[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

May 30



KENYA:

FORGET HUMAN RIGHTS----Execute culprits to win graft war, politician urges 
Uhuru; Says Big Four agenda will never be realised given the level of 
corruption in Kenya



A former MP aspirant in Embu yesterday urged President Uhuru Kenyatta to 
disregard human rights provisions and let the military execute corruption 
culprits.

John Mukunji, who contested for Manyatta MP in the last general election, said 
perpetrators of corruption exploit the Constitution's provisions to escape 
punishment and that is why there are unending scandals involving billions of 
shillings.

He said the only way to end corruption is "to have one or two killed by firing 
squad".

Mukunji said culprits use the money they steal to fight for freedom.

"We can never expect corruption to end unless the culprits are given capital 
punishment, he said.

Mukunji asked the President to do away with his Big Four agenda of ensuring 
food security, affordable housing, universal health and manufacturing and focus 
on corruption.

Considering the manner in which corruption is deep-rooted in Kenya, Uhuru will 
not get the funds to carry out his agenda, the politician said.

He said the proposed 1.5 % tax for affordable housing will go a country that 
has been unable to fight corruption.

“My advice to the President is, ignore the issue of human rights for these 
corrupt guys. Let’s not let someone who has stolen a billion be fined Sh500,000 
or get anticipatory bail of Sh500,000 when the money is gone already".

Mukunji said chicken thieves are dealt very harshly in the country but those 
who steal billions of money go scot free.

“We cannot win the fight against corruption at the courts of law in Kenya 
unless the President handles it himself with the military and gets rid of 
corrupt individuals."

(source: the-star.co.ke)








THAILAND:

Death penalty is no answer



Amendments to the criminal law to make severe sex crimes punishable by death 
may cause some people to rejoice. Yet, it would be wrong to think that capital 
punishment is a panacea for the long-standing problem.

In general, some rights activists recognise improvements in the amended law, 
saying that the changes will facilitate the work of the police. The amendments 
were published in the Royal Gazette on Monday.

The amended version introduced new elements including clear-cut definitions 
between rape and a sexual offence known in Thai as anajan.

But Thai society should should be aware that it cannot pin its hopes on capital 
punishment. Upgrading the penalty from imprisonment to death will not provide a 
guarantee that incidents of rape or murder will decrease. On the contrary, 
there are wide concerns that the threat of the death penalty could lead to 
rapists killing their victims in order to silence them.

There is also a major flaw in the justice system as some suspects may end up as 
scapegoats for others' crimes. Some may be forced to confess through torture 
and the real culprits may be able to get away scot-free.

In fact, punishing rapists with death is a contentious issue that divides 
society.

Over the past 2 years, some people have stepped up calls for the death sentence 
for rapists following the rape-murder of young victims, including that of a 
railway worker who killed a young passenger on a night train in 2014 in a case 
that shocked the nation.

The appalling case prompted many people to sign up for a campaign that called 
for "eye-for-an-eye" measures.

But, for one thing, such a tougher penalty, while not solving the problem, will 
only further batter the country's already stained human rights record.

Thailand is among 58 countries that still has the death penalty. More than 140 
countries have already abandoned capital punishment. Resorting to the death 
sentence in rape-murder cases will mean the nation cannot honour the promise it 
has made to the international community that it will scrap capital punishment.

Proponents of the punishment of death for convicted rapists really need to look 
thoroughly into the real causes of the problem. Rape is a form of social 
malady, so killing rapists will not end up preventing such crimes as long as 
the root causes remain unsolved.

On the other hand, they should look into why several countries that have 
decided to revoke the death penalty have done so without fearing that relaxing 
the punishments will encourage rape.

In fact, society needs to look at preventiveness that may work better in 
deterring rape. This means everyone in society must do their best to intensify 
social and ethical measures, instill family values, and strengthen families. 
Communities must work hard to get rid of the rape culture through education, 
provide efficient surveillance systems and do away with the conditions that 
make it easy for would-be rapists to commit these heinous crimes.

(source: Editorial, Bangkok Post)








PHILIPPINES:

Eleazar favors death penalty



Metro Manila police director Guillermo Eleazar on Wednesday said he was in 
favor of death as the capital punishment for individuals engaged in drug 
dealing.

“It will be a big deterrent for those who are involved in transacting big 
volume of drugs,” said Eleazar.

But he said the death penalty was good but it must be in a holistic approach.

