[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

March 1



GLOBAL:

Governments use death penalty to crackdown on religious minorities



Various countries that include China and Iraq are disproportionately using the 
death penalty against people from religious minorities, not for any criminal 
misdeeds, but merely based on their faith and religious beliefs, according to 
Raphael Chenuil-Hazan, the Executive Director of Ensemble Contre la Peine de 
Mort (Together Against the Death Penalty), a French NGO that aims to abolish 
capital punishment around the world.

The list of communities who have been victimised by the crackdown includes 
Tibetan Buddhists, the Uighurs (the Turkic-speaking minority in China’s western 
Xinjiang province and who are Sunni Muslims with close ethnic and cultural ties 
to Central Asia), and Chinese Christians. Each of the communities has seen a 
number of their followers sentenced to death solely for their religious 
identities.

“It’s a disgrace that some regimes, including China, Iraq, and Iran, are using 
the death penalty against people from religious groups who are condemned merely 
for their religious beliefs…This cannot be allowed to continue,” said 
Chenuil-Hazan, who added, “These people have been condemned not because of any 
criminal wrongdoing or misdeeds, but because they believe in something that a 
particular regime does not agree with. They are being targeted for their 
beliefs and the international community needs to wake up to what is going on 
and take appropriate action.”

According to Chenuil-Hazan, the security services’ crackdown on religious 
minorities has now extended to their legal representatives, who are also often 
imprisoned and tortured for having taken on cases dedicated to human rights.

Recently in China, up to 500 lawyers representing human rights activists were 
detained for acting as legal counsel to individuals who have been targeted by 
their respective governments.

“They are still in prison and we know little or nothing about their whereabouts 
or their welfare,” Chenuil-Hazan said, adding, “We have to be brave enough to 
raise these issues so that the wider community knows what is going on.”

Chenuil-Hazan made his comments while speaking at the 7th World Congress 
Against the Death Penalty, which is co-hosted by the European Union and the 
Kingdom of Belgium. Held every three years, the 4-day event brings together 
prominent activists, both public and private, who are actively attempting to 
have capital punishment banned across the globe.

Among those voicing their concern for the plight of the religious minorities 
was Audun Halvorsen, the State Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of 
Norway, who said that “even in 2019, people can be sentenced to death because 
of who they love, because of their faith, their sexual orientation. This is not 
acceptable.”

The congress heard that support for the death penalty was lowest among Hispanic 
(24%) and Black Protestants (25%), 68% of each preferred handing out life 
sentences without the chance of parole. The two communities’ views on capital 
punishment were backed by their fellow Christians in the Catholic Church, as 
well as by Jews, other non-Christian religions, and those who identify as 
religiously unaffiliated.

Pope Francis has spoken more forcibly about the issue, saying that life 
imprisonment is a form of torture and “a hidden (form of the) death penalty”. 
The Holy See’s abhorrence of the capital punishment is rooted in the Catechism 
of the Catholic Church, which proclaims that “in the light of the Gospel” the 
death penalty is “an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”.

Religious faith and capital punishment have always been intertwined. 
Christianity’s primordial event was the execution of its founder, and the same 
fate was suffered by many of its early teachers.

At the same time, putting “wrong thinkers” to death has generally been 
presented – and remains to be – a sacred necessity that began with the 
Inquisition in 15th century Europe and continues to this day through the 
actions of terrorist groups and radical Islamist movements that include ISIS, 
Boko Haram, and the Afghan Taliban.

(source: neweurope.eu)

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

Belarus attending 7th World Congress against Death Penalty



Belarus' Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Oleg Kravchenko is in Brussels, 
Belgium on a visit from 27 February to 1 March to take part in the 7th World 
Congress against the Death Penalty, BelTA learned from the Belarusian Ministry 
of Foreign Affairs.

