[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

May 6



CANADA:

‘Crime of passion’: How a gay man became the last person to be executed in B.C.



On, Sept. 6, 1958, Aaron “Bud” Jenkins was stabbed to death as he slept in the 
barracks at Esquimalt’s naval base.

Leo Mantha confessed to the crime. The tugboat operator had been romantically 
involved with Jenkins and the fatal stabbing came after the 2 had gotten into a 
violent argument.

Jenkins’ death was a textbook definition of a “crime of passion,” says Neil 
Boyd, criminology professor at Simon Fraser University.

“By today’s standards, it probably would’ve been a manslaughter conviction,” he 
said.

Instead, the 30-year-old Mantha received the death penalty and was hanged in 
1959, making him the last person to be executed in British Columbia.

Mantha’s death came at a time when the federal cabinet commuted most death 
sentences, but Boyd said Mantha was an exception due to “anti-gay sentiments.”

Originally from Quebec, Mantha had been in the navy before working on a 
tugboat. In the summer of 1958, a bartender at Victoria’s Empress Hotel 
introduced him to Jenkins.

The two had an affair, with Mantha writing love letters to Jenkins that were 
eventually read aloud in court.

“It was all, ‘I love you, Budzie-Wudzie,’” Stan Piontek, a friend of both 
Mantha and Jenkins, said of the letters read at the trial.

Piontek, 88, said the 2 got into an argument the night of Jenkins’ death, with 
Jenkins saying he planned to marry a female friend.

“I saw Jenkins in front of the Empress Hotel and somebody had beaten him up or 
something,” he said.

Piontek said he accompanied Jenkins to Mantha’s apartment on Superior Street so 
he could retrieve his uniform before returning to the barracks.

While in the apartment, Piontek says he spoke with Jenkins about what happened.

“Meanwhile, Leo Mantha was in the next room and heard all of this stuff,” he 
said.

Jenkins got a ride back to the barracks where he was later murdered.

Following Jenkins’ death, Piontek said there was a “witch hunt” in the 
military.

“I don’t know how many people they hauled out of the navy,” said Piontek, who 
had served in the navy for much of the 1950s. “I got railroaded out of there.”

The story of Mantha, a former military man who dated a gay man in the navy, had 
a chilling effect, according to Gary Kinsman, a sociology professor at 
Laurentian University and co-author of the book The Canadian War on Queers.

The case played a key role in a purge spearheaded by the Canadian government’s 
Security Panel, which led to the firing of thousands of Canadians in the 
military, RCMP and public service because of their sexual orientation.

Kinsman said following Jenkins’ death, investigators uncovered his “little 
black books,” which contained the names of other gay men in the military.

“They found a list of lots of people in the merchant marines and in the navy 
and this initiates the purge campaign on the west coast,” he said.

“It feeds into the RCMP and the Security Panel’s feeling that this homosexual 
threat is actually much bigger than they would have previously thought.”

Kinsman notes that Mantha’s case occurred at a time when gay sex was 
criminalized and homosexuality was considered a psychological disorder. There 
were also concerns that gays in the military posed a national security threat, 
since they could be prone to blackmail by foreign agents, although there was 
never any evidence that anyone was actually compromised.

Mantha’s story fit all of those narratives and was used to justify expelling 
people from public service due to their sexual orientation.

“We interviewed lots of people who were involved in the Victoria gay scene who 
said that prior to this murder things were pretty open,” Kinsman said. “But 
after that, people had to go underground and people were purged and people had 
to leave.”

In 2017, the Canadian government issued a formal apology to the LGBTQ 
community, one that Kinsman characterizes as “remarkably limited.”

Full speech: Justin Trudeau gives formal apology to people affected by gay 
purge

Mantha’s case came to the attention of the federal cabinet. Prime Minister John 
Diefenbaker, a former defence lawyer, opposed capital punishment and his 
cabinet commuted around 75 per cent of death sentences, according to Boyd.

The justice who presided over Mantha’s trial wrote to the federal justice 
minister asking for leniency.

Boyd said memos to cabinet, which referred to Mantha as “the homosexual,” 
indicate that his sexual orientation was a factor in the decision to deny 
clemency.

“Most of the death sentences were being commuted, but sexual orientation was 
something of a motivation for cabinet in deciding this was an especially 
heinous crime,” he said.

“Today, 2 people who are intimately involved who get involved in a very serious 
argument that leads to the death of the other without any evidence of planning 
— that would normally be a manslaughter charge, maybe second-degree murder. It 
says something about the culture of that time and the anti-gay sentiments of 
that era and the pre-eminence of those sentiments in government.”

