[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 11



SINGAPORE:

Masseuse charged with murder of boyfriend


A masseuse was charged at the Magistrate Court here today with the murder of 
her boyfriend last month.

Ng Choon Wah, 53, together with another suspect who is still at large, is 
accused of causing the death of Ng Kin Hock, 52, at a house in Taman Bahagia 
here at about 12.30 am on Jan 28.

The victim's body was found at a rubber plantation in Jalan Nyior 3 days after 
the murder.

Choon Wah was charged under Section 302 of the Penal Code, which carries the 
mandatory death penalty upon conviction.

She nodded when asked if she understood the charge after it was read in front 
of Magistrate Nuruhuda Mohd Yusof.

No bail was offered for the accused.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Norafiah Saini appeared for the prosecution.

Nuruhuda then set March 24 for mention of the case.

(source: New Straits Times)






IRAN:

Death Sentence Is Tehran's Answer To Ahwazi Calls For Freedom


The human rights situation has been worsening quickly in Iran. More than 2,000 
people have been hung during Hassan Rouhani's tenure as President of the 
regime. This is the biggest scale of executions in the past 25 years. These 
mass executions will be added to the black pages of the Iranian regime's 
history of human rights violations since the Iranian revolution in 1979. The 
large-scale execution of political and ideological prisoners has resulted in 
Iran being named one of the top countries committing executions per capita 
during the past few years.

Unlocked from its sanction-based constrictions, Iran is now fully free to 
underwrite terror and carry out more executions against Ahwazi Arab and 
throughout the country. 5 Ahwazi are facing imminent execution in public. The 
names of these Ahwazi Arab prisoners are QaisObeidawi, HamoodObeidawi, Mohammad 
Helfi, Mehdi Moarabi and Mehdi Sayahi.

The 5 men were condemned following a trial filled withheinous violations of the 
judiciary process by the Revolutionary Court of mullahs in Iran. These 
prisoners were arrested in April 2015 and on Tuesday, June 16, 2015, were 
brought in front of television cameras of Press TV by Ministry of Information 
to make public confessions of about their fictional crimes. Farhad Afsharnya, 
the regime's supposed Chief Justice for the AL- Ahwaz region saidthe execution 
of the 5 Arabs was confirmed, it will be ratified by the court and execution 
will be carried out in public.

These Ahwazi activists were only concerned with advancing cultural and social 
awareness for the cause of Ahwaz people and were not connected to an armed 
struggle against the state. The Iranian regime has stepped up its ferocious 
crackdown against Ahwazis and all none- Persian activists after the tension 
between Iran and its neighbours heightened as a result of Iran's involvement in 
Middle Eastern wars, such as in Syria and Yemen. Similar sentences have been 
issued in closed rather than public court proceedings, give a substantial 
reason to conclude that the Iranian judicial system only pay lip service to any 
idea of due process. Furthermore, it becomes apparent that human rights are 
overlooked by any president while the judicial system is not independent. These 
executions might occur anytime soon after Iranian parliamentary election at the 
end of February.

The Iranian regime's massive hypocrisy in condemning Saudi Arabia's 
questionable human rights record is breathtaking. Any use of the term 
"moderate" in connection with Iran's president Hassan Rouhani is ludicrous 
hyperbole; he is simply the president elected from the list of candidates 
chosen for the position by the Guardian Council, consisting of 12 Islamic 
theologians and Jurists, according to the Iranian constitution.

Under the constitution, secular candidates or those who fail to embrace the 
Islamic Republic's theocratic hardline Shiite values are nominally capable of 
being selected but, in reality, are not.

The parliament or Masjid has little power over the regime's religious courts to 
stop or even slow down the rate of executions, with the courts routinely 
issuing verdicts without even hearing evidence or investigating the charges 
against accused individuals as might be expected under legal systems elsewhere 
in the world.

1 example of the Iranian regime's legal system is the common charge of 
muharebeh or 'enmity to God,' routinely used against human rights activists and 
dissidents, which invariably receives the death penalty, often administered in 
public by stoning or mass hangings by cranes. Many of those hanged take up to 
20 minutes to die slowly and painfully of strangulation. The victims' bodies 
are left for some time before being removed as a way of intimidating the public 
into silence.