“On 28 February, the deputy minister attended a side event on the death penalty 
in Belarus. Chairman of the Standing Committee on Human Rights, National 
Relations and Media of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of 
Belarus Andrei Naumovich shared the country's position on the work of the 
parliamentary working group studying death penalty as an instrument of 
punishment, and also scheduled events and interaction with international 
partners on the matter,” the press service of the ministry said.

While in Brussels, Oleg Kravchenko and Belarus' Permanent Representative to the 
EU Alexander Mikhnevich met with Secretary General of the European External 
Action Service (EEAS) Helga Schmid and EEAS Managing Director Thomas 
Mayr-Harting to discuss relations between Belarus and the European Union, 
outline plans for future joint events.

Together with MP Andrei Naumovich, the deputy minister of foreign affairs held 
talks with Raphael Chenuil-Hazan, Director of the NGO Together against the 
Death Penalty, and representatives of the Council of Europe.

The parties talked over Belarus' cooperation with the abovementioned 
organizations. Oleg Kravchenko is expected to meet with Executive Director of 
the European Institute of Peace Michael Keating and Belgian MP Pol Van Den 
Driessche.

(source: eng.belta.by)








INDONESIA:

Life on death row: British grandmother awaits firing squad



Chatty, cheerful and brimming with mischievous gossip, Lindsay Sandiford sits 
cross-legged, knitting a pink baby blanket, and talks affectionately about her 
sons and the granddaughters she dotes on, whose faces smile out from pictures 
stuck on the walls around her bed.

"They are a joy - a real joy," she beams, gazing at the photos of the young 
cousins, aged one and six. "The younger one is marvellously bonkers. She's such 
a character. If I was to die tomorrow, I would be happy I've had that 
relationship with them. It is the most important thing in my life."

What might sound like a melodramatic slice of whimsy from an indulgent 
grandparent has a darker resonance when spoken by 62-year-old Sandiford, who 
sits knitting while on death row, in Indonesia. She could be taken to face the 
firing squad at any time.

Sandiford, from Yorkshire in Britain, was sentenced to death in 2013 for 
smuggling 10lb of cocaine from Bangkok to Bali and has spent the past six years 
in a 5-metre-by-5-metre cell with 4 other women in the island's notorious 
Kerobokan prison, ironically nicknamed Hotel K.

2 friends from her time in jail have been taken away in the dead of the night 
to be executed and she knows that, at 72 hours' notice, she could be taken 
under armed escort to Nusa Kambangan, the country's execution island, 700km 
away, on the southern coast of Central Java.

A legal-cost draftsman in Cheltenham before she separated from her husband and 
moved to India, Sandiford was arrested as she arrived in Bali in 2012, carrying 
a suit­case with a false bottom stuffed with the illicit drug that fuels the 
holiday island's manic nightlife. The unlikeliest of mules, she had no previous 
convictions and claims she only agreed to meet syndicate members in Bangkok and 
take the suitcase to Bali after the Britain-based drugs gang threatened to kill 
her younger son if she refused.

Sandiford says she had been snared by the syndicate while she was living 
overseas and her sons, who were running wild in her absence, crossed swords 
with a drugs gang operating out of London and Brighton.

She was interrogated for 48 hours and at one point says she had a gun held 
against her head.

"I said, 'Go on. Pull the trigger,' and the officer kicked the chair beside me 
away," she recalls. "There was a tremendous bang and I thought, 'That's it - 
he's shot me.' I will never forget that man's face and he is always in my 
nightmares."

Eventually, she agreed to help police catch the syndicate members to whom she 
was delivering the cocaine and took part in a sting operation that saw three 
British expatriates living on Bail arrested for drug trafficking. Sandiford 
says she was promised leniency in return for helping with the arrests and even 
fancifully believed she might be freed and sent home. It soon became clear, 
however, that her ordeal had only just started.

She found herself locked up in Bali's Polda police station alongside the 
syndicate members she had set up for arrest - Julian Ponder, Paul Beales and 
Ponder's then-partner, Rachel Dougall - who, Sandiford says, "told me my kids 
were dead and I'd be next".