Mantha was scheduled to hang at Burnaby’s Oakalla Prison along with 19-year-old 
Robert Chapman.

Chapman, who was convicted of killing his brother, had his sentence commuted at 
the 11th hour.

Mantha wasn’t so fortunate.

On April 27, 1959, Mantha ate a T-bone steak for his last meal, wrote a letter 
to his sister, and prayed. He was led to the gallows at Burnaby’s Oakalla 
Prison, where 43 other executions had taken place.

With several witnesses, including 2 newspaper reporters, looking on, Mantha was 
hanged shortly after midnight.

He was the last person to be hanged in B.C.

2 more men — Ronald Turpin and Arthur Lucas — were executed after Mantha in 
1962. The federal government then commuted all death sentences until capital 
punishment was abolished in 1976.

In addition to highlighting the homophobia of the era, Boyd says Mantha’s case 
highlights how life-and-death legal decisions could be “extraordinarily 
capricious.”

“The decisions about who should live and who should die, there were a lot of 
politics that went into those decisions,” he said.

(source: globalnews.ca)








PAKISTAN:

Pakistan suspends executions during Ramazan



Prison authorities across the country will not be carrying out executions from 
the first of Ramazan till Eidul Fitr, Express News reported on Monday.

The decision to temporarily suspend the death penalty comes in view of the 
sanctity of the holy month. President Arif Alvi will also deliberate upon and 
is expected to grant presidential pardons over the course of Ramazan.

The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) government had imposed a moratorium on capital 
punishment after coming to power in 2008.

The moratorium was, however, lifted by the Nawaz Sharif-led government through 
an executive order after the 2014 terrorist attack on the Army Public School in 
Peshawar.

Pakistan faults UN for ‘misreading’ its vote on death penalty resolution

The decision was endorsed by parliament through 21st Constitutional Amendment 
in January 2015 which sought to establish military courts for speedy trials in 
terrorist offences and acts threatening the security of Pakistan. The move was 
part of the National Action Plan, a comprehensive strategy to deal with the 
menace of terrorism.

Since then, Pakistan has executed almost 500 prisoners. The number accounted 
for 13 % of the total executions carried out globally between 2015 and 2017.

There are currently 289 death row prisoners at the Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi , 
12 out of whom are women who have challenged the death penalty in apex and high 
courts. At least 18 of the death row prisoners are awaiting a decision on 
clemency pleas.

According to a report of the Justice Project Pakistan, ‘Counting the 
Condemned’, Pakistan has sentenced 4,500 people to death and executed around 
821 over the last 14 years. The Supreme Court has overturned 85 per cent of the 
death sentences during appeals in the last 3 years.

According to a military tally, the federal government had referred 717 cases to 
military courts this year, of which 546 were decided. A total of 310 terrorists 
were awarded the death penalty, while 234 were awarded rigorous imprisonment of 
varied durations ranging from life imprisonment to 5 years in jail and 2 others 
were acquitted.

The military says that 56 condemned prisoners have been executed after final 
decisions from the top judiciary and rejection of clemency appeals by the 
president and the army chief.

Pakistani prisoners freed by Saudi Arabia start arriving home

Crimes punishable by death in Pakistan

Article 10 (a) of the Constitution of Pakistan grants every citizen the right 
to a fair trial, Article 185 (2) (a) allows the court to award capital 
punishment to an individual found guilty of any crimes punishable by death as 
defined in the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).

