[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

April 27




INDONESIA:

Bali 9 member Michael Czugaj moved to remote jail after found with traces of 
drug----We speak to 2 prisoners inside Bali's Kerobokan jail about the legacy 
of executed Australian Myuran Sukumaran.


Bali 9 member Michael Czugaj is among 66 prisoners who have been transferred to 
a remote jail in East Java after prison authorities said they caught him with 
traces of the drug ice in Bali's Kerobokan jail.

The shock move comes two days before the 1st anniversary of the execution of 8 
drug offenders in Indonesia, including Bali nine co-ordinators Myuran Sukumaran 
and Andrew Chan.

The future of rehabilitation projects Sukumaran helped establish in Kerobokan 
jail, including art classes and a T-shirt printing business, are in doubt after 
the 2 Iranian prisoners he entrusted to take over after his death were also 
moved.

The transfer of 66 prisoners to Madiun Prison in East Java at 4am on Wednesday 
morning was so sudden that prisoners did not have time to collect clothes or 
even cigarettes.

7 foreigners were moved, including Czugaj and 6 Iranians.

The head of Bali's prison division, Nyoman Putra Surya Atmaja, said prison 
officers had found traces of used sabu sabu (ice) when they searched Czugaj's 
cell.

"He was heavily addicted to drugs. He admitted to using drugs, but we only 
found a trace of used drugs," Mr Nyoman said. "Legally we can't charge him with 
evidence. He said he got it from a visitor. But he never said who. That's why 
we moved him. So he is kept away from his Bali drug network."

Mr Nyoman said the 66 prisoners who had been transferred were those who were 
"emotionally easy to provoke and who caused disturbances".

The transfer comes a week after a riot broke out at Kerobokan jail, with fires 
lit and prison bars broken after 11 members of the notorious Laskar Bali gang 
were admitted to the prison.

Those involved in the jail rehabilitation projects expressed shock, sadness and 
anger at the transfer of Iranians Ali Reza Safar Khanloo and Rouhallah Series 
Abadi, whom Sukumaran had asked to continue running Kerobokan jail's T-shirt 
printing business and the art room.

"In the short term I don't see anyway for the BengKer (prison workshop) to 
remain viable. I feel really sad," one insider told Fairfax Media.

"For them to destroy the BengKer is just mean. What a mess. What a waste of 
years of effort."

The insider said Rahol and Ali, as they are known, had been a calming influence 
on the jail.

Rahol, who helped organise supplies and weekly classes in the art room, 
recently spoke of how much he missed Sukumaran and still felt his presence in 
Kerobokan.

"His body is dead but still his soul is here," he said.

Ali had been experimenting with producing skateboards and bags, as well as 
T-shirts, in the prison workshop.

He had recently designed a T-shirt featuring a striking image of Sukumaran 
releasing doves of peace from a map of Australia, which he wanted to send to 
Sukumaran's family to commemorate Sukumaran's birthday on April 17.

"They are saying they are transferring the troublemakers - it's just revenge 
from the warden and chief of security," one prisoner said.

"With the workshop I have no idea what is going to happen. What they are doing 
is totally making me confused. It's like they don't care about the 
rehabilitation programs."

"This is the saddest day. Like we are fighting a losing battle," said another 
prisoner.

However Mr Nyoman, the head of Bali's prison division, said Rahol and Ali were 
not the leaders of the art room and T-shirt printing businesses.

"The leaders are prison guards. Not prisoners.The guards are still there," he 
said.

And Dadang Iskandar, the prison officer in charge of the BengKer, said the 
programs would continue "just with different members".

He said Indonesia always made decisions in the best interests of prisoners: 
"All the prisoners were transferred with good intentions."

April 29 marks the 1st anniversary of the execution of eight drug offenders, 
including Chan and Sukumaran, on Nusakambangan island, known as Indonesia's 
Alcatraz.

The 2 Australians had been sentenced to death in 2006 for their role in the 
foiled attempt to smuggle 8.3 kilograms of heroin from Indonesia to Australia. 
Czugaj is serving life imprisonment.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo had refused to grant Chan and Sukumaran 
clemency, despite claims the Australians had reformed in prison.