In the months leading up to their trials, Sandiford railed bitterly against the 
injustice she felt she had suffered and struggled to find a lawyer to navigate 
Indonesia's notoriously arcane judicial system. Ponder, Beales and Dougall, by 
contrast, kept a low profile as bribes of more than HK$10 million (S$1.7 
million) were rumoured to have been paid on their behalf.

When the cases came to court, Sandiford was tried for drug trafficking while 
the loss of vital evidence meant the other three Britons faced reduced charges. 
Sandiford was sentenced to death, the only woman to ever have received the 
penalty for drug offences in Bali, despite a recommendation from the prosecutor 
that she serve a term of 15 years. Ponder was sentenced to 6 years and Beales 
to four years for drug possession, while Dougall walked free after a year, for 
failing to report a crime.

6 years on, Ponder - once known as the King of Bali for his lavish lifestyle 
and unexplained wealth during his 8 years on the island - is flitting between 
luxury hotels in Malaysia and Thailand and has a baby with a 23-year-old Asian 
wife he met inside Kerobokan, where she was serving a sentence for fraud.

Sandiford has refused consular assistance after, in an astonishing twist, the 
British vice-consul to Bali, married mother-of-2 Alys Harahap, was dismissed in 
2015, having been accused of conducting an illicit romance with Ponder during 
her official visits to Kerobokan. To make her plight worse, more than 
HK$400,000 raised by church groups and well-wishers for a final appeal against 
Sandiford's death penalty has been stolen by an Indonesian lawyer and legal 
assistant hired to challenge her sentence, both of whom have proved impossible 
to track down.

An outcry over Sandiford's sentence from overseas human rights lawyers and 
former British director of public prosecutions Ken Macdonald, who argued that 
she had been treated with "quite extraordinary severity", has failed to get 
Sandiford taken off death row. Macdonald argued that there were "compelling 
reasons" to overturn her sentence, and said, "It is very difficult to catch 
anyone other than mules because they are the ones who put them­selves on the 
line. Unless they co-operate, the chances of catching those higher up the chain 
tend to be slender. But who will co-operate in Indonesia in the future if the 
prospect is the death sentence?"

The British government has nevertheless refused to fund Sandiford's appeal, 
despite being urged to consider doing so by the Supreme Court in London, whose 
five-judge panel ruled that "substantial mitigating factors" had been 
overlooked in her original trial.

6 years on death row have left Sandiford a calmer, more sanguine character than 
the woman arrested in 2012. In a series of meetings in January and February, an 
hour at a time spent in a stiflingly hot caged enclosure at the entrance to the 
women's section of Kerobokan, she makes it clear that she is reconciled to her 
situation.

"I really cannot face asking anyone for help or having to deal with another 
lawyer. I've been burnt enough times," she says. "I've had 10 different 
lawyers. I've had one steal all my money. If I actually turned my mind to the 
legal process, I would get angry and bitter and it would be destructive."

Neither does she want the British government to belatedly intervene. "If they 
started getting involved, they would probably end up getting me shot even 
sooner," she says. Her last contact from any British official was a letter from 
new vice-consul John Makin, in October 2016, asking her to contact him if she 
wanted assistance. Sandiford did not reply.

"I have days when I feel miserable and I think I do have an underlying 
depression, but I try not to let it take over my life or what time I have left, 
or whether it ends with a bullet. It's destructive to dwell on it, which is why 
I've kept busy to stay positive," she says. "You can either focus on the 
negative or the positive and wallowing in misery doesn't get you anywhere 
except being more miserable.

"In spite of everything, I feel blessed. I have been blessed to live long 
enough to see my 2 sons grow up into fine young men and blessed to have been 
able to meet my 2 grandchildren.

"I do feel I can cope with it now. Execution won't be a hard thing for me to 
face any more. It's not particularly a death I would choose but, then again, I 
wouldn't choose dying in agony from cancer either.