“There must be some interventions, other interventions as well as safeguards in 
order for it not to be abused and used against innocent people. In the case of 
illegal drugs, it must be the big time members of the syndicates who are 
actually distributing large amount of illegal drugs. They should be the one 
covered the penalty,” added Eleazar.

Eleazar made the statement following the arrest of 65-year old suspected member 
of drug syndicate caught with P10.2 million worth of shabu in Pateros late 
Tuesday afternoon.

The National Capital Region Police Office arrested Angelo Reyes, alias “Litong 
Pangit”, during police anti-drug operation along Alley 22 in Barangay Sta. Ana 
around 5:30 pm.

Police recovered 1,500 grams of shabu, 10 bundles of P1,000 boodle money 
equivalent to P1 million, a weighing scale, and a Toyoya Altis car used by the 
suspect to deliver the illegal substance during the operation.

Prior to the police operation, the authorities placed the suspect under a 
week-long surveillance following information about his illegal activity.

Eleazar said the suspect is connected to a group of Chinese nationals engaged 
in the illegal drug trade operating in the southern part of Metro Manila and in 
the province of Laguna.

“We will be conducting follow-up operations in order to find the other 
suppliers of illegal drugs. We have some information and we will identify the 
clients and the suppliers of the suspect,” he said.

The government under the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte is pushing 
a measure bringing back the death penalty against criminal elements, especially 
those engaged in drug trafficking.

Drug dealing and its use remain the serious concern of the government.

Late last week, government agents seized 146 kilos of shabu found at the 
warehouse of Goldwin Commercial in Malabon City.

The contraband was part of a three 20-foot container van shipment of 51,000 
kilos of tapioca starch from Cambodia exported by HKSTC Trading Co. Ltd. 
abandoned at the Manila International Container Port in North Harbor last 
March.

(source: manilastandard.net)








EGYPT:

The hangman of the Middle East: US-backed regime in Egypt hands down nearly 
2,500 death sentences



Egypt’s US-backed dictatorship of Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has sentenced 2,443 
people to death since coming to power in a bloody coup in 2013, according to a 
report issued this week by the UK-based human rights group Reprieve.

Of those sentenced to die by hanging, 2,008, or 82 % of the total, were 
convicted of political offenses.

A death penalty index tracking the use of the death penalty in Egypt and 
identifying those faced with execution recorded cases up until September 23, 
2018, when 77 of those on the country’s teeming death row faced imminent 
execution as a result of convictions in criminal trials. Since then, at least 
six of them have been put to death.

In total, 144 people have been executed by the Egyptian regime over the past 
five years. This compares to a single execution carried out between the 2011 
revolution that overthrew the 30-year-long US-backed dictatorship of Hosni 
Mubarak and the July 3, 2013, coup led by General Sisi against the elected 
government of President Mohammed Morsi. During this same interval, a total of 
152 death sentences were recommended by the Egyptian courts, compared to the 
nearly 2,500 issued since.

The death sentences have, in many cases, been handed down in mass trials in 
which defendants are brought before drumhead military tribunals in which they 
are denied all of the elementary rights to a fair trial including the right to 
present an individual defense, representation by legal counsel and the ability 
to call or examine witnesses.

The assembly line of state murder in Egypt begins with arbitrary arrest 
followed by a period of “enforced disappearance” in which prisoners are held 
incommunicado without charges and subjected to hideous torture until submitting 
to signing a confession. They are then brought into cages in military courts 
alongside dozens if not hundreds of others.

Under the regime’s “Assembly Law,” unlimited numbers of defendants can be tried 
together on the theory that they were involved in a “joint enterprise” in the 
alleged commission of a crime by a single individual. This has allowed the 
handing down of the death penalty for thousands of people whose sole crime has 
been to participate in peaceful protests against the regime.

Children have been subjected to this same treatment, tried for their lives 
alongside adults. The Reprieve report found that at least 12 of those condemned 
to hang were children at the time of their arrests, rounded up, tried and 
sentenced in flagrant violation of international law. Thousands of such 
children have been unlawfully arrested since the 2013 coup.

Among them is Ahmed Saddouma, who was dragged from his bed and taken from his 
family’s home on the outskirts of Cairo by Egyptian police in March 2015. He 
was held incommunicado for 80 days as his parents desperately searched for him. 
During that time, he was subjected to continuous torture, savagely beaten with 
metal bars and electrocuted all over his body until he signed a false 
confession.