Their legal team argued that Chan had become a pastor in prison and both men 
helped establish rehabilitation programs behind bars, including art, yoga, 
computer and cooking classes.

(source: smh.com.au)






PAKISTAN----executions

2 murder convicts hanged


2 murder convicts were hanged at the Faisalabad Central Jail on Tuesday. A 
spokesperson for the Prisons Department said Imran alias Hayat Ali, son of 
Nawaz, and Tahir, son of Rafiq, residents of Chak 55, had killed 4 of their 
rivals on February 5, 2005. Jaranwala police had registered a case against them 
and had presented the challan in an anti-terrorism court. The trial court had 
sentenced them to death and the apex court upheld the decision.

(source: The Express Tribune)






IRAN----executions

10 prisoners hanged in Iran in new wave of executions


Iran's fundamentalist regime has hanged at least 10 people in prisons since the 
weekend, in what has been described as a new wave of executions.

Earlier on Wednesday at least 6 other death-row prisoners in Ghezelhesar Prison 
in Karaj, north-west of Tehran, were transferred to solitary confinement for 
their imminent execution.

The regime's judiciary in Mazandaran Province announced that a 27-year-old 
prisoner identified by the initials Z. Ch. was hanged in a prison in Sari, 
northern Iran, on Sunday, April 24. Earlier in the week, the judiciary had 
announced that a 2nd 27-year-old prisoner, identified only by the initials H. 
H., was also hanged in prison in Sari on Sunday.

Elsewhere, the regime's judiciary in Qazvin Province announced that an unnamed 
man was hanged in Qazvin Central Prison, north-west of Tehran, on Tuesday.

At least 5 prisoners were hanged on Saturday in Zahedan Central Prison, 
south-east Iran. Another 3 prisoners were hanged in the same prison on Tuesday.

3 of those executed in Zahedan were identified as: Jamshid Dehvari, 30; Sadeq 
Rigi, 35; and Mohammad Sanchouli, who is believed to have been 22 years old.

Mr. Sanchouli had been behind bars for the past 5 years including time he 
served in the prison's ward for juveniles. He is believed to have been under 18 
at the time of his arrest.

The hangings bring to at least 46 the number of people executed in Iran since 
April 10. 3 of those executed were women and 1 is believed to have been a 
juvenile offender.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) said in a statement on April 
13 that the increasing trend of executions "aimed at intensifying the climate 
of terror to rein in expanding protests by various strata of the society, 
especially at a time of visits by high-ranking European officials, demonstrates 
that the claim of moderation is nothing but an illusion for this medieval 
regime."

Ms. Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the European Union for 
Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, was in Tehran on April 16 along with 7 EU 
commissioners for discussions with the regime's officials on trade and other 
areas of cooperation.

Her trip was strongly criticized by Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of the 
Foreign Affairs Committee of the NCRI who said: "This trip which takes place in 
the midst of mass executions, brutal human rights violations and the regime's 
unbridled warmongering in the region tramples on the values upon which the EU 
has been founded and which Ms. Mogherini should be defending and propagating."

Amnesty International in its April 6 annual Death Penalty report covering the 
2015 period wrote: "Iran put at least 977 people to death in 2015, compared to 
at least 743 the year before."

"Iran alone accounted for 82% of all executions recorded" in the Middle East 
and North Africa, the human rights group said.

There have been more than 2,300 executions during Hassan Rouhani's tenure as 
President. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation 
in Iran in March announced that the number of executions in Iran in 2015 was 
greater than any year in the last 25 years. Rouhani has explicitly endorsed the 
executions as examples of "God's commandments" and "laws of the parliament that 
belong to the people."

The NCRI in a separate statement on Sunday warned that 10 death-row prisoners, 
transferred to solitary confinement in Gohardasht (Rajai-Shahr) Prison in Karaj 
and Zahedan Prison, are at imminent risk of execution. It called on 
international human rights organizations to take urgent action to save their 
lives.

(source: NCR-Iran)







SAUDI ARABIA:

These Are the Juvenile 'Offenders' Saudi Arabia Executed in January


This is the 2nd in a 3-part VICE News series on the execution of juveniles in 
Saudi Arabia, in which we examine the arbitrary and sinister processes which 
constitute the Saudi justice system and its "counterterrorism" strategy, and 
reveal previously unreported examples of children caught up in its net.