Since Hassan Rouhani took office in 2013, over 2,000 Iranians, including women, 
many of them Ahwazi Arabs, Kurdish and Baluchi Sunnis, have been executed, 
almost all after ludicrous kangaroo trials in which they were unrepresented and 
not allowed to submit any evidence in their defence. Recently, 6 of 33 Sunni 
men currently on death row were publicly executed in a mass hanging, while 
another woman was sentenced to death by stoning. This is the "moderate" Iranian 
regime.

This report sheds light on this failure of the Iranian regime to respect the 
rightsof the Ahwazi Arab people in Al-Ahwaz, the south and south west part of 
Iran.

Conducted behind closed doors, before biased judges and in the absence of legal 
representation, the unfair trials of Arabs in the AL-Ahwaz region are part of a 
long-standing persecution of this oppressed people in Iran.

Despite the fact that this recurring miscarriage of justice is in flagrant 
violation of the Islamic Republic's constitution, Iran's jails are filled with 
Ahwazi political prisoners who face brutal punishments, a lifetime in prison or 
execution.

Over the past decade, hundreds of Ahwazi Arab prisoners ranging from poets, 
teachers to bloggers and human rights activists have been executed on trumped 
up charges in kangaroo courts.

Rather than finding reasonable evidence for the commission of a crime, judges 
generally rely on confessions, which have been drawn out from the accused 
through physical torture and psychological duress. Meanwhile, friends and 
relatives of the accused are kept in the dark, often not informed of where 
their loved one has been imprisoned, or even buried.

As we follow carefully the history of Ahwazi Arab people of repression, 
violence and capital punishment, we see that they have a long record of 
systematic crackdown over decades.

Meanwhile, the execution of Ahwazi intellectuals historically has inflicted an 
irreversible blow to the liberty movement of this occupied nation that has been 
struggling to achieve its fundamental rights of self- determination for years.

The executions of early leaders of Ahwaz liberation movement in 1963, the 
oppressive policies of Islamic Republic of Iran against Ahwazi people in every 
phases of their life, the tragic bloody massacre of Mohammareh city in 1979, 
and the severe crackdown of popular uprising in 2005 provide ample evidence 
that the intellectual, Ahwazi public figures, and the political class of this 
nation repeatedly have been targeted for imprisonment, repression and 
execution. The largest popular uprising of Ahwazi people broke out on 9 April 
2005 when people from several cities turned out into the streets and protested 
against the distribution of circular(petition) attributed to Mohammad Ali 
Abtahi, former vice president-parliamentary legal affairs of the president 
Mohammad Ali Khatami.

The latter events of popular uprising in April 2005 in Ahwaz which was a 
nonviolent demonstration against the wicked policy of central government 
focused on altering the demography of Ahwazi Arab people reminded the nation of 
the catastrophic massacre when so many people were killed in the course of the 
widespread peaceful demonstration, so many people massacred in the street by 
Iranian squad riot forces.

At the time, many civil and cultural activists were executed and many 
clean-handed and innocent young protesters were killed under tortures, their 
bodies discovered in Karoon River. These bodies were wrapped up in plastic and 
their hands were tied up behind their backs by rope. After the massacre, 
terrible panic and suffocating climate dominated in the region and 
subsequently, the executions of highly educated, intellectuals, and civil and 
political activists started again.

Notably, in 2005, dozens of teachers and cultural activists were arrested and 
after unfair trials and without access to legal representation, they were 
charged with vague charges such as acting against the national security, enmity 
with God, corrupting the earth and blasphemy , and then condemned to execution 
or life imprisonment. As an example, MR. ZamellBawi, who was studying law at 
senior semester at university and was waiting for his graduation ceremony, was 
arrested by intelligence security and under physical and psychological tortures 
was forced to incriminate himself falsely.

After a show trial in revolutionary court in Ahwaz he was sentenced to death 
and his verdict confirmed by the higher tribunal in Tehran. Additionally 6 
immediate members of his family who were mostly students and cultural 
activists, were sentenced to life imprisonment and exiled to far- away prisons 
outside Ahwaz.

