[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 25



ZIMBABWE:

Mnangagwa correct on inhumaneness of death penalty


It was interesting to hear Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa addressing the 
indaba of Legal Affairs ministers in Rome, Italy, as he spoke of efforts being 
made to abolish capital punishment in Zimbabwe.

For starters, capital punishment is the sentencing of a convict to death by a 
competent legal court. In other words, death sentence is legalised murder.

Such a law has no room in the modern world. It has to be done away with 
completely. Unlike South Africa and other progressive states, Zimbabwe still 
has the death penalty in its Constitution.

What it serves, no one knows, except Zanu PF, which campaigned vigorously for 
its inclusion in Constitutional Amendment (No. 20) Act 2013.

Among crimes where the death penalty applies is treason, sabotage, banditry and 
murder with intent. However, debate is centred on the usefulness of the death 
penalty.

Questions also concern why Zimbabwe chose to keep it in the Constitution 
applying it selectively, with women spared together with certain male age 
groups. This means a woman cannot be hanged no matter what crime she commits in 
Zimbabwe.

The fact that Mnangagwa, himself, an escapee of the death penalty through an 
age technicality at the courts of the white minority former government, opposes 
capital punishment, shows he understands the pain of facing the death penalty. 
Not only is it unjust, but shows the evil side of human beings. It does not 
even deter would-be offenders of similar crimes. We still wonder what capital 
punishment serves. The answer is nothing except to terminate life.

If there has to be any amendment to our Constitution, it must be the abolition 
of capital punishment. It is a Stone Age law, backward and unreasonable. It 
belongs to the archives or scrapyard of jurisprudence. Supporting the 
application of the death sentence is like supporting slavery and the slave 
trade in the 21st century. The hangman's noose is not different from the 
biblical cross. It reminds us of the talk that not all laws are just and the 
death penalty is one of the unjust and inhumane sentences in our laws.

The inclusion of the death penalty was never supported by democratic and 
progressive elements of Zimbabwean society except Zanu PF. What use they wanted 
it for no sane person knows.

Such backward laws are usually used by dictators to instil fear into their 
subjects and not for reform or punishment.

However, as the world moves on, Zimbabwe must also move on. Lots of people in 
our jails have been on death row for years and its commutation for life behind 
bars might become the smiling side of our laws.

(source: NewsDay)






SAUDI ARABIA:

Prosecutor wants death penalty for 28 espionage suspects----Business analyst, 
security serviceman among Iran spy ring in Saudi Arabia


A government prosecutor called for the death penalty for 28 suspects -- 27 
Saudis and 1 Afghan -- and for severe jail terms for the remaining 4, 3 Saudis 
and 1 Iranian.

A business analyst and a security serviceman are among the 32 people put on 
trial in Saudi Arabia this week for spying for Iran.

The 32 suspects are accused of high treason against the kingdom by 
collaborating with Iranian intelligence.

The security serviceman worked for a sector tasked with the security and safety 
of pilgrims, the court in the capital Riyadh heard as the last eight suspects, 
all Saudi nationals, went on trial on Tuesday, Saudi daily Okaz reported.

The serviceman asked the judges to name a lawyer to defend him, explaining that 
he did not have the financial resources to hire an attorney.

However, a judge told him that he would have to pay the state back in case it 
was found out that he was financially able to hire a lawyer, he changed his 
mind and said he would have his own lawyer, Okaz said.

Another suspect who pleaded to be bailed out was told that he needed the 
approval of the interior minister and that he should fill in an application.

(source: Gulf News)






LIBERIA:

Kakata Court Sentences Killers to Death by Hanging and 50-Year Imprisonment


The 13th Judicial circuit court in Kakata has sentenced 2 murderers to a 
50-year sentence and death by hanging.

The convicts, 54-year-old Garpue Gayeezon and 55-year-old Arthur Wakai, were 
sentenced last week after a panel of jurors brought down the unanimous guilty 
verdict.

Gayeezon and Wakai were convicted of felony murder in the 1st degree for 
killing Peter Gaye, a resident of Doe-Gboteh Town, Margibi County on July 29th, 
2015.

According to the prosecution, Wakai ordered Gayeezon to kill Gaye for a 
compensation of about US$110. Wakai had accused the deceased of being in a 
romantic affair with his wife.

"He refused to back off despite complaining about him to the elders of the 
town," Wakai had told the prosecution.

The prosecution showed that 3 shots from a single barrel gun had killed Gaye.

Although the defendants pleaded not guilty to their indictment before the 
court, the prosecution provided 2 state witnesses, the single barrel gun and 
the 3 shots that were used for the commission of the crime.