“It is a political trial based on trumped-up charges,” the boy’s father, Khaled 
Mostafa Saddouma, told Middle East Eye. “I saw marks of torture on his body, 
which he said happened during interrogations.”

Even though the crime to which he confessed, the attempted assassination of a 
judge, took place three weeks after he had been seized by the police, he was 
convicted and sentenced to death in a mass trial of 30 people. It appears that 
his only real “crime” was participating in a protest together with fellow 
members of a group of football fans known as the Ultras.

Also sentenced to die for a crime he was alleged to have committed at the age 
of 17 and while a high school student is Karim Hemeida Youssef, whose June 22 
sentencing was not included in the data compiled by Reprieve.

Arrested in January 2016, he also was subjected to “enforced disappearance” for 
42 days during which he was tortured into confessing to taking part in an 
attack on a Cairo hotel.

“When he denied the charges, a security officer electrocuted him repeatedly all 
over his body until he was forced to confess,” his father told Middle East Eye 
.

At least 32 women have also been condemned to death under Sisi’s reign, 
according to Reprieve.

The abysmal conditions in Egypt’s prisons are claiming more victims than the 
hangman’s noose. Since the coming to power of Sisi, at least 60,000 people have 
been imprisoned on political charges, jailed under hellish conditions of severe 
overcrowding, lack of sanitation and denial of medical care.

Defendants in mass trial

According to the London-based Arab Organization for Human Rights, nearly 800 
detainees have died in Egyptian jails since the 2013 coup, most as the result 
of medical negligence.

“Egyptian prisons have turned into execution compounds taking the lives of 
their detainees by denying them the right to the medical care they need and 
providing a fertile environment for diseases and epidemics to spread inside the 
detention centers due to the lack of hygiene, pollution and overcrowding,” the 
group said.

It said that there had been 20 such deaths so far in 2019, including 15 
detainees charged based on their political opposition to the regime.

Egyptian security forces, meanwhile, are carrying out violent repression 
against the civilian population in the northern Sinai Peninsula that amounts to 
war crimes, according to a report issued on Tuesday by Human Rights Watch 
(HRW).

The 134-page report documents arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, 
torture, extra-judicial killings, and mass evictions, as well as air and ground 
assaults against civilian populations.

The report states that children as young as 12 have been rounded up in mass 
sweeps of the region and held in secret prisons.

The area is subject to a demilitarization treaty between Egypt and Israel, but 
the Israeli government has not only allowed a massive Egyptian military 
deployment, ostensibly in a campaign to eradicate the Islamic State of Iraq and 
Syria (ISIS), but has itself participated in airstrikes in the region.

The HRW report called upon the US government to “halt all military and security 
assistance to Egypt,” while indicating that Washington’s support for the regime 
implicated it in war crimes.

Washington is the foremost backer of the blood-stained dictatorship in Cairo, 
with the US Congress approving the Trump administration’s request for $3 
billion in aid to the Sisi regime, with another $1.4 billion in the pipeline 
for 2020.

This aid has gone to the purchase of F-16 fighter jets, M1A1 Abrams battle 
tanks, Apache attack helicopters and Humvees, all of which have been unleashed 
upon the population of the Sinai Peninsula. Also included in this package are 
cluster bomb munitions, banned by most countries because of their lethal 
effects on civilian populations and, in particular, children.

The US Central Command has also resumed “Operation Bright Star,” a major 
military exercise begun under the Mubarak dictatorship, which focuses on 
training Egyptian forces for “irregular warfare.”

The US State Department dismissed the HRW report, insisting that US military 
aid had “long played a central role in Egypt’s economic and military 
development, and in furthering regional stability.” It added that the 
assistance was aimed at “countering the Iranian regime’s dangerous activities” 
in the region.

The US military’s aid to Egypt’s armed forces have implicated it in war crimes

Similarly, a Pentagon spokesman insisted that “The US strategic 
military-to-military relationship with Egypt remains unchanged.”

US President Donald Trump, who praised General Sisi during his visit last month 
to the White House for doing “a fantastic job in a very difficult situation,” 
has since announced that he will formally brand the Muslim Brotherhood, which 
backed the overthrown Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, as a “terrorist 
organization.”

This classification of an organization that Washington utilized over a long 
period in the Middle East to counter the influence of socialist and 
left-nationalist political forces has the sole purpose of legitimizing the mass 
murder being carried out by the Egyptian regime.

Washington backs Sisi precisely because of his role in ruthlessly suppressing 
the revolutionary movement of workers and young people that toppled Mubarak in 
2011 and threatened to spread throughout the region, undermining the strategic 
interests of US imperialism.