"I had a friend from Scotland who died of breast cancer in Hawaii in the late 
1990s. I was there when she died. She was only 44 and had her children fairly 
late, and they were 5 and 6 years old. The last thing she did was hold my hand 
and sing Mele Kalikimaka to me, which is Hawaiian for Merry Christmas. She 
never got to see her children grow up and she never got to hold her 
grandchildren. So when I think of her I realise I haven't got anything to 
complain about."

Sandiford has seen both of her granddaughters in Bali - the 1-year-old visited 
with her parents for the 1st time in November - and she is able to make 
occasional phone and video calls to her children and grandchildren in Britain.

"What keeps me going is the fact I have seen my boys become men and become 
fathers and I have 2 beautiful granddaughters," she says. "I wake up and I see 
their faces and I smile. I am sad I can't be a full-time grandmother but I have 
lived long enough to meet them and hold them and tell them that I love them.

"Even if I have a really bad day here, I turn around in bed and see my 
grandchildren. I wake up and I look at their faces and I'm not religious but I 
honestly feel blessed. I regret I haven't been of more help to my boys, but I 
don't think they would be at the point they are in their lives if I wasn't in 
here. They wouldn't have grown up as much if I was there as a safety net for 
them. My sons are both doing incredibly well and they both want to seize life 
rather than waste it and watch it drift away in a haze of smoke."

Now grey-haired and suffering from arthritis, Sandiford has difficulty walking. 
She spends most of each day in her cell and jokingly admits the biggest issue 
affecting her execution may be the half-mile "walk of death" prisoners have to 
take to reach the forest clearing where the shoot­ings - up to a dozen 
condemned prisoners executed at the same time - are carried out. For Sandiford, 
though, the most appalling element of execution is not the mechanics of death 
but the process that precedes it.

"What I am uncomfortable about is the public humili­ation. You're dragged 
halfway around the country and paraded in front of the press before being 
executed. My attitude is: if you want to shoot me, shoot me. Get on with it. 
I've done a terrible thing, I know, but the worst thing is the ritual public 
humiliation they seem to enjoy."

She was close friends with Andrew Chan and Myuran (Myu) Sukumaran, members of 
the Bali Nine Australian drug-smuggling gang, who were taken from Kerobokan to 
be executed in April 2015. The loss of Chan, who spent 10 years on death row in 
Kerobokan and became a Christian minister before his death, at the age of 31, 
hit her particularly hard.

"I had a message from Andrew just after midnight on the day he was taken away 
saying, 'They're coming.' There were tanks rumbling outside the prison at 4am 
and that was just horrible. I got 7 letters from Andrew while he was on Nusa 
Kambangan, before they executed him. He used to call me the Blue Whale because 
of the outfit I wore. He was funny. I still miss him."

Sandiford has the right to a final visit from her family before her execution 
and to have a spiritual adviser accom­pany her to the firing squad but insists 
she wants neither.

"I can't be dealing with other people and having to make them feel all right 
about it. I don't want any fuss at all," she says. "I do not want my family to 
go through what Andrew and Myu's families went through and the other families 
who were there. I've told my family, 'If you come, I will refuse to see you, so 
don't bother coming.'

"I've told them that when I'm dead there will be no ceremonies, no nothing. If 
there's any money left, spend it all in one day and have a party and enjoy 
yourselves. I've told them, 'If there's any weeping or ritual trees or flowers 
I will come back and haunt you.'

"I'm their mum and they love me and for me that's enough. And they know I love 
them and hopefully that will be enough for them."

Asked how she imagines she will handle the process of execution when the moment 
comes, she replies, "I should think I will be quite cantankerous and 
non-compliant" before breaking into raucous laughter.

The only prisoner awaiting execution in Kerobokan, Sandiford passes her days 
knitting in her cell and teaching other prisoners how to knit. They produce 
hundreds of beautifully crafted toys and clothes that are sold to raise money 
for charities and church groups, and for work to improve conditions on the 
women's block, which is over­crowded and has poor sewage and drainage, she 
says. On her block, more than 250 prisoners are crammed into the cells, some 
containing more than a dozen women, others just one. Inmates have to buy and 
prepare their own food, which they cook in a basic, chaotic kitchen area at the 
end of the building.