2 state witnesses testified that Gayeezon and Wakai confessed to the elders of 
the clan and in their voluntary statements to the police.

Margibi County public defender Klon Nyangbe waived further arguments into the 
matter before the unanimous guilty verdict.

In 2008, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf signed into law an act reinstating the 
death penalty in Liberia. International organizations such as the United 
Nations Economic and Social Council and the International Bar Association both 
condemned Liberia's restoration of capital punishment and pointed out that it 
violated Liberia's international obligation as a signatory to the International 
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights' Second Optional Protocol aimed at 
abolishing the death penalty.

(source: bushchicken.com)






IRAN:

Entire male population of village in Iran executed for drug trafficking


The entire male population of a village in Iran has been executed for its 
alleged role in drug trafficking, according to an Iranian cabinet minister.

Shahindokht Molaverdi, a vice-president of Iran responsable for Women and 
Family Affairs, said in an interview to the Mehr news agency that she fears 
violence could worsen in the unnamed village in the Sistan and Baluchestan 
province:

"The children of the executed criminals are also already drug traffickers. They 
want to avenge the deaths of their fathers. At the same time they are feeding 
their families with money from the drugs trade and the people of this village 
can not be protected."

Sistan and Baluchestan province shares thousands of kilometres of land 
borderwith neighbouring Pakistan and Afghanistan and is a key smuggling point 
for opium and other narcotics. Largely underdeveloped and poor, a large part of 
the local population relies on the drugs trade for income. In recent years the 
area has become a base for Sunni, mainly Salafist extremist groups originating 
in Pakistan.

Both drug traffickers and Sunni extremists have been main targets of a strict 
crackdown led by the Iranian government.

The exact number of men executed in the province has not been published, but 
Sistan and Baluchestan figures among the Iranian provinces that applies capital 
punishment most often.

"If we do not act against these people, crime will return," said Molaverdi. 
"Society is responsible for the families of those executed. Although the family 
support programme was neglected for several years, it has now been relaunched 
as part of the sixth national development plan."

Iran is among the countries that carries out the death penalty most frequently, 
and many of those sentenced to death are done so for drug-related crimes. The 
country's national assembly recently launched a bill that would see drug 
offences punished by life imprisonment rather than death.

(source: albawaba.com)

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

Torture and executions continue in Iran: Amnesty International


The authorities in Iran have "severely curtailed the rights to freedom of 
expression, association and assembly, arresting and imprisoning journalists, 
human rights defenders, trade unionists and others who voiced dissent, on vague 
and overly broad charges," Amnesty International said in its annual report on 
violations of human rights in Iran.

"Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees remained common and was committed 
with impunity; prison conditions were harsh. Unfair trials continued, in some 
cases resulting in death sentences."

"Women and members of ethnic and religious minorities faced pervasive 
discrimination in law and in practice. The authorities carried out cruel 
punishments, including blinding, amputation and floggings. Courts imposed death 
sentences for a range of crimes; many prisoners, including at least four 
juvenile offenders, were executed."

Detainees and sentenced prisoners were denied adequate medical care; in some 
cases, the authorities withheld prescribed medications to punish prisoners, or 
failed to comply with medical doctors??? recommendations that prisoners should 
be hospitalized for treatment. The authorities also frequently subjected 
detainees and prisoners to prolonged solitary confinement amounting to torture 
or other ill-treatment.

"Prisoners were kept in severely overcrowded and insanitary conditions with 
inadequate food and exposed to extreme temperatures. This included prisoners in 
Dizel Abad Prison in Kermanshah, Adel Abad Prison in Shiraz, Gharchak Prison in 
Varamin, and Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad. According to some former detainees, 
in Tabriz Central Prison, some 700 to 800 prisoners were held in 3 poorly 
ventilated, insanitary cells with access to only 10 toilets."

"Courts continued to impose, and the authorities continued to carry out, 
punishments that violate the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or 
degrading punishment. These were sometimes carried out in public and included 
flogging, blinding and amputations. On 3 March the authorities in Karaj 
deliberately blinded a man in his left eye after a court sentenced him to 
"retribution-in-kind" (qesas) for throwing acid into the face of another man. 
He also faced blinding of his right eye."

The report by Amnesty said: "The authorities continued to use the death penalty 
extensively, and carried out numerous executions, including of juvenile 
offenders. Some executions were conducted in public."

(source: NCR-Iran)



INDIA:

Grave Doubts About Afzal Guru's Involvement In 2001 Parliament Attack: P 
Chidambaram


Even as 6 university students are facing a sedition charge for allegedly 
raising slogans in favor of Afzal Guru, Congress Party leader P. Chidambaram 
has told The Economic Times that there were "grave doubts about the extent of 
his involvement" in the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament.