The police state repression undertaken by the Cairo regime with Washington’s 
backing is only postponing a revolutionary reckoning with the Egyptian working 
class. Under conditions in which 40 % of the population subsists on less than 
$2 a day, while inflation and the elimination of subsidies to meet the demands 
of the IMF are slashing the living standards of masses of workers, a new 
eruption of class battles is inevitable.

Workers who rose up in the textile mill towns of the Nile Delta, the Egyptian 
ports and in Cairo itself to overthrow Mubarak, will be impelled once again 
onto the road of struggle. The lessons of the betrayal of the Egyptian 
revolution of 2011 must be assimilated and a new revolutionary leadership built 
in the working class as a section of the International Committee of the Fourth 
International.

(source: World Socialist Web Site)



JORDAN:

Death penalty to Egyptian expatriate for killing Jordanian citizen in Madaba in 
June 2016



The Grand Criminal Court has sentenced on Wednesday, May 29, 2019, an Egyptian 
expatriate to death for killing a Jordanian citizen in Madaba in June 2016 
after agreeing with the victim's wife, who had an illegitimate relationship 
with the killer.

The Court had also sentenced the wife to hard labor after being accused of 
complicity in the murder.

Prior to the date of the murder, the Syrian wife, who planned with the killer 
to carry out the crime, had given him JD 300 to buy a pistol in order to kill 
the victim.

The criminal had indeed bought the pistol and since he already knows the 
victim, he asked him to get into his car and go on a ride with him.

The killer then shot the victim in the head, where he died immediately for a 
skull fracture and brain damage.

The criminal was convicted of premeditated murder by Judge Ibrahim Abu Shamma, 
in the presence of the 2 civilian Judges Anwar Abu Eid, Tariq Al-Rasheed and 
the Court's Prosecutor Afif Khawaldeh.

(source: royanews.tv)








IRAQ:

France Hands ISIS Suspects to Iraq, Which Sentences Them to Hang



The 7 French citizens, wearing sandals and yellow jumpsuits, were brought 
before an Iraqi judge in a Baghdad courtroom this week to answer for their 
offense: joining the Islamic State.

Each admitted to having thrown in his lot with the militants, working as tax 
collector, Arabic teacher, military trainer, chicken seller, medical aide or 
fighter.

If there was evidence that any had committed a violent crime, it was never 
presented. Most had not even seen a lawyer until moments before being escorted 
into the courtroom.

And yet after 7 trials over 4 days, Judge Ahmed Mohamed Ali delivered 7 
identical sentences: death by hanging.

The Frenchmen were among the roughly 4,000 foreigners captured in Syria and 
Iraq after the rout of ISIS, and they pose an international dilemma: Most of 
their home countries don’t want them back.

The trials have drawn world attention as a test of whether Iraqi courts can 
meet international standards for a fair trial, and provide a just solution to 
one of the most vexing problems left in the aftermath of the battle against the 
Islamic State: what to do with its legions of followers.

If the 1st week was any indication, the legal process in Iraq will be swift, 
and unvarying.

“The penalty is the death sentence, whether they fought or not,” Judge Ali said 
in a brief interview after court adjourned on Monday. He also sentenced an 8th 
defendant, a Tunisian who is a resident of France, to death.

In the first batch of 12 cases that began on Sunday, France, a country that 
prides itself as a champion of human rights and opponent of the death penalty, 
essentially outsourced the judicial process to Iraq.

The French foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said Wednesday that there were 
450 French citizens affiliated with the Islamic State being held in camps in 
northeastern Syria. But with memories still fresh of the terrorist attacks in 
Paris in 2015, in Nice in 2016 and Trèbes in 2018, polls show that a vast 
majority of French people do not want these citizens returned, even if they 
were to be detained and tried.

One problem, said Jean-Charles Brisard, the head of the Center for the Analysis 
of Terrorism in Paris, is that sometimes “there’s not enough proof” to convict 
them in French courts.

So France, which has sometimes refused to return foreigners to face justice in 
countries that use torture and the death penalty, has turned its citizens over 
to a legal system in which due process rights are significantly weaker and the 
death penalty is common.

International legal experts say Iraq’s terrorism prosecutions are intrinsically 
flawed: Confessions are sometimes obtained through torture or coercion, some 
judges are biased, and defendants routinely lack adequate legal counsel.