"I can't just sit here feeling miserable and sorry for myself, so I get on with 
what I like doing," says Sandiford. "I like knitting and I like cooking, so I 
knit and I cook. I've always got a project on the go. At the moment, I'm 
knitting 100 woollen pigs for a charity - I've got 10 girls working on it.

"I like knitting and I never had time for it before, when I was raising two 
kids. It's therapeutic. They've started knitting in a lot of North American 
prisons because it's rhythmic and you're counting and you can't really think 
about anything else when you're counting, and it stops you feeling sorry for 
yourself, although, I must admit, I do have the odd day when I wallow in 
self-pity."

It is evident that Sandiford enjoys a warm relationship with the guards.

"My philosophy is they can't make my life any more miserable so if I don't want 
to do something, I tell them I won't do it and I ask them, 'What are you going 
to do about it? Shoot me?' And they just laugh and walk off," she says. "They 
are really, really good to me. They feel incredibly sorry for me. They know who 
I am. They know I don't cause a problem. They know I'm not out there fighting 
and I don't gossip or get involved in arguments. I don't complain about 
anything and they leave me alone."

Many of the women in Kerobokan are Indonesians who were driven into drug 
trafficking by poverty.

"They get horrendous sentences," says Sandiford. "There's one girl in here 
who's 24 and she got 12 years for having 30 grams of crystal meth. Another girl 
is 20 and she was sentenced to 20 years for less than a kilo of crystal meth. A 
kilo would have got her the death sentence.

"I try to help foreign girls because they've got no one else here to help them. 
Today, I made pumpkin soup and I made a great big cauldron and gave some to the 
Filipino girls and some to the Thai girls and some to the African girls."

She insists she rarely gives a thought to Ponder and the other members of the 
syndicate who are now free while she remains on death row.

"If I dwelt on it I could quite easily send myself insane with the unfairness 
of it all. But it is what it is. You can bash your head against a wall but it 
isn't going to change the situation I'm in," she says.

Post Magazine traced Ponder to a hotel in Kuala Lumpur, where he was staying on 
undefined busi­ness with his young wife and baby daughter. He declined to 
comment but told a friend he hoped Sandiford was spared execution, saying, 
"Lying awake every night for so many years thinking you could be taken away and 
executed at any time is already punishment enough."

A British diplomatic source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Sandiford 
had refused consular support since 2014 but that, "We are ready to begin 
providing it again if she changes her mind."

No official representations have been made by the British government on 
Sandiford's behalf since her case was raised by then-foreign secretary William 
Hague on a visit to Jakarta, in 2014, but a Foreign Office spokesman says, "We 
have repeatedly made representations about the use of the death penalty to the 
Indonesian government at the highest levels."

Indonesia has not executed a foreign national since 2016, when it sent three 
Nigerians to the firing squad, but it has not announced a moratorium. Popular 
with voters, executions are often conducted for political reasons and may 
resume following the presidential election, in April.

Back in Kerobokan, Sandiford has decided to get on with however much life she 
has left.

"We're all in jail," she reasons. "It's a planet and you can't get off it. It's 
just that your corner of it is a bit more open than mine.

"The one thing certain about life is no one gets out alive."

With that, she goes back to her knitting.

(source: asiaone.com)








SOUTH SUDAN----executions

7 men including members of one family hanged amid spike in executions



South Sudan authorities executed at least 7 people in February 2019 alone, 3 of 
whom were from the same family. This is as many as were executed in the whole 
of 2018 and represents a shocking spike in the use of the death penalty in the 
country, Amnesty International said today.

“This confirms our fears that South Sudan authorities have absolutely no 
respect for the right to life as they continue to totally disregard the fact 
that the world is moving away from use of the death penalty,” said Seif 
Magango, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for East Africa, the Horn and 
the Great Lakes.