In 2005, Ali OudaAfravi , Mehdi HantoushNavaseri, in 2006, Ali Matori, Malik 
al-Tamimi, Abdullah Soleimani (Kaabi), Abdul Amir Faraj Allah, Mohammad Lazem 
Kaab, Khalaf DhrabKhazraei, Ali Reza Asakereh, in 2007, QasemSalamat, Majed 
Albughbish, Razi Zargani, RaisanSawari, AbdolrezaHantoushNavaseri, Muhammed Ali 
Sawari, JaafarSawari, in 2008, Hussein Asakereh, Abdul Hussein Al -hareibi, 
Ahmad Meramzy, ZamellBawi, in 2009, Khalil Kaabi and Said Sadon were sentenced 
to death on false charges of "enmity against God" and after months of torture 
in solitary confinement in secret prisons secretly were hanged. It is 
noteworthy that all these executed people were the educated and the political 
and cultural activists of the Ahwaz nation and the bodies of these people had 
not been handed over to their families.

Hashem Shabani, an Ahwazi Arab poet and human rights activist was executed for 
being enemy of God and threatening national security. In reality, he spoke 
about against brutal treatment of Ahwazi Arabs, apparently he was campaigning 
for the Ahwazi people who are oppressed, mocked and treated as third citizens 
by Iranians. We have to keep in mind that if somebody is an Arab, then they are 
not the same as being an Iranian Persian because of their ethnic background. 
There is a cultural bias against Ahwazi Arabs in the mainstream Persian 
population.

In 2011, the brothers Heydariyan (3 people) along with their friend, Ali 
Sharifi, were arrested in the wake of civil protests in Ahwaz. According to 
credible reports, they were charged with enmity with God and at were sentenced 
to death after confessing under torture. They were denied a fair trial and 
judicial proceedings and in 2012 were hanged in secret. Ali Chbyshat and Khalid 
Mousavi were arrested in 2011 and were kept for seven months in solitary 
confinement by the Intelligence Service without access to lawyers and then 
convicted to death penalty and hanged in secret.

Because of the severe repression, censorship, lack of freedom of the press and 
the judicial system's lack of transparency and lack of coverage for any of the 
non-Persian prisoners, there is no possible way to give exact figures of all 
the death sentences among non-Persian ethnic groups in Iran. Iran not only has 
the world's highest execution rates but the executions have mostly been carried 
out against ethnic groups such as Ahwazis, Kurds and Baluchis who are 
struggling to achieve their national and linguistic identity and 
self-determination rights.

There are thousands of underage prisoners who have been executed in Iran. 
According to the International Covenants on Human Rights, the death penalty is 
forbidden for people who commit crimes while under 18 years of age. Waging war 
against God is one of the leading charges used by the Iranian regime to justify 
the inhuman executions of ethnic groups in Iran.

Since the 80s, the clerical regime used it as a weapon to suppress many 
political and ideological opponents. Most executions of prisoners who were 
accused of "enmity against God" belong to none-Persian ethnic nationalities in 
Iran, mostly Ahwazi Arab, Baluch, and Kurdish activists.

The regime defies international law by holding all the bodies of the executed 
prisoners. Hundreds of Ahwazi prisoners' bodies have been withheld by the 
Iranian authorities. Many human rights organisations called on the regime 
authorities to hand over the bodies of the executed political prisoners to 
their anguished families.

This is a part of the regime's collective punishment policy against the Ahwazi 
Arab people, Iran has refused to deliver the bodies of hundreds of Ahwazis 
executed since 2005 to date under the pretext that their families will hold 
funerals for them, which will serve as a catalyst for Ahwazi uprising. This 
reflects the racism of the Iranian regime against Ahwazi Arabs.

Finally one must question the purpose of the regime behind the high number of 
executions and the human tragedies. In a country where most of fraud and 
administrative and financial corruption are committed by the regime officials, 
while the oppressed nations are living in extreme poverty, why is it that these 
officials have not been prosecuted or executed?

It can be concluded that the executions of non-Persian prisoners have political 
and security aspects in a bid of the ruling regime in Iran to expand its 
domination and control over the occupied and oppressed nations of Ahwaz, 
Kurdistan, Baluchistan and other peoples in the country.

When the Iranian regime learned that its agenda has been failed to put out the 
peaceful resistance of Ahwazi people the Iranian authorities with the help of 
their deeply flawed criminal justice system began to prioritize the death 
penalty of Ahwazi prisoners, amid warnings from the human rights organizations, 
such as Amnesty International.

