[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 7



PAKISTAN:

Pakistan PM vows justice after mobs kills Christian couple over 
'blasphemy'----A young Christian couple was accused of having desecrated a 
Quran on Tuesday and brutally murdered by a village crowd. Pakistan leader 
Nawaz Sharif vowed the attackers would be punished.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif weighed in on the brutal mob murder 
Tuesday of a young Christian couple accused of blasphemy, calling it a "public 
lynching" and saying the law should pursue and punish those responsible.

Local Muslim clerics have been arrested along with nearly 50 other people, 
according to The New York Times.

Charges of blasphemy in Pakistan are highly sensitive, and have at times led to 
vigilante justice. Anti-blasphemy laws can carry the death penalty.

The Christian couple were accused by fellow laborers Tuesday of desecrating a 
Quran, according to early reports. Members of a mob that grew to 500 or more 
people marched into their home, grabbed them, and burned them alive in a nearby 
industrial kiln where they worked in Kot Radha Kishan, a town south of Lahore 
in the Punjab.

A human rights investigative team, however, now says the original dispute was 
over money, but that calls went out on mosque loudspeakers in nearby villages 
accusing them of blasphemy and burning a Quran in the kiln.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan issued a statement saying their team on 
the ground "did not come across any evidence of desecration of the Holy Quran."

The couple were identified by media, police, and the commission as Shahbaz 
Maseeh and his wife, Shama Bibi, both in their twenties. They had 3 children, 
and Mrs. Bibi was pregnant according to the commission.

Mr. Sharif said Wednesday that, "A responsible state cannot tolerate mob rule 
and public lynching with impunity .... I have directed the Punjab chief 
minister to show no mercy and the law should take its course to punish those 
who are responsible for this act."

Condemnation of the attack was widespread, The New York Times reported, with 
demonstrations held in Lahore and Islamabad.

The case is quickly proving a sensitive one for Sharif following the decision 
late in October by a high court to move forward with the death penalty of Asia 
Bibi, who was found guilty several years ago under the anti-blasphemy law for 
making negative comments to her neighbors about the Koran while at a local 
water well. In 2011, the governor of Punjab Province, Salman Taseer, who took 
up her case and called for reforms to the laws, was assassinated.

Reuters' report from a local journalist who did not want to be named indicated 
that police at first did not respond to the Kot Radha Kishan case, and then did 
not intervene once the mob took over:

"Police did not take it seriously. Later they sent 5 officers to the spot,' the 
journalist said. 'The couple was thrashed and burnt in their presence."

The New York Times reports that the owner of the kiln, Yousaf Gujjar, has been 
arrested along with several Muslim clerics who are expected to be charged with 
inciting the murder of the couple, and offers further context on how blasphemy 
is often used to settle local scores:

Police officials said that 39 out of the nearly 50 people who had been arrested 
in the case were brought before an antiterrorism court Wednesday, and 
permission was sought from the court to interrogate them.

Though the police have not provided a motive, blasphemy allegations are often 
used to settle personal scores and vendettas, rights groups say. In recent 
years, allegations of blasphemy, which is a crime punishable by death or life 
in prison, have led to instances of violence and vigilante justice.

The Monitor reported in October, regarding the Bibi case, that Pakistan is 
under an semi-official moratorium on the death penalty. The passions raised by 
blasphemy accusations however at one point were enough to bring a series of 
high level assassinations of officials:

Bibi's name and case have since become nearly synonymous with a sensitive 
national debate over blasphemy laws, which are not clearly defined and were 
further criminalized under the military dictatorship of Gen. Zia ul-Haq in the 
1980s. The laws can carry the death penalty, though in Pakistan since 2008 
there has been an unofficial moratorium on the death sentence and only 1 person 
has been executed.

The death sentence came during a period of extreme attacks on Christians and 
minorities. In 2010 the governor of Punjab, Salmaan Taseer, visited Bibi in 
jail and was shortly after shot dead in Islamabad by his guard, who assumed 
that Mr. Taseer opposed the blasphemy law and supported Bibi.

(source: Christian Science Monitor)






BAHAMAS:

Kofhe Goodman Faces 3 Month Wait For Appeal Hearing


Death row inmate and convicted child killer Kofhe Goodman must wait another 3 
months before his appeal hearing takes place in the country's 2nd highest 
court.

The 40-year-old appeared before the Court of Appeal where his lawyer, Wayne 
Munroe, informed the judges that he had received the 3,500-page trial 
transcripts a week ago and needed more time to review the contents for their 
appeal. In addition to contesting his death sentence, Goodman is seeking to 
have the Court of Appeal overrule a Supreme Court jury's verdict that found him 
guilty of the September 2011 murder of Marco Archer, of Brougham Street.

Garvin Gaskin, acting Director of Public Prosecutions, had no objection to the 
request for an adjournment given the nature of the case. Justices Anita Allen, 
Stanley John and Abdulai Conteh granted the adjournment but said they would not 
be able to hear the matter until February 5, 2015.

