[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

July 25



IRAN----executions

A Prisoner Hanged in Rasht


A prisoner was executed at Rasht Central Prison on murder charges.

According to a close source, on the morning of Saturday, July 21, a prisoner 
was executed at Rasht Central Prison. The prisoner, sentenced to death on 
murder charges, was identified as Seyyed Morteza Mohammadi.

A close source told IHR, "Morteza was from Rasht and was dating a girl named 
Fariba. He murdered her and burned her body after a fight in 2015. He had a 
9-year-old son who was present in front of the prison gate at the time of the 
execution."

The execution of this prisoner has not been announced by the state-run media so 
far.

According to Iran Human Rights annual report on the death penalty, 240 of the 
517 execution sentences in 2017 were implemented due to murder charges. There 
is a lack of a classification of murder by degree in Iran which results in 
issuing a death sentence for any kind of murder regardless of intensity and 
intent.

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

2 Men Hanged in Public


2 prisoners were executed in public on the charge of rape and murder.

According to Tasnim news agency, on the morning of Sunday, July 22, 2 prisoners 
were executed in public in Mashhad. The prisoners were sentenced to death on 
the charge of rape and murder of 2 children in separate cases.

According to Mizan Online news agency, one of the prisoners is identified as 
Ali Asghar Ashrafi, son of Mohammad, born in 1976. He was convicted of raping 
and murdering an 8-year-old Afghan girl on March 27, 2018. The other prisoner 
was identified as Sajjad Rashidi, son of Asad, born in 1991. He was convicted 
of raping and murdering a 10-year-old boy on April 25, 2018.

It should be noted that the United Nations have repeatedly criticized public 
executions in Iran. The Secretary-General of the United Nations, as well as the 
UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, had earlier 
asked Iranian authorities to stop public executions.

According to Iran Human Rights (IHR)'s annual report on the death penalty, 31 
prisoners were hanged in public in 2017.

(source for both: Iran Human Rights)

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

Laleh Park Mothers: Executions, terror are signs of regime's weakness


Laleh Park Mothers once again reiterated their demands for abolition of the 
death penalty and freedom of all political prisoners and prisoners of 
conscience in a statement published on Tuesday, July 24, 2018.

In parts of the statement issued on Sunday, July 22, 2018, Laleh Park Mothers 
wrote:

The Iranian regime's officials could solidify the pillars of their bloody rule 
in the early years of their coming to power by widespread suppression, 
intimidation, arrests, torture, execution and assassinations of their 
opponents.

The question is, are they in a situation, to survive today's critical 
conditions by further arrests and detentions, torture and terror, execution and 
assassination of opponents inside Iran and abroad, and by destroying the 
unnamed graves of victims of the 1988 massacre? No doubt, they are not going to 
be able to do so...

The officials of the Iranian regime must be very foolish if they do not 
understand that the situation is very different today from the early years of 
their rule, and that they cannot silence and send home the hungry people who 
are fed up with injustice, discrimination, etc. and long for freedom, by using 
suppression, lies, and an atmosphere of terror. The more they arrest, torture, 
and kill and the more they harass and humiliate people, more sectors of society 
will join the protests with new demands. This was clearly demonstrated last 
year in the eruption of the uprisings in December 2017/January 2018...

We, the Laleh Park Mothers, once again, reiterate our just demands of abolition 
of the death penalty, freedom of all political prisoners and prisoners of 
conscience, and prosecution of the perpetrators and masterminds of all the 
crimes committed under the Islamic Republic... We are a small part of the 
Iranian people's Call for Justice Movement. We will stand with them and one 
day, we will restitute our rights and build a humanitarian world, without 
discriminations, injustice and suppression of freedoms...

(source: NCR-Iran)






ISRAEL:

Defense minister urges colleagues to endorse death penalty for terrorists


Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Wednesday urged fellow ministers to 
approve a bill calling for the death penalty for convicted Palestinian killers 
of Israeli civilians and soldiers, saying there is no reason for Israel to be 
more enlightened than the US in the war on terror.

Ministers were scheduled to vote on the bill at a meeting of the top-level 
security cabinet later in the day.

"At long last the bill for death sentences for terrorists is to be decided on," 
Liberman tweeted. "I am sure that my ministerial colleagues understand that we 
need all measures in the fight against terror.

"A terrorist who slaughters a family should not return home," continued 
Liberman. "There is no reason for us to be more enlightened that the United 
States or Japan in the war on terror."