"[Those arrested in the raid] were kids, to the extent that some we arrested 
thought the matter was over and they would return to their families."

Speaking directly into the camera in a documentary released last year, Saudi 
Arabian Special Forces General Major Sultan al-Maliki was very clear. A group 
of alleged terrorists rounded up by the authorities in 2003 were far away from 
their adult years.

The scene cuts to footage from the arrest, honing in on the face of one boy who 
looks scared, confused, and disorientated.

The boy was one of a group of youngsters from the African country of Chad who 
had been deceived into thinking they were coming to Mecca to study the Quran, 
according to the documentary - released by the Saudi government-funded news 
outlet Al Arabiya - and subsequent reports in Saudi press.

Instead, the Quran course "turned out to be a terrorist, criminal course, with 
disastrous results for those [juveniles] who were deceived," General Said 
al-Qahtani, Director of Police for Mecca, tells the viewer. "One of them hadn't 
reached 14 years old," he notes.

Al-Qaeda targets "vulnerable people" who "don't have the capacity to act or 
reject," explains Brigadier General Mudief al-Talhi. "They bring misguided 
children over and brainwash them," says an unnamed Major General.

In most parts in the world, children who are recruited, groomed, and deceived 
by terrorist organizations are seen as victims. Not in Saudi Arabia. These boys 
never went home to their families. Instead, at least 1 is known to have spent 
the next 12 years languishing in jail - and on January 2 this year he was 
executed.

The official Interior Ministry list of 47 people killed in a mass execution 
that day, combined with reports in Saudi press, which is all controlled by the 
state, identifies one of the dead as Mustafa Abkar, a Chadian reportedly born 
in 1987 who was arrested during a raid in June 2003. The major operation 
targeted a terrorist cell in Mecca thought to be responsible for a string of 
bombings in Riyadh in May 2003, and was the same raid depicted in the Al 
Arabiya film.

The birth year of 1987, reported by newspaper Okaz, means Abkar could not have 
been any older than 16 when he was detained - but Saudi activists believe Abkar 
was the 13-year-old described by General al-Qahtani, and that he was the young 
boy the camera zooms in on.

According to a source who spoke to the Middle East Eye, Abkar had no access to 
a lawyer and did not even get a court hearing until 2014, a single appearance 
in front of a judge at the end of which he was sentenced to death.

Abkar was not the only juvenile so-called offender to be capitally punished on 
January 2. While the mass execution was widely reported, what went largely by 
the wayside was the detail that at least three of those were prisoners whose 
alleged crimes are believed to have taken place when they were children.

Information about any prisoner or judicial proceeding in Saudi Arabia is hard 
to come by - the justice system is notoriously arbitrary and secretive, and the 
media often offers only sparse or fragmented details. But alongside Abkar, on 
the official list of those executed on January 2 were two names recognized by 
activists as men who were arrested as minors, which can confirmed by piecing 
together multiple press reports.

One was also arrested in the June 2003 operations targeting the Mecca terrorist 
cell that Abkar was charged with being part of. Amin Mohammed Aqla al-Ghamidi 
was arrested as he walked along a street in the city with a school friend, 
according to his father. According to a birth date reported by Okaz, he was 17 
when he was detained while the European Saudi Organization of Human Rights 
reported he was 14.

Saudi Arabian authorities picked him up after raiding a nearby apartment that 
they said was being used to plot an "imminent terrorist act." He was an "expert 
in making explosives," reported Okaz following his execution.

"My young boy wouldn't be able to fathom let alone undertake such huge and 
Islamically-forbidden act alone," Amin's father Mohammed Al-Ghamidi told 
Al-Riyadh newspaper a week after his arrest. "It's clearly the work of older 
men preparing to commit criminal acts." His son loved studying, was one of the 
best students in his class, and had just had a university application accepted, 
he said.

Abkar and al-Ghamidi were not the only minors arrested in the June 2003 
operation, according to leading Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. "Half of 
those arrested at the apartment were children," it reported shortly after the 
raid. Recruiting children was a deliberate tactic of al-Qaeda, it pointed out, 
referring to a comment once reportedly made by Osama bin Laden: "We're keen on 
young recruits between 15 and 20 as they are the most adaptable to the concept 
of Jihad for the sake of God."