Appellate court president Justice Allen said she wished for the appellant's 
submissions to be provided to the court a month prior to the hearing date.

Last year, Goodman stood trial between April 17 and August 2 for Marco's murder 
and was found guilty.

During that trial the prosecution argued that Goodman killed Marco between 
September 23 and 28, 2011.

In the lead up to sentencing, which occurred in late October, a death sentence, 
life imprisonment or a 15-year prison term were the punishments Justice Bernard 
Turner was asked by counsel to consider.

The judge, in handing down his sentence, noted that abducting a child, 
fracturing his skull with a blow to the head, placing a bag around his head and 
discarding his naked, lifeless body in bushes can be considered to be "the 
worst of the worst" in the guidelines for sentencing set out by Parliament.

Justice Turner, in considering the death penalty, regarded the mitigating 
factors and the circumstances of the case - Goodman's previous convictions for 
unnatural carnal knowledge in 1993, attempted murder and causing grievous harm 
in August 1998 - and was "satisfied that the circumstances of this case 
required that a penalty be imposed."

"This case is a clear and compelling case for the ultimate sentence of death, 
to satisfy the requirements of due punishment for the murder of this child and 
to protect this society from any further predatory conduct by this convict at 
any time in the future. Kofhe Edwardo Ferguson Goodman, I hereby sentence you 
to suffer death in the manner authorised by law," the judge had previously 
ruled.

(source: Tribune242.com)






CHINA:

China Overwhelmingly Supports Death Penalty for Corrupt Officials----73 % of 
Chinese citizens support the death penalty in cases of corruption, according to 
a new survey.


Chinese citizens overwhelming support imposing the death penalty on officials 
found guilty of corruption, according to a new survey.

According to Chinese state media, a survey conducted by the Social Survey 
Center of China Youth Daily this week found that a whopping 73 % of Chinese 
citizens support the death penalty in cases of official corruption.

China leads the world in terms of capital punishment. Although China doesn't 
release official figures on the number of people it executes each year, it is 
widely believed to execute more people than the rest of the world combined.

In recent years, however, it has taken a number of steps to reduce the number 
of executions it carries out. In 2007 it ordered that all capital punishment 
sentences must be approved by the country's supreme court, which is believed to 
have drastically reduced the number of executions. In 2011 it also removed 13 
crimes - including smuggling precious metals and excavating ancient tombs - 
from the list of crimes that can carry a death sentence.

Currently there are 55 capital punishment crimes in China, which is high by 
international standards. Late last month, a draft amendment to China's criminal 
law was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress 
that would remove a further 9 crimes from the list of capital crimes. According 
to Caixin, the 9 crimes are: "the smuggling of weapons and ammunition, the 
smuggling of nuclear material, the smuggling of counterfeit money, the 
counterfeiting of money, fundraising fraud, organizing prostitution, forcing a 
person into prostitution, obstruction of the execution of military duties, and 
spreading rumors in war time."

Despite these reforms, the number of executions in China each year continue to 
far outpace the rest of the world combined. Amnesty International didn't give a 
precise figure for 2013 but said that it was certainly in the thousands. Dui 
Hua, a legal rights group based in the United States, estimated that China 
executed around 4,000 people in 2010 (compared to 8,000 people in 2007, before 
the Supreme Court had to approve all executions).

The survey released this week was conducted online and had 2,105 respondents. 
The media reports contained few details about the survey's methodology and it's 
possible the survey used a non-random sample.

Still, the findings underscore the deep anger that corruption provokes among 
the Chinese populace. President Xi Jinping has waged an unprecedented 
anti-graft campaign since taking office in 2012.

(source: The Diplomat)



LEBANON:

Lebanon judge requests death penalty to Saudi, French bombing suspects


A judge requested the death penalty Friday for 2 alleged would-be suicide 
bombers, a French and a Saudi man, along with 3 Lebanese suspects accused of 
being part a 10-member, ISIS-affiliated group behind suicide-bomb plots in 
Beirut.

In his indictment, Judge Riad Abu Ghayda requested the death penalty for Fayez 
Boushran, a French national originally from Comoros, Saudi Abdel-Rahman Naser 
al-Shenefi, and three other Lebanese identified as Alaa Kanaan, Ayman Kanaan 
and Mahmoud Khaled.

The judge also sought a sentence of 15 years in prison with hard labor for 2 
other Lebanese suspects and 3 months in prison with hard labor for Ahmad 
Hussein, Jamal Hussein, and Mohammad Harmoush.

The men comprised a 10-member group, known as "the hotels cell," and belonged 
to ISIS with the aim of carrying out suicide attacks in Beirut and its southern 
suburbs in revenge for "Hezbollah's alleged killing of Sunnis in Syria," a 
judicial source told The Daily Star.

The plot was broken up in a series of raids last June.

In the indictment, Abu Ghayda said the cell had 3 separate tasks: the 1st was 
assigned to the French man who joined ISIS's ranks to carry out jihad against 
Shiites "to teach them a lesson for fighting in Syria."