Although the death penalty formally exists in Israeli law, it has only ever 
been used once - in 1962 in the case of Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann, one of the 
architects of the Holocaust.

It is technically allowed in cases of high treason, as well as in certain 
circumstances under the military law that applies within the IDF and in the 
West Bank, but is not implemented.

The bill, proposed by Liberman's Yisrael Beytenu party, won initial backing in 
a January preliminary reading in the Knesset, despite some coalition lawmakers 
expressing reservations over the legislation. Its progress since then has been 
repeatedly delayed.

The head of the Shin Bet domestic security service, Nadav Argaman, has in the 
past told lawmakers he opposes the death penalty for attackers. The IDF is also 
opposed, Army Radio reported, with the security establishment also concerned 
that the introduction of the move would spark unrest in the Palestinian 
territories.

Chief Sephardic Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef has also said he is against the punishment, 
citing objections from Shin Bet officials who said it would endanger the lives 
of Jews around the world who could be kidnapped and used as bargaining chips in 
exchange for terrorists awaiting execution.

Finally, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has reportedly come out against 
capital punishment, arguing that it would not serve to dissuade terrorists from 
carrying out attacks, as they generally commit them with the assumption that 
they won't survive.

(source: The Times of Israel)






MALAYSIA:

Memorandum on death penalty will be submitted to cabinet


A memorandum on the death penalty will be submitted to the cabinet for 
consideration once a thorough study on plans to abolish it is completed.

De facto law minister Liew Vui Keong said the study is being carried out by the 
Attorney-General's Chambers.

He said this in a written reply to Ramkarpal Singh (Harapan-Bukit Gelugor) on 
the matter.

Abolishing mandatory death penalty by hanging is part of Harapan's election 
manifesto.

Last year the previous BN government had abolished the mandatory death sentence 
under the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952.

The amendment grants the judges discretion to pass life sentences if the 
accused helped authorities to disrupt other drug operations.

(source: malaysiakini.com)






UNITED KINGDOM:

The death penalty is an abomination - Sajid Javid must not condone it----The 
'Isis Beatles' may be monsters, but the 'string 'em up for all we care' 
position of the British government is genuinely shocking


If even 1/2 of what we think we know about Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee 
Elsheikh is true, they are monsters.

They stand accused of being 2 of the 4 so-called "Isis Beatles", the 
notoriously cruel British-born jihadis responsible for beheading at least five 
hostages - the British aid workers Alan Henning and David Haines, plus the US 
journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and the US humanitarian worker Peter 
Kassig - alongside countless incidents of torture and degradation. Neither 
shows remorse, and neither is legally entitled to the protection of the British 
state any more since being stripped of their British citizenship. The Sun is 
probably right to argue that most people would happily see them dead. But for 
"string 'em up, for all we care" to become the effective position of the 
British government is a genuinely shocking moment all the same.

There was no discussion, no debate in parliament. MPs only found out from the 
newspapers that the home secretary, Sajid Javid, had upended the settled view 
of successive governments by declining to seek American assurances that the 
death penalty would not be invoked before co-operating with attempts to put 
them on trial in the US. Javid wasn't in parliament to explain himself 
yesterday, but his security minister, Ben Wallace, did volunteer that sticking 
to our usual principles might "get in the way of" a trial

Principles do admittedly get in the way of all sorts of things, but that's what 
makes them principles. They're meant to be inviolable, immovable, moral 
absolutes. You can't be opposed in principle to the death penalty except when 
it turns out to be inconvenient; you can't be in favour of human rights only so 
long as they apply to likable people. Putting humans to death is either wrong 
or it isn't, and as a nation we have been officially opposed to it for so long 
that we had begun to take it dangerously for granted. Suddenly, the debate no 
longer feels settled.

It should be said that there were no good choices here for the government, or 
for the bereaved families who would naturally like to see justice done. The 
chances of a conviction in the UK courts are deemed low, given that the 
surviving hostages never saw their captors without masks and the case against 
them relies heavily on intelligence material that might be hard to share in 
court. The options are leaving them to rot in the custody of Kurdish forces in 
Syria, without a trial of any kind; internment in Guantanamo, without a trial 
of any kind; and trial in the US. It's obvious why Javid might prefer the 
latter, but baffling that he didn't even try to seek guarantees about use of 
the death penalty first.