Children are indeed ideal targets for terrorist groups, said Dan Collison, 
program director at War Child, because they can be so easily influenced. 
"Children haven't yet formed the confidence and the critical thinking skills to 
differentiate between an adult that's helping them and an adult exploiting 
them," he said. "Their choices and decisions are very susceptible to those 
around them - those influences can be very positive, but they can also be 
utterly malign."

While it was clear that some children committed very serious, violent crimes, 
acknowledged Collison, one thing was very clear: "A child should not be 
convicted of terrorism. A terrorist act is a political act, and a child doesn't 
have the capacity to act in that way. They have been neglected and let down by 
people who are supposed to be looking after them, but they are not terrorists. 
Whether a child is recruited by al-Qaeda, or an armed group in Sierra Leone, 
they are victims of armed conflict."

To convict a child of terrorism was a terrible breach of their rights, he said 
- to execute them was "unthinkable."

The final juvenile offender killed by Saudi Arabia on January 2 was not an 
alleged terrorist. His crime was protesting. Ali Said al-Ribh was detained on 
February 12, 2012, when he was 18 years and 2 months old. He was charged with 
participating in protests which took place throughout 2011 and early 2012 
during the Saudi Arabian response to the Arab Spring.

Thousands of Shia Muslims - a religious minority which faces systemic 
discrimination inside the kingdom - took to the streets in the country's 
Eastern Province to demand better treatment and the release of political 
prisoners. Hundreds were rounded up and thrown in jail, including multiple 
juveniles.

Around 200 "laughable" trials have taken place, said Human Rights Watch (HRW) 
Saudi Arabia researcher Adam Coogle, most of them based on confessions which in 
court the defendants withdrew saying they were tortured into making them or 
didn't know what they were signing. Around 15 people were sentenced to death, 
including al-Ribh and 3 other juveniles whose cases have received international 
attention - Ali al-Nimr, Dawood al-Marhoon, and Abdullah al-Zaher - who are 
still alive.

Al-Ribh was tortured while in custody, according to information gathered by 
anti-death penalty NGO Reprieve. After 5 hearings, he was sentenced to death 
for crimes including using weapons against security forces during a protest and 
using his Blackberry to help organize demonstrations. He always denied any use 
of violence. The Saudi authorities did not inform his family of the execution 
and have kept the location of his burial secret, said Reprieve.

'Prosecutors and judges are free to criminalize any act in accordance with 
their own interpretation of precepts of Islamic law'

All the young men discussed in this article were tried in Saudi Arabia's 
Specialized Criminal Court (SCC), a secretive tribunal set up in 2008 to try 
terrorism suspects but which has been increasingly used to try dissidents and 
peaceful activists. It has no laws or statutes specifying its jurisdiction that 
have been made public, and anyway, Saudi Arabia has no written law. 
"Prosecutors and judges are free to criminalize any act in accordance with 
their own interpretation of precepts of Islamic law," notes HRW.

Aside from the fact the SCC and the wider Saudi justice system violate basic 
principles of due process, executing people for crimes they committed when they 
were juveniles is a clear and egregious violation of international law - 
including the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International 
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights - to both of which Saudi Arabia is a 
signatory.

Treating children recruited by terrorist organizations as criminals rather than 
victims, and sentencing people to death for protesting, would also be regarded 
as morally and legally indefensible in much of the world.

Despite this - and despite Saudi Arabia brutally crushing political dissent, 
practicing torture, and executing more people per capita than any other country 
except Iran - those who could potentially hold sway over the kingdom remain 
loath to condemn or sanction it in any substantial way.

The oil-rich state remains a close ally of the West, lauded for its role in the 
so-called war on terror, and enjoying a status as the number 1 buyer of 
American and British-made arms. The US has sold arms worth $47.8 billion to 
Saudi Arabia under President Barack Obama - nearly triple the $16 billion under 
George W. Bush - while under Prime Minister David Cameron the UK has sold $9.68 
billion-worth.