“You can’t outsource a trial that suspends fundamental trial rights, if the 
trial is unfair and the punishment is disproportionate,” said Andrew Clapham, 
professor of international law at the Graduate Institute for International and 
Development Studies in Geneva.

Government-appointed lawyers earn just $25 for taking a terrorism case from 
trial to appeals. In the cases this week, one lawyer said she had not seen her 
client’s file until the defendant entered the courtroom; others said they had 
just five or 10 minutes to review the case and discuss it with their clients 
beforehand.

Iraq’s antiterrorism law is a catchall that criminalizes membership in a 
terrorist organization, so the ISIS cook may face the same penalty as the bomb 
maker: life imprisonment or death. The law’s vagueness means that people are 
not held accountable for their specific crimes, human rights experts say. So if 
any of the defendants convicted this week committed murder, torture or rape, 
the subjects never arose in the trials.

Iraq is keenly aware of the spotlight and outfitted a new courtroom for the 
occasion. A panel of three judges, in black robes with white trim, sat on a 
platform beneath a flat-screen TV, which featured slick videos of the 
allegations against each suspect set to rousing music.

After Iraq’s 10-minute trials of Iraqi ISIS suspects last year, Judge Ali’s 
two-hour trials seemed unrushed and deliberate by comparison. He allowed the 
defendants and their lawyers ample time to present their cases. Sometimes he 
even stopped the lawyers from asking questions that could harm their clients’ 
defense.

However, he had no compunction about invoking the death penalty. Iraq ranked in 
the top five countries that most frequently carried out the death penalty in 
2018, according to Amnesty International. Its liberal use of capital punishment 
appears to violate international covenants, which Iraq has signed, that reserve 
the death penalty for only the most serious crimes, like murder.

Some 514 foreign ISIS suspects were tried in Iraqi courts in 2018 and the first 
4 months of 2019, according to the Supreme Judicial Council. A spokesman said 
the council did not have records of how many had received the death penalty or 
how many had been executed.

If any of the defendants convicted this week committed murder, torture or rape, 
the subjects never arose in the trials.

Subscribe for original insights, commentary and discussions on the major news 
stories of the week, from columnists Max Fisher and Amanda Taub.

Iraq has also been criticized by human rights advocates for sometimes allowing 
confessions obtained under torture to be used as evidence.

One of the French defendants said he had been tortured into writing his 
confession. During his trial on Monday, Fodhil Tahar Aouidate, a native of 
Roubaix, France, lifted up his shirt and showed black marks on his stomach to 
the judge and then turned and showed them to the courtroom.

Judge Ali adjourned Mr. Aouidate’s trial until his allegations could be 
evaluated by a medical team. He is to return to court on Sunday. Another 
defendant, Mohammed Hassan Mohammed Berriri, said Wednesday that he had seen 
people tortured and beaten and to avoid that, “I will say anything.”

On Sunday, after death sentences were handed down in the first three cases, the 
French Foreign Ministry said in a statement that “France respects the Iraqi 
authorities’ sovereignty,” but added that “France is opposed, on principle, to 
the death penalty, anytime and anywhere.”

Under Iraqi law, defendants have the right to appeal and the president must 
sign off before an execution is carried out. On Tuesday, Mr. Le Drian, the 
French foreign minister, said he had discussed the death-penalty issue with the 
Iraqi president, Barham Salih.

Even if the French-Iraqi partnership is deemed a success, there are obstacles 
to scaling it up for the remaining 3,000 foreign detainees in Syria from about 
80 countries.

Several countries are in talks with the Iraqi government about transferring the 
detainees in Syria to Iraq for trial. Iraq is willing to handle the remaining 
cases but wants the suspects’ home countries to pay the costs of the court and 
prisons. There have been reports that Iraq is asking more than $1 million per 
detainee.

Several European countries are discussing the creation of an international 
tribunal to try ISIS suspects, but experts consider such a body overly 
expensive, of limited use and unrealistic.

The Kurdish authorities in northeastern Syria have suggested building a 
courthouse there to try foreign Islamic State prisoners but the location is in 
a war zone with no clear sovereignty.

Jeanine Hennis Plasschaert, the United Nations special representative for Iraq, 
said that ultimately countries “bear primary responsibility for their own 
nationals, including the treatment of their citizens in accordance with 
international law.”

“One would expect and hope that individual states take back their nationals to 
process, prosecute, and deradicalize them,” she said.