Since the Ahwazi uprising, the death sentences and executions are being imposed 
and carried out on Ahwazi prisoners even more extensively, after procedures 
that violate human rights standards.

Iranian television stations like Press TV continue to broadcast 
self-incriminating testimonies of Ahwazi detainees even before the opening of a 
trial, undermining the fundamental rights of defendants to be considered 
innocent until proven guilty.

Is it just Ahwazi political prisoners who must be executed for using their 
pens, the only weapons they raised in the struggle for the rights of the Ahwazi 
people? Why is it a crime in the Iranian state to write about the lack of basic 
rights to a decent existence for the Ahwazi people who live below the poverty 
line, while their land is teeming with natural resources such as oil, natural 
gas, mining stone and running water? All remain inaccessible to the people of 
Ahwaz, including the right to clean drinking water.

Where is the justice when the Ahwaz region, the so-called heart of Iran's 
economy, is considered one of the poorest regions in Iran?

>From 2003 to date, the climate in Ahwaz has dramatically deteriorated due to 
air pollution caused by Iran's industrial activities in Ahwaz. Ahwaz is one of 
the most polluted areas in Iran and the larger Middle East, and it is an area 
where there is a visible increase in the number of people dying from pollution 
related diseases.

One has only to visit the out-patient department in hospitals in the Ahwaz to 
find them filled with patients suffering from cancer and other pollution 
related chronic lung diseases. If our political prisoners have established 
campaigns, it is only because they could not close their eyes and remain silent 
to the horrific sufferings of their people.

The world is learning slowly that Ahwazi political prisoners are quickly 
sentenced to death after unjust show-trials where they are charged with "enmity 
against God", or that they post a risk to national security, or militant 
activities and secession. The vast majority of Iranians, the pro-Iranian Mullah 
regime who view themselves as human rights advocates who claim to be distraught 
over the rivers of blood flowing in Syria and other Arab nations are weeping 
crocodile tears if they're honest, having remained silent for decades on the 
plight of the Ahwazi Arab peoples and other brutally oppressed ethnic groups in 
Iran who are murderously subjugated and brutalised solely for claiming their 
lawful rights.

Iran by dominating on the wealth of this nation has increasingly plundered it 
and as a result of it, the villages and towns of Al-Ahwaz were destroyed day by 
day. The chauvinist policies of Iranian governments have had to try to 
completely deny the existence of Ahwazis. In return, when Ahwazis protest at 
the ongoing oppression, they will be dealt with live fire or arrest and then 
execution. It seems that execution sentence is the Iran's last resort to 
liquidating Ahwazi prisoners.

(source: Rahim Hamid, Ahwazi Arab freelance journalist and human rights 
activist; countercurrents.org)






BANGLADESH:

HC upholds death for 3 Huji men


The High Court yesterday upheld death penalty of 3 Huji members, including its 
chief Mufti Abdul Hannan, and life imprisonment of 2 others over the 2004 
grenade attack on the then UK envoy in Bangladesh.

The 2 other condemned operatives of the outlawed militant outfit are Sharif 
Shahedul Alam Bipul and Delwar Hossain alias Ripon.

The court also upheld the life imprisonment of Muhibullah alias Muhibur Rahman 
alias Ovi and Mufti Main Uddin alias Abu Zandal, also Huji members.

Former UK high commissioner to Bangladesh Anwar Choudhury along with around 70 
others was hurt and 3 were killed in the attack at the shrine of Hazrat 
Shahjalal (RA) in Sylhet.

The Bangladesh-born envoy, barely 18 days into his new assignment, suffered 
minor leg injuries in the grenade attack after Juma prayers.

Yesterday, the HC bench of Justice M Enayetur Rahim and Justice Amir Hossain 
handed down the verdict after accepting the death reference of the case and 
dismissing the appeals filed by the convicts seeking acquittal of the charges.

The grounds, on which the HC delivered the verdict, could not be known as its 
full text was not released yesterday.

After receiving the full HC judgment, the convicts will have 30 days to appeal 
against it before the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, according to 
Deputy Attorney General Shaikh AKM Moniruzzaman Kabir.

If they did not do so, there would be no legal bar to executing the sentences, 
he told journalists after the HC verdict.

