESH:

Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami chief challenges death penalty

Head of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami group asks supreme court to review death 
penalty handed down against him


Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, secretary-general of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami 
group, has asked the country’s supreme court to review a death penalty handed 
down against him earlier, which was upheld by the court on Wednesday.

Along with Mujahid, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader Salahuddin Quader 
Chowdhury, who has also been slapped with a death sentence, also has only one 
day left to file a petition against the sentence before the court.

The supreme court’s appellate division upheld the sentences against both men on 
June 16 and July 29 respectively.

Both of them had 15 days to file their petitions beginning from the day that 
the court delivered the sentences.

The International Crimes Tribunal, a special domestic court, had found Mujahid 
guilty of 5 out of the 7 charges leveled against him and sentenced him to death 
in July of 2013.

Two top Jamaat-e-Islami leaders, Abdul Qader Molla and Mohammad Kamaruzzaman, 
were also convicted — and subsequently hanged — in 2013 and in April of this 
year respectively.

The 2 had served in various government posts in Bangladesh at different times.

Mujahid had served with the BNP’s coalition and Chowdhury was the parliamentary 
affairs advisor for Khaleda Zia when she was in power from 2001 to 2006.

Chowdhury hails from a political family in the port city of Chittagng. His 
father, Fazlul Quader Chowdhury, had opposed Bangladesh’s independence from 
Pakistan when he had served as speaker of Pakistan’s parliament.

The International Crimes Tribunal was established in 2009 to investigate war 
crimes committed in 1971.

Bangladeshi opposition parties and international organizations such as Human 
Rights Watch have criticized the recent death sentences and expressed concerns 
about the accused not getting a fair trial.

Bangladesh accuses the Pakistani army along with local collaborators of killing 
up to 3 million people during its 1971 war for independence.

(source: videonews.us)




IRAN:

Execution of 2 juvenile offenders in just a few days makes a mockery of Iran’s 
juvenile justice system


Reports have emerged of a 2nd execution of a juvenile offender in Iran in just 
a few days Amnesty International said today, which reveal the full horror of 
the country’s deeply flawed juvenile justice system.

Fatemeh Salbehi, a 23-year-old woman, was hanged yesterday for a crime she 
allegedly committed when she was 17, only a few days after another juvenile 
offender, Samad Zahabi, was hanged for a crime he also allegedly committed at 
17.

Fatemeh Salbehi was hanged in Shiraz’s prison in Fars Province despite Iran 
being bound by an absolute international legal ban on juvenile executions, and 
severe flaws in her trial and appeal. She had been sentenced to death in May 
2010 for the murder of her 30- year- old husband, Hamed Sadeghi, whom she had 
been forced to marry at the age of 16.

An expert opinion from the State Medicine Organization provided at the trial 
had found she had had severe depression and suicidal thoughts around the time 
of her husband’s death. However the death sentence was upheld by Iran’s Supreme 
Court later that year.

“The use of the death penalty is cruel, and inhumane and degrading in any 
circumstances, but it is utterly sickening when meted out as a punishment for a 
crime committed by a person who was under 18 years of age, and after legal 
proceedings that make a mockery of juvenile justice,” said Said Boumedouha, 
Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa 
Programme.

“With these executions the Iranian judiciary has yet again put on display its 
brazen contempt for the human rights of children, including their right to 
life. There are simply no words to adequately condemn Iran’s continued use of 
the death penalty against juvenile offenders.”

The adoption of a new Islamic Penal Code in May 2013 sparked hopes that Fatemeh 
Salbehi and other juvenile offenders on death row may have their death 
sentences quashed and their cases re-examined. Article 91 of the Code allows 
judges to replace the death penalty with an alternative punishment if they 
determine that the juvenile offender did not comprehend the nature of the crime 
or its consequences or his or her “mental growth and maturity” are in doubt.

The re-examination hearing that Fatemeh Salbehi was granted in relation to 
Article 91 proved to be deeply flawed. It lasted only three hours and focused 
mostly on whether she prayed, studied religious textbooks at school and 
understood that killing another human being was “religiously forbidden.”

On this basis, the Provincial Criminal Court of Fars Province had ruled in May 
2014 that she had the maturity of an adult and therefore deserved the death 
sentence. In reaching this outrageous conclusion the judges failed to seek 
expert opinion, even though they lacked adequate knowledge and expertise on 
issues of child psychology.

This underlines the importance of the clear provision in the UN Convention on 
the Rights of the Child (CRC), which is binding on Iran, that no death 
sentences may be imposed for offences committed by individuals under the age of 
18.

In another appalling case eight days ago, another juvenile offender Samad 
Zahabi was secretly hanged in Kermanshah’s Dizel Abad Prison in Kermanshah 
province for shooting a fellow shepherd during a row over who should graze 
their sheep.

This execution was also carried out without a 48 hour notice period being given 
to Zahabi's lawyer, as is required by law. Horrifically his family said they 
only learned of his fate after his mother visited the prison on 5 October 2015.

Samad Zahabi had been sentenced to death by the Provincial Criminal Court of 
Kermanshah Province in March 2013, even though he had said both during the 
investigations and at the trial that the shooting was unintentional and in 
self-defence, and resulted from a fight that he was drawn into against his 
will.

Branch six of the Supreme Court upheld his death sentence in February 2014, 
despite a written submission from the Office of the Prosecution that had asked 
for it to be quashed in light of the provisions of the 2013 revised Penal Code.

In December 2014, the general board of Iran’s Supreme Court issued a pilot 
judgement which entitled all juvenile offenders to seek judicial review of 
their cases based on Article 91 of the Penal Code. Samad Zahabi was never 
however informed of this legal development which may have spared his life.

“These latest juvenile executions cast a huge doubt over the commitment of the 
Iranian authorities to implement the provisions of the 2013 Islamic Penal Code 
with a view to abolishing their use of the death penalty against juvenile 
offenders,” Said Boumedouha said.

“The Iranian authorities should be under no illusion that they can avoid 
international scrutiny until they introduce a new law banning the use of the 
death penalty on any offender under 18 years of age.”

Background:

Iran is scheduled to be reviewed by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child 
(CRC) in January 2016. The Committe of the Right of the Child oversees the 
implementation of the CRC, which Iran ratified in July 1994. As a state party 
to the CRC, Iran has pledged to ensure that all persons under 18 years of age 
are treated as children and never subjected to the same punishments as adults. 
However, the age of adult criminal responsibility remains nine lunar years for 
girls and 15 lunar years for boys.


Between 2005 and 2015, Amnesty International has received reports of least 75 
executions of juvenile offenders, including at least three juvenile offenders 
in 2015. More than 160 juvenile offenders are believed to be currently on death 
row in prisons across the country.

(source: Amnesty International)