On Monday, when Judge Ali asked Mustapha Merzoughi, 37, to explain how and why 
he had journeyed to Syria, the stocky Frenchman at first said nothing. Then he 
almost spit out his words.

“I did stupid things, I regret it,” he said. “But I did not kill anyone. I did 
not want to commit any crime. I know I made a big mistake by joining a 
terrorist organization. I know you will give me the death penalty.”

When the hearing was over and he had sentenced Mr. Merzoughi to death, Judge 
Ali was asked if the defendants’ repeated declarations of regret were taken 
into account.

“Anyone who commits a crime will be feeling that kind of regret, but that’s not 
enough to drop the charges,” he said. “There are the victims, thousands of 
victims, Yazidis who were captured and sold at markets as slaves. Who would 
agree to join an organization that committed these kinds of crimes?”

(source: New York Times)

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

Concern Mounts as Iraq Sentences More French IS Fighters to Death



Rights groups are raising concerns about the lack of due process for hundreds 
of suspected IS fighters in Iraqi prisons as Baghdad this week condemned 6 
French Islamic State members to death.

An Iraqi court on Tuesday issued capital punishment to 2 French nationals who 
were found guilty of membership in the IS terror group. Another 4 French former 
jihadists were sentenced to death earlier this week.

London-based human rights organization Amnesty International charged it was 
"extremely concerned" the process could be used as retribution rather than 
justice for about 20,000 Iraqis and foreign nationals held in Iraq and awaiting 
trial on charges of committing crimes on behalf of IS and other jihadist 
groups.

"We're very concerned about the sheer number of people that have been arrested 
and detained by Iraqi authorities and certainly the rapid movement of the 
judicial system in just trying them, and in many cases sentencing them," 
Philippe Nassif, the Middle East and North Africa advocacy director at Amnesty 
International, told VOA in a telephone interview. "Several thousands of them 
have been sentenced to death. That's a really big concern."

Nassif said the unwillingness of countries to take back their citizens who 
joined IS and try them at home has added to the rapid executions. He added that 
many who are detained by Iraq have potentially committed crimes against 
civilians in Iraq and Syria, but many of the details remains unclear due to a 
lack of transparency and accountability in the swift trial process.

"We don't know what exact crimes these individuals have committed because they 
are tried within 10 minutes and they are sent to be executed, and we've never 
had the opportunity to find out what it is that they did," he said, adding the 
U.S. and European Union should step up efforts to help the Iraqi judicial body 
in facing this "gigantic problem."

The six French men — identified as Kévin Gonot, Léonard Lopez, Salim Machou, 
Mustapha Merzoughi, Karam el-Harchaoui and Brahim Nejara — have 30 days to 
appeal their death sentences. They are among six other French citizens handed 
over to Iraq by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces after their capture in 
the operation against IS.

France's reaction

France on Monday said it has informed its embassy in Baghdad to take "the 
necessary steps" to prevent Iraq from carrying out the sentences, reiterating 
its opposition to capital punishment while at the same time asking for 
accountability for IS crimes.

"France is opposed in principle to the death penalty at all times and in all 
places," the country's foreign ministry said in a statement.

Iraq began trying suspected IS local and foreign members shortly after 
declaring its final victory over IS in December 2017.

Earlier this month, the Iraqi judiciary said it had sentenced 514 suspected IS 
foreign fighters and acquitted 11 others since the start of 2018.

Iraqi officials in the past have said they will continue to hold the individual 
foreign fighters liable for damages in a fair process, rejecting accusations 
against the Iraqi judiciary.

In March, the speaker of Iraq's Council of Representatives said his country 
should be compensated monetarily as well.

"The Iraqi parliament will formally demand all countries whose citizens have 
either committed crimes inside Iraq [or] brought damage and harm to the Iraqi 
people ... bring those criminals to justice and compensate Iraq for the crimes 
they did to Iraq and the Iraqi people," Mohammed al-Halbousi told reporters in 
Washington.

Foreign fighters

Both the Iraqi government and U.S.-backed SDF have complained about the burden 
of holding hundreds of foreign fighters and their families after IS lost its 
self-proclaimed physical caliphate across Iraq and Syria.

Some experts say Iraqi courts could provide a window for Western countries as 
they grapple with the issue of what to do with IS foreign fighters.

The United States' current position is that jihadists ought to be tried in 
their home countries. But the United Kingdom and France have been reluctant to 
agree to such an arrangement.