The 27 offences punishable by death in the PPC include blasphemy (295-C of 
PPC); high treason (Section 2 of the High Treason Act, 1973); murder (Section 
301 of PPC); hijacking (Section 402-B, C of PPC); waging or abetting war 
against Pakistan (Section 121 of PPC); Rape (Section 6 of the Zina Ordinance, 
1979); adultery (Section 5 of the Offence of Zina Ordinance, 1979); mutiny and 
subordination (Section 31 of the Pakistan Army Act, 1952); abetment of mutiny 
(Section 132 of PPC); offences in relation to enemy, treachery, mutiny, and 
cowardice (Section 24 of the Pakistan Army Act, 1952), arms trading (Section 
13-A(1) of the Pakistan Arms (Amendment) Ordinance, 1996), giving up military 
passwords, intentionally using unassigned military passwords (Section 26 of the 
Pakistan Army Act); stripping a woman’s clothes (Section 354-A of PPC), 
abduction to subject someone to unnatural lust (Section 12 of the Offence of 
Zina Ordinance, 1979); kidnapping or abduction of minor (Section 364-A of PPC); 
kidnapping for ransom or extortion (Section 365-A of PPC); importing, exporting 
into and from Pakistan dangerous drugs (Section 13 of the Dangerous Drugs Act, 
1930); importing, exporting inter-provincially or manufacturing drugs (Section 
14 of the Dangerous Drugs Act, 1930); drugs smuggling (Section 9 of the Control 
of Narcotics Substances Act, 1997); gang rape (Section 10(4) of the Offence of 
Zina Ordinance, 1979); sabotage of the railways system (Section 127 of the 
Railways (Amended) Act, 1995); Haraabah (Section 15 of the Offences Against 
Property Ordinance, 1979); scheduled offence likely to create terror or disrupt 
sectarian harmony (Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997); aggravated 
murder (Section 302 of PPC); robbery resulting in death (Section 396 of PPC) 
and Bearing false witness intending or knowing the accused may be convicted of 
a capital offence, if an innocent person is convicted and executed as a result 
(Section 194 of PPC).

(source: tribune.com.pk)








CHINA:

Gang Leader Evades Death Penalty for Two Decades Thanks to Political 
Connections----A local gang leader in the southwestern city of Kunming was able 
to evade his death penalty punishment for two decades thanks to his parents’ 
roles in the local police.



Sun Xiaoguo was convicted of rape and assault charges in 2 court cases, the 
latter in 1998 when he was sentenced to death.

But thanks to protection from his mother, a police officer in the Kunming 
police bureau in charge of criminal cases, and his stepfather, then-deputy 
director at the local Guandu district police station, Sun got his punishment 
delayed and later was released from prison for good behavior.

Entrepreneur and Gang Leader

Kunming is the capital city of Yunnan Province, China’s most southwestern 
region that is connected with Burma, Laos, and Vietnam.

The state-run newspaper Kunming Daily reported on April 24 that amid a 
crackdown on local gangs launched by Kunming authorities, Sun Xiaoguo and his 
gang was arrested.

Sun ran several front companies, as a board member of four local companies, 
including two trading companies, a restaurant management company, and an 
investment firm.

He also previously ran several nightclubs in Kunming and nearby Yuxi and 
Wenshan cities, but sold his shares in them in 2017.

On Tianyan Cha, a Chinese database of local businesses, Sun is listed as an 
entrepreneur.

So far, those 4 companies are still in operation. Kunming authorities said Sun 
has been detained because he operates a gang, but has not filed formal charges.

Juvenile Offender

Sun in fact has a long criminal history.

Sun, now 44, was born and raised in Kunming. His previous criminal case were 
exposed by the state-run, but more liberal-minded Southern Weekly, in January 
1998.

Investigative reporter Yu Liuwen said he was threatened by Sun’s mother after 
the report was published, who made a phone call to the newspaper’s office 
saying she would put him in prison.

The article is no longer available online, while the court verdicts have been 
removed from local authorities’ websites. But through sleuthing, netizens 
recovered the articles and reposted them on social media.

In October 1994, a local court convicted Sun and other five suspects of 
gang-raping two young women. According to the Southern Weekly report, which was 
based on interviews with dozens of local sources, after Sun was arrested, Sun’s 
parents arranged for his age to be changed from 19 to 17 years-old, so that he 
could be charged as a minor and receive a reduced punishment.

In December 1995, the court sentenced Sun to 3 years in prison with a crime of 
rape, to be served until October 1997. Southern Weekly reported that Sun was 
not sent to prison, but in fact went straight home.

Sentenced to Death

Soon after, Sun was on the prowl again.

According to the Southern Weekly report, citing court documents and interviews, 
on Nov. 7, 1997, Sun lured two underage girls to a nightclub. Inside a private 
room, Sun and his followers began to assault them.

They punched and kicked them. One young woman faced the most brutal beating: 
they used cigarette butts to burn parts of her body, took off her clothes and 
used toothpicks to prick her nipples, repeatedly hit her head against the 
marble table, and peed on her face. The young woman lost consciousness.

Sun’s followers sent the girls to the hospital after realizing they could be 
seriously injured.

According to the subsequent police investigation, Sun had raped 1 of the women 
in June 1997 when he first knew her. Sun was also involved in the gang rape of 
at least 6 other teenagers, according to police files the Southern Weekly 
obtained.