In December 2018, Amnesty International raised the alarm that the eastern 
African country had in that year executed more people than in any other year 
since its independence in 2011.

The executions in 2018 followed the transfer of at least 135 death row 
prisoners from county and state prisons to Wau Central Prison and Juba Central 
Prison, which are equipped with gallows to carry out executions.

6 of this year’s victims were executed in Juba Central Prison, while at least 1 
was executed in Wau Central Prison. All the victims were men. The country 
executes people by hanging.

“We are shocked and dismayed that executions have become the order of the day 
in South Sudan. Rather than execute people, the authorities should rehabilitate 
prisoners and make them well-adjusted individuals that can contribute 
positively to society,” said Seif Magango.

Amnesty International has established that at least three of the executions 
undertaken in February 2019 were shrouded in secrecy; the family of the 3 
related men was not informed of their impending execution and only learnt of 
the death of their loved ones after they had been executed.

“These reports are extremely concerning, and we cannot even begin to imagine 
how the families must be feeling. South Sudan must immediately commute all 
death sentences to terms of imprisonment, establish an official moratorium on 
executions and take steps, without delay, to abolish the death penalty,” said 
Seif Magango.

Amnesty International established that at least four of the seven executed men 
had been convicted of murder. The country’s Penal Code also allows for the use 
of the death penalty for bearing false witness resulting in an innocent 
person’s execution, terrorism (or banditry, insurgency or sabotage) resulting 
in death, aggravated drug trafficking and treason.

Background

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception 
regardless of the nature of the crime, the characteristics of the offender, or 
the method used by the state to execute the prisoner.

The death penalty - the premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being 
by the state in the name of justice - is the most fundamental denial of human 
rights. It violates the right to life as proclaimed in the Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights. It is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading 
punishment.

(source: Amnesty International)

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

Executions Stepped Up in War-Ravaged South Sudan, Amnesty Says



South Sudan is stepping up its use of executions, hanging seven people in the 
first 2 months of 2019, the same number subjected to the death penalty all of 
last year, Amnesty International said.

6 were executed at a prison in the capital, Juba, and at least 1 other was in 
Wau, in the country’s northwest, the London-based advocacy group said Friday in 
a statement. 4 had been convicted of murder, while 3 belonged to the same 
family and their executions were “shrouded in secrecy,” with relatives only 
being informed after their deaths.

“This confirms our fears that South Sudan authorities have absolutely no 
respect for the right to life as they continue to totally disregard the fact 
that the world is moving away from use of the death penalty,” said Seif 
Magango, Amnesty’s deputy director for East Africa.

South Sudan, Africa’s youngest country, is trying to emerge from a 5-year civil 
war that may have claimed almost 400,000 lives. Amnesty declined to give more 
information about the executions. Government spokesmen didn’t answer multiple 
calls seeking comment.

(source: Bloomberg News)



PHILIPPINES/SAUDI ARABIA:

DFA moving to save Filipina on death row in Saudi



The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) on Friday said it is exhausting all 
“diplomatic avenues and legal remedies” to save a Filipina sentenced with death 
penalty in Saudi Arabia.

“The Philippine Consulate General in Jeddah said it will continue to assist the 
Filipina who was sentenced to death in 2017 for murdering her female employer 
in Makkah 3 years ago,” the DFA said in a statement.

The Saudi Court of Appeals affirmed the Filipina’s death sentence on Thursday. 
The OFW had told the court that she killed her employer in self defense.

Consul General Edgar Badajos claimed that the Consulate has been assisting the 
Filipina since the start of her trial by providing her with a lawyer and 
sending a representative to attend the hearings.

Badajos also said that the Filipina’s case has been referred to the Department 
of Justice, which is serving as chair of the Inter-Agency Committee Against 
Trafficking (IACAT), for the filing of appropriate charges against the 
recruiters of the OFW, who was just a minor when she was first deployed to 
Saudi Arabia in 2016.