"The official French statement condemning the death sentences given to these 
individuals was largely to soothe its EU allies who are against the death 
penalty," said Watheq al-Hashimi, director of the Iraqi Group for Strategic 
Studies, a Baghdad-based group that advises the Iraqi government.

While fundamentally against capital punishment, "in reality France would like 
to see Iraq try more French citizens who have joined IS," al-Hashimi added.

He said the trial of all IS foreign fighters could be a lengthy and expensive 
process requiring international assistance.

"Iraqi authorities are overwhelmed with the large number of IS foreign fighters 
detained in Iraq. Logistically, Iraq can't keep these individuals for a long 
time. For one thing, prisons are overcrowded. That's why Iraq has offered to 
try all IS foreign fighters for about $1.8 billion. But no response has been 
received yet from the international community."

(source: voanews.com)








IRAN:

Juvenile Offender Danial Zeinolabedini in Danger of Execution



According to information received by IHR, the death row juvenile offender 
Danial Zeinolabedini might be in danger of execution. Unofficial sources have 
told Danial's family that he will be executed after Ramadan, Muslims’ month of 
fasting, which ends in the first week of June. Danial Zeinolabedini is a 
juvenile offender whose death sentence has been upheld by the Iranian Supreme 
Court. Danial was born on August 9, 2000. He allegedly committed murder on 
September 22, 2017, when he was 17 years old. According to his relatives, he 
did not commit the murder and is innocent.

According to IHR sources, Danial Zeinolabedini is scheduled to be executed 
after Ramadan, Muslims’ month of fasting, which ends in the 1st week of June. 
Danial was along with 3 others charged with murdering a man identified as 
Sadegh Barmaki. Forensics announced that Mr Barmaki had died as a result of 
burn injuries. Danial has repeatedly said that he did not play a role in 
causing the burn injuries. However, the judge’s understanding is that Mr 
Barmaki was killed before his body was set on fire.

Nevertheless, Danial is a juvenile offender. Under the United Nations 
Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Iran has ratified, the Iranian 
authorities have an obligation to not issue the death sentence for offenses 
committed under the age of 18. However, at least 7 juveniles were executed in 
2018 and so far in 2019, at least 2 juvenile offenders have been executed in 
Iran.

Under Article 91 of the Islamic Penal Code which was added to the Iranian law 6 
years ago, judges are allowed to issue alternative verdicts for the minors. The 
juvenile offenders whom a judge considers not mature enough to realize the 
nature of the crime committed can face prison terms. Danial’s lawyer, Asoo 
Arya, had previously told IHR this client is underage. The lawyer said: 
"According to Article 91 of Iran’s Islamic Penal Code, execution of people 
under 18 years old is not allowed unless the court recognizes the defendant as 
a mature person by sending him/her to forensics. My client has not been sent to 
forensics.”

However, according to Article 91 of Iran's revised Islamic Penal Code, it is up 
to the presiding judge's discretion to deem the juvenile mature enough to 
understand the nature of the offense: "In the cases of offenses punishable by 
hadd or qisas, if mature people under eighteen years do not realize the nature 
of the crime committed or its prohibition, or if there is uncertainty about 
their full mental development, according to their age, they shall be sentenced 
to the punishments prescribed in this chapter." Otherwise, the Islamic Penal 
Code puts the age of criminal responsibility for males at 15 and 9 for females. 
The article has not led to a decrease in the execution of juvenile offenders. 
>From the application of article 91 in 2013 to the end of 2018, at least 42 
juvenile offenders have been hanged in Iranian prisons.

(source: Iran Human Rights)








FRANCE:

Civil society weighs in as Iraq vows to execute French citizens----Activists, 
lawyers call out French government for failing to protect suspected ISIL 
members sentenced to death in Iraq.



Activists and lawyers have pleaded with the French government to recognise 
flaws in Iraq's justice system after two more of its citizens accused of ISIL 
membership were given the death penalty, bringing the total to 6.

The executions could be carried out at the end of the week.

"We have information from Iraqi lawyers who do not want to take on these cases 
on because it's too dangerous for them," Raphael Chenuil-Hazan, Executive 
Director of the French NGO Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM) told Al 
Jazeera.

Human rights groups accuse the Iraqi government of conducting thousands of 
unfair trials against those suspected to be members of the Islamic State of 
Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS).

A report from Human Rights Watch said the trials are based on limited criminal 
evidence, often relying solely on a defendant's forced confession.

Defence lawyers have reported threats to them and their families for providing 
legal aid to ISIL suspects.