The Americans know what our position has always been, and presumably wouldn't 
have been surprised if we had stuck to it. Wallace told parliament there was no 
direct request from Donald Trump's administration for the government to roll 
over. So the obvious conclusion is that either it was made indirectly but very 
clearly that we should; or Javid did it simply because he thought the end 
justified the means, that it wasn't such a big deal. In his letter, he insists 
that this is not a shift in British policy either on getting involved in US 
death penalty cases, or on the use of the death penalty generally around the 
world.

But what makes MPs so furious is that this is precisely how it will be seen, 
particularly given recent revelations that British intelligence agencies were 
complicit in the torture and rendition of terror suspects after 9/11. What 
price the moral high ground from which we used to lecture regimes guilty of 
human rights abuses, when we're once again caught selling our own principles 
down the river? And expect the pro-hanging brigade in this country to be 
emboldened by an unexpected opportunity to push their case.

What really sticks in the throat, however, is the propaganda coup this 
represents for Isis. They are being given the martyrs they seek on a plate. Now 
watch them argue that western liberal democracies are hypocrites who can't even 
live up to the values they are supposedly fighting to defend; that when it 
comes to the crunch the west is no better than them; that the difference 
between electric chair and serrated knife is not so very great. Britain has 
once again squandered moral legitimacy for reasons the government either can't 
or won't explain. Sooner or later, that will surely come back to haunt us.

(source: Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist)






INDIA:

HC sets aside death sentence, acquits convict of all charges----Says no 
evidence to prove Manikandan murdered a 4-year-old girl in Tiruvannamalai


The Madras High Court on Tuesday set aside the conviction as well as death 
sentence imposed by a trial court on 24-year-old P. Manikandan for having 
allegedly murdered a 4-year-old girl child in Tiruvannamalai on June 13, 2013 
due to a personal enmity with her father over repaying the loans that he had 
taken from him.

Allowing a criminal appeal filed by the convict, a Division Bench of Justices 
S. Vimala and S. Ramathilagam agreed with Senior Counsel N.R. Elango that a 
Mahila Court in Tiruvannamalai had casually convicted and awarded capital 
punishment to the appellant though there was hardly any evidence to connect him 
with the offence.

The Bench ordered a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the murder of 
the child to find out the real perpetrators of the crime within three months.

If the present appellant was found to be guilty even in the 2nd round of 
investigation, it would be open to the prosecution to proceed against him in 
accordance with law.

Penning the judgment for the Bench, Ms. Justice Vimala said there was a strong 
dividing line between 'may be true' and 'must be true' since the former was 
represented by conjectures and the latter by concrete conclusions. It was not 
proper on the part of the trial court to have awarded death penalty by ignoring 
such a dividing line.

'Circumstantial evidence'

The judge pointed out that the entire case of the prosecution rested on 
circumstantial evidence which did not support the hypothesis "that it is only 
this accused and this accused alone" who committed the murder. If the trial 
court was agonised over the death of the child, it should have ordered further 
investigation instead of awarding death.

"When more power is exercised, more caution is essential. Judging can be done 
only on the basis of legal evidence... This is a case where there is no 
evidence at all. Still, death penalty has been handed down in a very casual 
manner probably out of over enthusiasm and zeal to stray into irrelevant 
considerations other than those sanctioned by the highest court of the land.

"Capital punishment would evoke an awe and send shock waves only when it is 
based on truth and evidence. It would lose its sanctity and severity when it is 
perverse and peddled frequently by every other trial court for fear of 
indictment from outside sources," Ms. Justice Vimala observed.

(source: The Hindu)

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

Death sought for serial child rapist


A special Pocso Act court on Tuesday allowed the prosecution plea to frame 
charges against a 36-year-old serial sex pest under IPC Section 376 under which 
death penalty is the maximum sentence. Special public prosecutor Geeta Sharma 
made the application after the court convicted Ayaz Ansari for raping and 
having unnatural sex with a 13-year-old schoolgirl in 2014.

With the accused previously being convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, 
the prosecution sought the death sentence under Section 376. The accused, in 
his reply, said that to attract the charge under the relevant sections, it 
should be appar nt that the subsequent offence should be committed by the 
accused after his conviction in the earlier offence.

(source: indiatimes.com)

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

Saved from gallows in Dubai, Kapurthala man returns home


Kapurthala resident Sandeep Singh, who was given death penalty in Dubai (UAE), 
returned to India after Sarbat da Bhala Trust paid blood money for his release.

Sandip Singh's family and members of the local unit of Sarbat Da Bhala Trust 
received him at Sri Guru Ram Dass Jee International Airport on Tuesday 
afternoon.