"I think it is possible to hold an honest opinion that the Afzal Guru case was 
perhaps not correctly decided," Chidambaram, who served as the Home Minister 
and then the Finance Minister in the United Progressive Alliance government, 
told ET.

"But being in government you cannot say the court has decided the case wrongly 
because it was the government that prosecuted him. But an independent person 
can hold an opinion that the case was not decided correctly," he said.

Afzal Guru was secretly hanged and buried in Tihar Jail in Delhi by the 
Congress Party-led government on Feb 9, 2013.

His conviction and execution has been a subject of controversy because there 
are those who believe his role in the attack did not merit the death penalty, 
while others argue that he was given a fair trial by the Indian judiciary.

The Congress Party-led government was criticized for pulling Afzal Guru out of 
the death-row queue and executing him out of turn, without even informing his 
family. The Congress Party was accused of trying to appear tough on terrorism 
in the run up to the national election.

Recently, six students from Jawharlal Nehru University, who allegedly organized 
an event to mark the 3rd anniversary of Afzal Guru's execution, and raised 
"anti-national slogans," have been charged with sedition by the Bharatiya 
Janata Party-led government.

"There were grave doubts about his involvement in the conspiracy behind the 
attack on Parliament, and even if he was involved, there were grave doubts 
about the extent of his involvement. He could have been imprisoned for life 
without parole for rest of his natural life," Chidambaram told ET.

(source: Huffington Post)

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

Death penalty should be given for sedition: Togadia


Bareilly: "Delhi police should enter the JNU campus and arrest people like Umar 
Khalid, who raised anti-national slogans and indulged in seditious activates. 
In such cases, death penalty should be given to the accused," said working 
president, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Praveen Togadia, while addressing a 
convention on 'social harmony' here on Wednesday.

He said, "Modi government should bring a bill for the construction of Ram 
temple in Ayodhya the way former Union home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel 
did for renovating the Somnath temple in Gujarat."

He said Hindus across the world should unite, leaving aside caste bias, and 
Uniform Civil Code should be applied across the country.

Expressing concern over rising population in the country, he said government 
should strictly enforce the two child norm and those who fail to abide by it 
should be deprived of government benefits. Slamming the state government for 
its appeasement policy and anti-Hindu stand, he said, "Akhilesh Yadav is chief 
minister of UP because Hindus are in majority. Had it not been so, some Nihal 
Ahmad would have been the CM," said Togadia.

Addressing a symposium on social harmony organized by VHP at Shahabad tehsil in 
Rampur on Tuesday, Togadia said if Hindus of Rampur, Moradabad and Meerut fail 
to unite, they would meet the same fate which their counterparts in Kashmir 
faced 25 years back. Even a strong force of 11 lakh jawans of Indian army could 
not protect the Hindus in Kashmir. "Those raising Pakistani flag in Kashmir 
should be put behind the bars," he said.

(source: The Times of India)






INDONESIA:

Lawyer for former Australian university student accused of murdering friend by 
spiking her coffee with cyanide argues there's no 'concrete' evidence against 
her----Wayan Mirna Salihin died after drinking cyanide-spiked coffee in Jakarta


A former Australian university student who has been accused of lacing a 
friend's ice coffee with cyanide should be released immediately, her lawyers 
say.

Jessica Kumala Wongso, 27, has been charged with the premeditated murder of her 
friend, Wayan Mirna Salihin, who died in Olivier restaurant in Central Jakarta, 
Indonesia, on January 6.

If found guilty, she could face the death penalty.

In a pretrial hearing at Central Jakarta Court on Tuesday, Wongso's lawyers 
argued there was a lack of evidence to link her to the crime and her continued 
detention was a 'gross violation' of human rights.

'[Police] cannot prove the concrete actions of my client, which means they have 
made a gross human rights violation by detaining her without strong evidence,' 
Wongso's lawyer Hidayat Bustam said.

'There has been an abuse of power, with police forgetting Indonesia is a 
country based on law, not power.'

Hidayat alleged police had conducted a search of Wongso's home without the 
required legal documentation and had on one occasion subjected his client to 
almost 12 hours of interrogation.

He denied his client had anything to do with poisoning Mirna's coffee and 
questioned why the pair's friend Hani and a staff member at the cafe, who had 
also tasted the coffee, had not died as well.

The prosecution team defended the handling of the investigation on Wednesday, 
saying police had ample authority to charge her.

Prosecution lawyers admitted police did not have a permit when they searched 
Wondgso's home, but Jakarta Police lawyer Adj. Sr. Comr. Aminullah said the 
'urgency' of the investigation meant it was necessary, the Jakarta Post 
reported.