Iraq's justice system aside, Chenuil-Hazan said the French government has a 
responsibility to protect its citizens from the death penalty, which has been 
outlawed in France since 1981.

"Whatever they have done and whatever they have been accused of, France has a 
responsibility to support its citizens ... especially when they face the death 
penalty in another part of the world," said Chenuil-Hazan.

Foreign Minister Jean Yves Le Drian told French radio on Tuesday that he had 
been in contact with Iraqi President Barham Salih, and that the government was 
"multiplying efforts to avoid the death penalty."

"We are absolutely against the death penalty," Le Drian told French radio 
station France Inter. But, he added, "These terrorists ... need to be tried 
where they committed their crimes. It's the Iraqi justice system that will 
decide on them."

Violating international human rights

Lawyers said international human rights were at stake, stating that if the 
deaths are carried out, France and Iraq would be responsible for violating 
citizens' "right to life" as outlined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of 
Human Rights.

"France has the means to bring back our citizens and they know how to do it," 
Vincent Brengarth, a lawyer with the Paris-based law firm Bourdon & Associates 
told Al Jazeera. "But the fact is the state has exposed these people to the 
risk of the death penalty even though this sanction has been abolished and 
clearly contradicts international law."

Iraq sentences 2 more French ISIL members to death

Last year, Brengarth and his colleague William Bourdon travelled to Baghdad to 
represent Melina Boughedir, a 27-year-old French national suspected of ISIL 
involvement.

Boughedir was eventually found guilty of "terrorism" and sentenced to 20 years 
in prison. She is currently being held in an Iraqi cell with her two-year-old 
daughter.

While in Baghdad, Brengarth says he saw multiple flaws in the Iraqi justice 
system.

"We saw that the right to defence wasn't really being taken into account," said 
Brengarth who recounted witnessing people being sentenced to the death penalty 
after less than an hour of trial. "France has a responsibility ... it's 
abnormal that we cannot guarantee our citizens' these minimal rights."

The six French citizens sentenced to death are among more than a dozen captured 
by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in January and handed over to 
Iraq.

SDF forces have transferred hundreds of Iraqi and foreign detainees to Iraq in 
recent months, where trials are ongoing.

Iraq has taken a hardline position against those suspected of ISIL involvement 
after the group spent 3 years in control of 1/3 of the country.

As ISIL continues to lose territory, the Iraqi government has rushed to punish 
anyone suspected of ISIL involvement, with thousands awaiting trial.

Earlier this month, Sweden proposed setting up an international tribunal to 
prosecute those suspected of joining ISIL.

If implemented, the tribunal would model similar systems set up after the 1994 
Rwandan Genocide and wars in the former Yugoslavia. The talks, however, have 
yet to lead to any concrete measures.

A 'complicated' issue for French citizens

The question of what to do with suspected French ISIL fighters is a sensitive 
subject in France.

A wave of recent attacks are still on people's minds, particularly the November 
2015 Paris attacks that killed 130 people and were claimed by ISIL.

According to a poll conducted in early March, 82 percent of French citizens 
said they thought those suspected of ISIL involvement should be tried in Syria 
and Iraq.

"They said they wanted to die for their cause," Karine Dubus, a 44-year-old 
restaurant manager told Al Jazeera. "It was their choice to go to Syria, so now 
they have to accept their choice ... but I get that it's complicated."

Michelle Meilleur, a 65-year-old retiree living in northeast Paris, shared a 
similar sentiment.

"They left knowing what they were doing," Meilleur told Al Jazeera. "I think it 
would make sense for them to be tried over there...and I think my opinion 
reflects the majority of the French population."

According to French government figures, up to 1,700 French nationals travelled 
to Syria and Iraq between 2014 and 2018 to join ISIL.

One French national awaiting sentencing in Iraq, 32-year-old Fodil Tahar 
Aouidate, was seen in a video posted by ISIL shortly after the November 2015 
attacks. In the video, he said it was his "great pleasure and joy to see these 
unbelievers suffer as we suffer here".

Many French citizens say they are concerned that if the suspects are brought 
back to France, there won't be enough evidence or witnesses available to bring 
them to trial.

Still, some insist they should be repatriated and tried in their home country.

"They're French and they need to be tried by the French justice system," Kenza 
Dumay, a 22-year-old student. "Maybe they did terrible things, but they at 
least deserve the right to be tried by a fair justice system ... one that won't 
send them straight to their death."

(source: Al Jazeera News)