The newspaper also reported that since 1996, Sun asked many bars, clubs, and 
disco halls in Kunming to pay him protection fees, threatening that his gang 
would destroy their facilities if they did not comply.

According to an internal book of China’s biggest cases published by China Law 
Press in 1999, for the harm done to the 2 women, Sun was sentenced to death in 
February 1998 on charges of rape, insults to women, intentional injury, and 
picking quarrels and provoking trouble.

The Kunming intermediate court sentenced Sun to death on Feb. 18, 1998. Sun 
appealed the sentence but the Yunnan supreme court upheld the sentence.

But on March 9, 1999, Sun was found to still be alive. The Yunnan supreme court 
changed the death penalty to include 2 years’ reprieve. In September 2001, the 
court again changed his sentence, to 18.5 years in prison. The prison then 
released Sun early in 2012, citing good behavior.

State-run newspaper The Paper reported on April 26 that the police officers in 
charge of his case at the involved police bureaus and the Kunming Prison are 
now under investigation.

(source: The Epoch Times)








PAPUA NEW GUINEA:

Papuan armed group lambasts death penalty demand for member



The National Liberation Army of West Papua (TPNPB) has lambasted the government 
for demanding the death penalty for a TPNPB member arrested over the killing of 
military personnel.

The armed group demanded that the prosecution retract the death penalty demand, 
as Yogor Telenggen was a political defendant, not a criminal one.

“The shooting happened in a conflict area, military against military. It was 
not murder of a civilian,” TPNPB spokesperson Sebby Sembom said in a press 
release made available on Monday. “He is a political defendant, not a criminal 
one,” he said.

Yogor was a “fighter” of the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement (OPM) that 
had been fighting for Papuans’ right to self-determination, Sebby went on.

On Friday, prosecutors at the Manokwari District Court had demanded the death 
sentence against Yonggor for premeditated murder in violation of Article 340 of 
the Criminal Code. He stands accused of killing Indonesian Military (TNI) 
member First Pvt. Sandi Novian at Sinak Market in February.

Yogor’s lawyer, Christian Warinusi, told The Jakarta Post on Monday that his 
client also stood accused of four other shootings, but Yogor only admitted 
guilt on the shooting of a Trigana plane in Mulia in Puncak Jaya, Papua, on 
orders of the armed group.

The lawyer said that, contrary to the accusation, Yogor had not shot Sandi. 
Rather, Yogor’s friend had borrowed his weapon and used it to shoot the 
soldier, before snatching Sandi’s weapon.

The weapon is one of the pieces of evidence put forward against Yogor in the 
case.

The lawyer also said Yogor was a political defendant. “He is a combatant, so he 
should not be charged under the Criminal Code. Yogor shot someone who was 
armed, the enemy,” Christian went on.

He raised questions about the punishment of Indonesian Military personnel who 
shot unarmed civilians. Several Papuan activists have accused the TNI of 
hurting civilians in their attempt to eradicate the rebels.

The 30 year-old suspect had been sentenced to life imprisonment in another case 
in 2013 for alleged involvement in various lethal attacks against TNI and 
police personnel. In January 2016, he escaped from Abepura prison and was 
rearrested in May last year, according to the TPNPB. The group said police had 
shot Yogor in the knee during the arrest last year.

He was later detained at the Police’s Mobile Brigade building in Jayapura and 
sent to Manokwari for the trial in January, TPNPB said.

(source: The Jakarta Post)




BELARUS:

Belarus puts on hold deportation of foreigner who may face death penalty in 
Iran



A Minsk court has overturned the decision to deport Iranian citizen Merhdat 
Jamshidiyan who has spent 10 months in Belarusian prison. His case has been 
sent back for review.

The Belarusian Department of Citizenship and Migration (OGIM) was about to 
extradite the man to Iran where he is highly likely to get a death sentence. 
The Ministry of Interior refused to give the man refugee status.

Merhdat Jamshidiyan has been living in Belarus for more than 20 years and, with 
the exception of the last two years, he had had registration. But for the last 
seven years Iran has been asking to give out the man, because the state 
suspects of murdering his mother and brother (for the record, he was an 
opposition activist) in September, 2012. It should be noted that Merhdat was 
staying in Belarus at that moment.

Until recently, the Belarusian side refused to start extradition proceedings 
due to lack of conclusive evidence. Even if a man is found not guilty in his 
homeland, he may still be executed; in Belarus, he converted to Christianity, 
which is considered as apostasy.

For the year to date, almost 1,000 Belarusians have signed an appeal to the 
authorities asking ‘not to send Merhdat to his doom’.