Mr Aminullah said in light of this, police had not violated procedures.

A decision on Wongso's suspect status will be made by the court by March 2.

Wongso and Ms Salihin reportedly studied together at Billy Blue College of 
Design in Sydney and Swinburne University of Technology.

Ms Salihin died on January 6 at a Jakarta hospital after suffering convulsions 
moments after she sipped an iced coffee ordered by her friend.

Police said Ms Wongso arrived at the cafe around an hour before her two friends 
and ordered three drinks, including the Vietnamese iced coffee that is believed 
to have killed Ms Salihin.

Testing by a police laboratory found a deadly dose of cyanide in Ms Salihin's 
body.

Wongso has maintained her innocence since her former study partner's death, 
telling reporters that she 'does not know where the cyanide came from'.

(source: Daily Mail)






BANGLADESH:

Pilkhana Carnage Case ---- Now wait for HC verdict; Proceedings in country's 
biggest ever criminal case to end by May


The High Court is likely to finish hearing the death reference and appeals in 
BDR carnage case in May this year, as it has already completed majority of 
their proceedings in the last 190 working days.

On completion of the hearings, the court will fix a date for delivering verdict 
on the biggest ever criminal case in the country's history in terms of the 
number of accused and convicts.

After the verdict, it may take some time for writing and releasing the full 
verdict and then both the state and defence may move appeals before the 
Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, if they want to.

"The apex court will then hear and dispose of the appeals and it may take 3 
more years to deliver the final judgment of the case even if the proceedings 
are run on priority basis," said defence counsel Aminul Islam.

The death reference and the appeals were filed with the HC months after a Dhaka 
court announced its verdict on November 5, 2013, nearly 5 years after the 
mutiny at the Pilkhana BDR headquarters.

The trial court awarded death penalty to 150 soldiers of the erstwhile 
Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) and 2 civilians, and sentenced 161 others to life 
imprisonment for their roles and involvement in the carnage.

It also handed down rigorous imprisonment, ranging from three to 10 years, to 
256 people, mostly BDR soldiers. The court acquitted 277 accused. A total of 
846 people, 823 of them BDR personnel, were on trial.

74 people, including 57 senior and mid-ranking army officials, were massacred 
in the BDR mutiny on February 25-26 in 2009 at the Pilkhana headquarters of the 
paramilitary force that has been renamed Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB).

Until February 18 this year, both the state and defence counsels have placed 
arguments on factual points of the appeals of 118 death-row inmates out of 
total 152 of the case before the HC.

After placing arguments on factual points of the appeals of the rest death-row 
inmates, the counsels would make arguments on factual points of the appeals of 
other convicts who were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment and 
different terms of imprisonments, Deputy Attorney General AKM Zahid Sarwar 
Kazal and defence counsel Aminul Islam told The Daily Star on February 18.

The High Court would hear legal points after the counsels finished placing 
arguments on the factual points, they said, adding that the hearing proceedings 
might be completed in May this year.

Aminul Islam said after the High Court announces the judgment, it might take 
time for writing and releasing the full verdict and then both the state and 
defence might move appeals before the Appellate Division, challenging the HC 
verdict.

Earlier, the state counsels presented first information report, charge sheet, 
confessional statements of 538 convicted accused, statements on the seizure 
list, statements of 654 prosecution witnesses and 29 defence witnesses of the 
case before the HC.

The special HC bench comprising Justice Md Shawkat Hossain, Justice Md Abu 
Zafor Siddique, and Justice Nazrul Islam Talukder on January 18 last year 
started hearing death reference and 255 appeals in the case, paving the way for 
completing its adjudication.

The 33-hour mutiny broke out after the then BDR chief Maj Gen Shakil Ahmed 
started a Darbar (Grand Conference) at the Darbar Hall in Pilkhana in the 
morning of February 25, 2009.

The mutineers looted the armoury and rampaged through the Pilkhana 
headquarters. Within hours, they killed most of the superior officers in and 
around the Darbar hall.

They tortured and bayoneted their superiors before killing them, and then 
dumped the bodies in sewers and mass graves to destroy evidence.

The mutineers also tortured the family members of their superiors and looted 
their houses. They also ransacked officers' quarters and set fire to vehicles.

Earlier, 17,306 BDR jawans faced trial in 11 special BDR courts and 60 summery 
trial courts of BDR commanding officers for the mutiny.

At least 78 accused jawans died under mysterious circumstances after the 
mutiny. Many of them reportedly died of heart attack in police custody while a 
few others committed suicide.

(source: The Daily Star)