No counsels of the convicts were present in the courtroom when the HC judgment 
was handed down.

On December 23, 2008, the Sylhet Divisional Speedy Trial Tribunal sentenced 
Mufti Hannan, Bipul and Ripon to death, and Ovi and Abu Zandal to life 
imprisonment for the grenade attack and the killings.

All 5 convicts, who are now in jail, filed separate appeals with the HC in 
2009, seeking acquittal.

(source: The Daily Star)






INDIA:

SC puts on hold child rapist-murderer's death sentence


The Supreme Court on Wednesday put on hold the execution of the death sentence 
of Vasanta Sampat Dupare who had sought recall of its verdict upholding his 
conviction and death sentence for raping and stoning to death a 4-year-old girl 
in Maharashtra in 2008.

An apex court bench of Justice Dipak Misra, Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman and 
Justice Uday Umesh Lalit agreed to hear the review plea by the 55-year-old 
death row convict as his counsel submitted that the lower court had not 
properly examined the additional evidences and the related exhibits in the 
course of the trial.

Putting on hold the death sentence, the bench told his counsel to satisfy it as 
to how its earlier judgment, sought to be recalled, was wrong.

A bench headed by Justice Misra had on November 26, 2014 had rejected Dupare's 
plea challenging the Bombay High court decision upholding his death penalty.

The apex court while upholding the death sentence had said "the rape of a minor 
child is nothing but a monstrous burial of her dignity in darkness. It is a 
crime against the holy body of a girl child and the soul of the society and 
such a crime is aggravated by the manner in which it has been committed".

(source: twocircles.net)






ENGLAND/PAKISTAN:

Britain funds counter-narcotics program linked to death penalty in Pakistan, 
court hears


Secrecy regarding Britain's funding of a counter-narcotics operation in 
Pakistan linked to the death penalty faced scrutiny Thursday as a tribunal 
heard arguments on whether the British government should publicly disclose 
details on the matter.

Despite Britain's official policy of opposing the death penalty, it has funded 
the counter-narcotics program since the 1990s. Pakistan's Anti-Narcotics Force 
(ANF), which has received millions of pounds in UK taxpayers' money, has openly 
gloated about securing death sentences for non-violent drug offenders.

Yet amid growing calls for transparency, ministers have repeatedly refused to 
release documents examining whether UK funding given to the group could result 
in executions.

Global human rights organization Reprieve says juveniles and exploited drug 
mules are often executed in states such as Pakistan and Iran. The group is 
challenging the UK government in the Information Rights Tribunal over its 
refusal to disclose a broad range of information relating to the Pakistan 
agreement.

Reprieve is demanding the government release its appraisal of human rights and 
execution risks related to the program, steps it has taken to mitigate these 
risks, and whether parliamentary approval was secured for the scheme.

At the center of the case is the government's Overseas Justice and Security 
Assistance (OSJA) guidelines, which were introduced by the Foreign and 
Commonwealth Office following the 2011 Arab Spring.

The guidance was drafted to ensure that the human rights implications of the 
government's security and justice work abroad are considered in full. But since 
the OSJA was implemented, ministers have refused to be transparent about the 
assessments that have been undertaken and who signed off on them.

Director of the death penalty team at Reprieve, Maya Foa, said the government's 
determination to keep this information secret is steadfast.

"The FCO is falling over itself to prevent information about how it ensures its 
overseas activities align with basic British human rights principles from 
coming to light. Yet if the measures taken were sufficient, why would there be 
any need to keep them secret?" she said.

"The British public has a right to know if their taxes are funding death 
sentences and executions in countries like Pakistan and Iran, where juveniles 
and exploited drug mules are sent to the gallows on a daily basis. Ministers 
need to come clean."

In December 2014, Pakistan ended an unofficial moratorium on executions. Since 
this policy change was enacted, Pakistan's government has made its intention 
clear to execute each and every one of its citizens on death row. At present, 
this group is estimated to eclipse 8,000 people, more than 100 of whom are 
believed to be alleged drug offenders.

In February 2014, a previous hearing relating to Britain???s funding of the 
counter-narcotics program was conducted in secret, following a request from the 
government. Thursday's hearing is expected to be the last before a formal 
judgment is issued.

RT approached the FCO for comment on the case but is yet to receive a response.

(source: rt.com)