(source: belsat.eu)








IRAN:

Execution Trend in Iran; January to April 2019



In 2019, by April 30, at least 79 people have been executed in Iran. Only 22 of 
the cases were announced by Iranian authorities or media. There is a high 
possibility that more executions have been carried out far from the eyes of 
human rights defenders.

According to the Iran Human Rights (IHR) statistic department, from January 1 
to April 30, 2019, at least 79 people have been executed in Iran. During the 
same period of time last year, 64 people were executed in the country.

At least two juvenile offenders, Mehdi Sohrabifar and Amin Sedaghat, were among 
the executed prisoners. Both were executed on April 25 at Shiraz Central Prison 
(Adel-Abad Prison). They were less than 16 at the time of the alleged “rape and 
robbery” crime. Moreover, IHR has received unconfirmed information about 
another juvenile execution in Ilam prison which is under further fact-check 
investigation. IHR announces executions only after the confirmation of two 
different credible sources. Last year during the same period, 3 juvenile 
offenders were executed. Since juvenile executions is a sensitive issue for 
Iranian authorities, they keep such executions secret. Therefore, there is a 
high chance that the number of executed juvenile offenders are also higher than 
reported.

During the first 4 months of 2019, at least 5 prisoners have been executed for 
drug-related charges:

On March 11, 2019, Shirmohammad Narouei, 50, and his son Younes Narouei, 20, 
were executed at Birjan prison. Abdollah Ghanbarzehi, 29, was executed on April 
15, 2019, at Dastgerd prison in the Iranian city of Isfahan. And on April 27, 
prisoner Kamal Shahbakhsh was executed at Kerman central prison.

Last year in the same period of time, 1 person was executed for drug offenses.

Public executions were also continued in 2019. At least 7 people have been 
hanged publicly in from by the end of April. During the same period of time 
last year, 3 people were executed in Iran.

And last but not least, 65 people have been executed for murder charges (qisas 
or retribution in kind) between January 1 and April 30, 2019. In the first 4 
months of 2018, IHR reported 53 executions in Iran.

Only 22 cases out of 79 have been announced by Iranian authorities or media. 
The rest have been confirmed by IHR’s sources. Thus, the actual number could be 
much higher than what is reported here.

(source: Iran Human Rights)








BRUNEI:

Brunei says it will not enforce gay sex death penalty after backlash----Sultan 
extends moratorium to death by stoning law in rare response to global criticism



Brunei’s Sultan, Hassanal Bolkiah, has extended a moratorium on the death 
penalty to incoming legislation on punishments for gay sex, after a global 
backlash led by celebrities such as George Clooney and Elton John.

The country provoked an outcry when it rolled out its interpretation of Islamic 
laws, or sharia, on 3 April, punishing sodomy, adultery and rape with death, 
including by stoning.

Brunei has consistently defended its right to implement the laws, elements of 
which were first adopted in 2014 and which have been rolled out in phases since 
then.

However, in a rare response to criticism aimed at the oil-rich state, the 
sultan said on Sunday that the death penalty would not be enforced in the 
implementation of the sharia penal code order (SPCO).

Some crimes already command the death penalty in Brunei, including premeditated 
murder and drug trafficking, but no executions have been carried out since the 
1990s.

“I am aware that there are many questions and misperceptions with regard to the 
implementation of the SPCO. However, we believe that once these have been 
cleared, the merit of the law will be evident,” the sultan said in a speech 
before the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

“As evident for more than two decades, we have practised a de facto moratorium 
on the execution of death penalty for cases under the common law. This will 
also be applied to cases under the SPCO, which provides a wider scope for 
remission.“

The vastly wealthy sultan, who once piloted his own 747 airliner to meet the 
former US president Barack Obama, often faces criticism from activists who view 
his absolute monarchy as despotic, but it is unusual for him to respond.

The sultan’s office released an official English translation of his speech, 
which is not common practice.

“Both the common law and the sharia law aim to ensure peace and harmony of the 
country,” he said. “They are also crucial in protecting the morality and 
decency of the country as well as the privacy of individuals.”

The law’s implementation, which the UN condemned, prompted celebrities and 
rights groups to seek a boycott on hotels owned by the sultan, including the 
Dorchester in London and the Beverley Hills hotel in Los Angeles.

Several multinational companies have since banned staff from using the sultan’s 
hotels, while some travel companies have stopped promoting Brunei as a tourist 
destination.

(source: The Guardian)