Sandip Singh, a resident of Khangura village of Kapurthala, went to Dubai for 
labour work in 2006.

On November 29, 2007, the Dubai police nabbed him for the murder of Hardeep 
Singh of Singhpura in Hoshiarpur.

A lower court announced death penalty for him. In 2010, the family contacted SP 
Singh Oberoi, a Dubai-based businessman and chairman of Sarbat Da Bhala Trust.

The trust fought a legal battle in the high court and got the death sentence 
commuted into life imprisonment. Then Oberoi contacted the family of the 
deceased in Hoshiarpur. The family agreed for settlement by blood money.

Sukhjinder Singh Heir, president of Sarbat Da Bhala Trust in Majha Zone, said, 
"After an effort of 9 years, Sandeep Singh was finally released from the Dubai 
jail."

Sandeep Singh Said, "It is my 2nd birth. When the court announced death 
sentence, I had no hope of returning home."

Office-bearers of Sarbat Da Bhala Trust claimed that there were a total of 130 
Indians who were given death penalty in Dubai, out of which the trust got 94 
persons released.

(source: tribuneindia.com)

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

Kerala custodial death case: Two policemen get death penalty, others 
jail----The case triggered widespread protests across Kerala.


A special CBI court has awarded death penalties to 2 policemen convicted in 
connection with the custodial death of a man in Kerala.

The prosecution case was that Udayakumar, 26, who was taken into custody in 
2005 for questioning in a theft case, died in custody after being tortured by 
police.

3 other officers were also found guilty of conspiracy charges and have been 
sentenced to 3 years in prison.

2 policemen, who took Udayakumar into custody, were found guilty of murder 
while 3 others were found guilty of conspiracy and destroying evidence. A total 
of 6 policemen were accused in the case and one died during the course of 
trial.

The case triggered widespread protests across the state as it was alleged that 
police had used 3rd degree methods on Udayakumar.

The CBI took over the investigation following a high court order on a plea 
filed by Udayakumar's mother.

(source: khaleejtimes.com)






PAPUA NEW GUINEA:

8 get death penalty over PNG sorcery killings in 2014


8 of the 97 Papua New Guinean villagers convicted of killing 7 people in a 
sorcery-related attack 4 years ago in Madang have been given the death penalty. 
The National Court judge Justice David Cannings imposed life sentences on the 
remaining 88 after 1 of the accused died last month in hospital.

The 97, from villages on Madang's Rai Coast, were found guilty of the murders 
of 3 elderly men, 2 children and 2 young men at Sakiko village near Ramu Sugar 
town.

They were each charged with 7 counts of wilful murder.

The 8 on death row were found to be directly involved in the murders.

Justice Cannings said the 97 villagers had marched into Sakiko village on April 
14, 2014, motivated by concerns about the number of deaths in the area 
attributed to sorcery.

He said a genuine belief in sorcery cannot be regarded as an extenuating 
circumstance to lessen the gravity of the crimes.

Belief in witchcraft, sorcery and the occult is known locally as sanguma which 
is widespread in some provinces.

(source: radionz.co.nz)






NIGERIA:

Rights groups reject moves to execute death row inmates


Human rights organisations have criticized the approval by the Federal 
Government to review or sign the death warrants of 2, 359 death row prison 
inmates in the country.

The Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami (SAN) had at the 
National Economic Council (NEC) meeting last week asked state governors to act 
in line with Section 212 of the 1999 Constitution on the number of inmates 
sentenced to death, as a means of decongesting the prisons, which has about 73, 
631 inmates nationwide.

The Executive Director of Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants 
(CURE), Sylvester Uhaa said it was worrisome that the country is planning the 
executions, when the rest of the world is moving away from the death penalty 
and finding solutions to violent crimes.

"It is not true, as claimed by the governors and the Attorney-General of the 
Federation that death row inmates in Nigeria pose the greatest security risk to 
the Prison Service and society because they constitute about 2 % of the prison 
population," he said.

Also speaking, the director of the Avocats Sans Frontiere France (ASFF) 
otherwise known as Lawyers Without Borders, Angela Uwandu said if the 
executions are done it would do little to decongest the prison population.

She asked government to adopt the international moratorium on executions and 
convert the death sentences to other kinds of imprisonment taking into 
consideration the age and health conditions of the affected inmates, and their 
number of years already spent in prison.

(source: dailytrust.com.ng)