(source: globalnation.inquirer.net)








KENYA:

Man sentenced to death for defilement and murder



A 25-year-old man has been sentenced to death for defiling and killing a 
14-year-old girl.

Charles Langat, who worked for the minor's aunt as a herdsman, committed the 
offences on December 13, 2015, in Londiani.

The victim had attended a Mass at St Barnabas Catholic Church at Kamuingi as 
her mother and aunt went to Kenya Assemblies of God.

The victim returned before her mother and aunt. Langat had been home the whole 
day.

When the minor's aunt and mother returned at 2pm, the girl was nowhere to be 
seen and Langat was also missing.

They waited for Langat and the minor to return but to no avail. The victim's 
mother found her body in the evening as she drove cattle into the shed.

"When she opened the door to the sheep's pen, she found the deceased on the 
ground with no underpants and covered in blood,” the prosecutor, Susan Keli, 
told Justice Mumbi Ngugi.

Sharp object

“The stomach injuries and the injuries to the scalp could have been caused by a 
sharp object. The hymen, which was freshly torn, would have been due to 
penetration by a male sexual organ and any other blunt object,” said a 
postmortem report by George Biketi, a senior Nakuru County medical officer.

"We also found semen in the minor's vagina. She also had a stab wound extending 
from the spleen, the stomach, the omentum and liver."

Henry Sang, from the Government Chemist, said: “Our analysis concluded the DNA 
profiles from the knife and the pair of trousers matched those generated from 
the victim's blood sample."

Justice Mumbi said: “The accused defiled the victim, stabbed her brutally and 
then carried her body into the sheep’s pen where he dumped it. This was a clear 
case of murder. I find that the accused deserves the death penalty. I therefore 
sentence him to death." Langat has 14 days to appeal.

(source: standardmedia.co.ke)








FRANCE/IRAQ:

France Will Intervene if ISIS Fighter Citizens Sentenced to Death in Iraq



France’s Minister of Justice has announced that the government will intervene 
should French Islamic State members be sentenced to death in Iraq for their 
activities.

13 French Islamic State fighters face trial in Iraq after being captured in 
Syria and under Iraqi law, the penalty for anyone caught providing material aid 
to Islamic State or other extremist organisations is death, Le Parisien 
reports.

Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet said that the French would allow the Iraqis 
to judge the foreign fighters but would insist on imposing a limit which would 
not allow the use of the death penalty.

” There are French adults who have knowingly gone on the battlefield, it is not 
illogical that they are responsible for their actions where they committed 
them,” Belloubet said.

“We are on the one hand ensuring that the rights of defence are ensured and on 
the other hand the French who are entitled to consular protection. We, 
therefore, will ensure the minimum of respect for the right to a fair trial,” 
she added.

The upcoming trials are just the latest of foreign fighters from Europe. Last 
year, the Iraqi courts sentenced French national Melina Boughedir to life in 
prison for being a member of Islamic State.

During the trial, the 27-year-old’s lawyers complained that the French 
government had worked proactively to stop her and other jihadists from 
returning to France.

Earlier this month, authorities revealed that France could be looking at 
hundreds of possible returning Islamic State members with the state services 
estimating there could be as many as 300 men, 300 women, and 500 children 
waiting to be repatriated.

Germany’s Linda Wenzel was also put on trial for joining the Islamic State by 
Iraqi authorities and was sentenced to 6 years in prison for various charges 
including entering the country illegally to join the terror group.

(source: breitbart.com)




MOROCCO:

Justice Minister: Royal Pardons Effectively Reduce Death Sentences----A 
congress is meeting in Brussels to encourage countries to abolish the death 
penalty, arguing it does not prevent crime.



Moroccan Minister of Justice Mohamed Aujjar has highlighted Morocco’s 
“realistic” approach of enshrining the right to life in the Constitution while 
speaking in Brussels at the seventh World Congress against the Death Penalty.