When asked to comment on the January 2 execution, Britain's Foreign Secretary 
Philip Hammond told BBC Radio: "Let us be clear, first of all, that these 
people were convicted terrorists." Such a comment suggested Hammond was 
alarmingly misinformed, said Reprieve, and came "dangerously close to condoning 
Saudi Arabia's approach."

In a statement on January 3 UK Minister for the Middle East Tobias Ellwood said 
the country is "firmly opposed to the death penalty" and had "expressed [its] 
disappointment at the mass executions." He said the government expected that 
"Ali al-Nimr and others who were convicted as juveniles will not be executed," 
but he did not say anything about those convicted as juveniles who had been 
killed the previous day.

The US State Department produced similarly insubstantial comments. "We have 
previously expressed our concerns about the legal process in Saudi Arabia and 
have frequently raised these concerns at high levels of the Saudi Government," 
said John Kirby, spokesperson for the Bureau of Public Affairs on January 2. 
"We reaffirm our calls on the Government of Saudi Arabia to respect and protect 
human rights, and to ensure fair and transparent judicial proceedings in all 
cases."

Obama visited Saudi Arabia last week, meeting King Salman in Riyadh to discuss 
bilateral relations.

Reprieve urged the US president to raise the cases of al-Nimr, al-Marhoon, and 
al-Zaher, whose families still wake up every day not knowing if they will be 
alive at the end of it. The young men, who were aged 17, 17, and 15 when they 
committed their so-called criminal acts of attending protests, are sentenced to 
die by beheading. Al-Nimr and al-Zaher were also sentenced to crucifixion - the 
displaying of their beheaded bodies in a public place.

No such overtures were made. At a press briefing in Riyadh on Friday White 
House Press Secretary Ben Rhodes was asked whether the president had discussed 
human rights, and whether he had raised certain cases that had received 
attention in the US. While there had been been a "very candid discussion" about 
human rights, Obama "did not raise individual cases," said Rhodes.

It is "absolutely shocking" that the US and the UK are standing by while 
juvenile offenders are executed by their ally, said Reprieve. "It is appalling 
to see [from watching the Al Arabiya documentary] that Saudi officials were 
well aware that they were executing several juvenile [offenders] on January 2," 
said Maya Foa, director of the organization's death penalty team. "Any Saudi 
concerns over the 'vulnerability' of juvenile prisoners, mentioned in the film, 
were entirely absent when they executed Mustafa Abkar and Ali Al Ribh on the 
basis of forced 'confessions.'... Now more than ever, the international 
community must call on Saudi Arabia to halt juvenile executions, once and for 
all."

(source: vice.com)






KENYA:

Court upholds death penalty for former MP Betty Tett's son


The High Court yesterday upheld a death sentence handed to former Assistant 
Minister Betty Tett's son.

David Tett was sentenced to death in 2013 for robbery with violence.

High Court judge James Wakiaga said there was enough evidence to show that 
actual violence occurred against the victims.

"I agree with the trial court's findings and dismiss this application," said 
Justice Wakiaga, adding that the prosecution's case was proved beyond 
reasonable doubt.

Wakiaga said that upon evaluation of the evidence before him, he agreed with 
the trial court's finding that the prosecution had proven all the elements of 
the offence.

He added that Mr Tett's conduct at the scene and thereafter pointed to his 
participation in the commission of the offence he was charged with.

In 2013, Magistrate Kiarie Waweru handed Tett the death penalty after he found 
him guilty of violently robbing his father, William Tett of Sh1,000, credit 
cards and a mobile phone all valued at Sh157,000 at their Karen home on 
September 6, 2011.

David committed the offence jointly with others who were not before the court 
while armed with a revolver and a knife. The prosecution said the accused went 
to their house accompanied by two other men and ordered his father to give them 
money. They tied him with ropes and robbed him before escaping.

David had pleaded for leniency, saying he was remorseful and wanted to 
reconcile with his family. However, the magistrate said the only sentence 
provided for by the law for the capital offence was death.

When he appealed the judgement in 2013, David, said he was suffering from an 
ailment which could not be treated in prison.

He wanted the court to order that he be taken to Kenyatta National Hospital. He 
was expected to file a medical report from the prison department.

David also filed an application for bail pending the determination of his 
appeal.

(source: standardmedia.co.ke)