Speaking at the opening of the congress, which started on February 26 and runs 
until March 1, at the European Parliament headquarters, Aujjar said that 
although the open debate on the death penalty in Morocco has not yet been 
decided, Morocco did have the courage to include the right to life in the 2011 
Constitution.

He explained that Article 20 stipulates that “the right to life is the first 
right of every human being.” He added that the government has not reached a 
consensus on the death penalty but stressed that Morocco has not carried out an 
execution since 1993.

Aujjar noted that the government’s policy is to limit death penalty sentences 
to a few crimes, such as crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide.

However, in December, a Moroccan named Ilyas El Koraichi called for Morocco to 
give the death penalty to the suspects arrested for the killing of 2 
Scandinavian tourists on December 17. El Koraichi created the petition on 
Change.org, and it has received 2,207 signatures so far.

Aujjar highlighted the effectiveness of royal pardons to reduce the number of 
people on death row by converting death sentences to limited prison terms.

The Moroccan official expressed optimism that Morocco’s current efforts, with 
the dynamism of civil society, will lead the debate to a consensus on the death 
penalty.

The president of the National Council of Human Rights (CNDH), Amina Bouayach, 
who also attended the congress, told Maghreb Arab Press (MAP) that CNDH has 
demanded the abolition of the death penalty and emphasized that the right to 
life is a basic right that the justice system must guarantee.

The congress was attended by the high representative of the EU, Federica 
Mogherini; Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs Didier Reynders; European 
deputies; and representatives of governments and civil society organizations.

The speakers unanimously underlined the importance of advocating for a 
universal abolition of the death penalty and defending the right to life, 
arguing that the death penalty does not prevent crime.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, and Pope Francis 
also expressed their support for an end to the death penalty in messages 
broadcasted via a video call.

(source: Morocco World News)








EGYPT:

EU Parliament vice president admits 'hypocrisy' on Egypt executions



While the EU is under heavy criticisms for its "deafening silence" over the 
executions in Egypt, Vice President of the European Parliament, Pavel Telicka, 
said "Aren't we, in the EU, sometimes hypocritical? Yes, we are. It's a matter 
of fact. We are imperfect, yet in terms of human rights and on the question of 
the death penalty, the EU has a record that no one in the world has, but we are 
not a world policeman." Telicka's comments came after a question raised during 
the 7th World Congress Against the Death Penalty held at the European 
Parliament in Brussels. Telicka said he has recently met with an Egyptian 
minister where he raised concerns on human rights and asked for a visit to 
Egypt.

"So far that did not have a follow-up. I regret to say, it takes two to dance 
the tango. Having said that, I need to also eventually admit that not everyone 
in the EU is always 100 percent pursuing that [humanitarian] policy." Telicka 
pointed at the U.N. for the issue and said the EU should also step up its 
efforts. "For sure, we can always do better."

Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders, who also attended to the event, 
responded to a question on European leaders attending a summit in Egypt just 
after the execution of nine men. Reynders said that they are holding bilateral 
talks with Egyptian authorities on the matter. "There are two different 
elements, the way to go to the abolition of the death penalty which is a [EU] 
principle and the other way is to discuss the conditions of prosecution and the 
application of death penalty."

Last week Egyptian authorities executed 9 young men convicted of assassinating 
an Egyptian prosecutor-general in 2015 in a car bombing. Amnesty International 
said the men were convicted on terrorism charges after "grossly unfair trials" 
marred by torture. U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville told a briefing 
in Geneva, that "there is significant cause for concern that due process and 
fair trial guarantees may not have been followed in some or all of these cases, 
and that the very serious allegations concerning the use of torture were not 
properly investigated." European leaders attended the two-day EU-Arab summit in 
the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh, a few days after the execution. 
Following the summit, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker posted 
a tweet in which he said he is "grateful" to Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah 
el-Sissi for hosting the summit. The EU Commission, EU Council and the EU 
Parliament have not yet commented on the 15 political executions that took 
place in Egypt in the past month.

(source: dailysabah.com)