The French man was chosen to carry out a suicide attack in Beirut. Upon his 
arrival to Lebanon, Boushran met with Munzer al-Hasan, who recruited suicide 
bombers and was killed during an Army raid to arrest him earlier this year.

Hasan transported Boushran to Napoleon Hotel in the Beirut neighborhood of 
Hamra and gave him pocket money. Boushran was instructed to remain at the hotel 
until someone contacted him about the target of the attack in Beirut's southern 
suburbs, a Shiite-dominated area.

Boushran was arrested at the hotel on June 20 during a raid by the Internal 
Security Forces' Information Branch.

The 2nd task was assigned to 2 Saudi men including Shenefi, who was wounded 
when his partner, Ali al-Thuwayne, blew himself up on June 25 during a General 
Security raid on Duroy Hotel, where they were staying at in the Beirut 
neighborhood of Rouache.

Shenefi and Thuwayne planned to blow themselves up at the Al-Saha restaurant in 
the capital's suburbs. 1 of the men was supposed to carry out the 1st suicide 
attack during a World Cup match while hundreds were gather to watch. Seconds 
later, the other was to blow himself up as people rushed to help the wounded, 
to kill as many victims as possible.

The Saudi men also met Hasan upon their arrival to Lebanon, and the recruiter 
showed them the location of the restaurant on their way from the airport to 
their hotel.

The 3rd mission was assigned to Hasan's group, which prepared explosive belts 
and bombs for the would-be suicide bombers.

The men were transferred to the Military Tribunal for trial.

Abu Ghayda cleared 7 people for lack of evidence and issued search warrants for 
10 suspected ISIS commanders.

(source: The Daily Star)






EGYPT:

Court Considers Death Sentence for 4 Accused of Rape


An appeals court referred on Thursday 4 defendants accused of rape to Egypt's 
Grand Mufti to consider their death sentences.

The court postponed the verdict of 6 other defendants to December 18.

The 10 defendants are accused of kidnapping a woman from the governorate of 
Kafr El-Sheikh and raping her in 2006.

The defendants had already appealed their sentences before, which makes 
Thursday's death sentences final, should the Mufti ratify them.

The Grand Mufti's decisions are not legally binding, yet it is customary for 
the court to adopt them.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which ruled Egypt since the 
overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 until the inauguration of 
ousted President Mohamed Mursi in June 2012, issued a decree in April 2011 
maximising the penalty of rape to include the death sentence.

(source: Aswat Masriya)






BANGLADESH:

Jamaat VS Judiciary?


An international crimes tribunal on October 29 has handed down death penalty to 
Jamaat-e-Islami chief Motiur Rahman Nizami for crimes which include mass 
killing and rape and brutal murder of intellectuals during country's Liberation 
War in 1971. He was also sentenced to imprisonment for life each on four other 
charges of crimes against humanity he committed in 1971. He was president of 
Jamaat's student wing Islami Chhatra Sangha that turned into the Pakistan 
army's infamous auxiliary force Al-Badr during the Liberation War. He led the 
killing squad to thwart the birth of Bangladesh as an independent nation in the 
globe.

His party rejected the verdict delivered by the tribunal. Like him his party 
also strongly believed that what Nizami had done in 1971 was right. Neither 
Nizami nor his party has apologised for their misdeeds.

However, Jamaat did not remain silent by rejecting the verdict that awarded 
Nizami the death penalty. It enforced 3 days of countrywide hartal - on 
Thursday, Sunday and Monday--to protest the verdict. On Sunday Jamaat announced 
hartal on Thursday too to protest another verdict delivered by the 
international crimes tribunal sentencing Jamaat leader Mir Quasem Ali to death. 
Jamaat also rejected the Supreme Court's verdict that upheld the death penalty 
of Jamaat leader Kamaruzzaman. The way Jamaat has enforced hartal from October 
30 to November 6 has effectively paralysed the country's economy.

This is not the 1st time that Jamaat has enforced hartals. It has been doing 
the same since 2013. It has already enforced a few dozen hartals. The most 
violent agitations the activists of Jamaat and Shibir staged was in February 
last year to protest the conviction of its leader Delwar Hossain Saydee. Around 
one hundred people including some members of law enforcement agencies were 
killed during the violent street agitation. Due to the Jamaat's violence, the 
BNP-led alliance's movement for restoration of the non-partisan election time 
government has failed to drum up people's support.

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

'Govt won't hesitate to execute Kamaruzzaman's death penalty'


The government would not hesitate to execute death sentence of war criminal 
Muhammad Kamaruzzaman despite a call by United Nations human rights experts to 
halt the execution, the law minister has said.

"The highest court of the country has sentenced Muhammad Kamaruzzaman to death 
for his war crimes, maintaining all legal procedures. We are a sovereign 
nation, and therefore, the government will do what is needful to implement its 
verdict," Anisul Huq told The Daily Star today.

Anisul said Kamaruzzaman will be given 7 days for seeking presidential mercy 
since hearing the verdict, as per relevant rules.

"If he does not seek presidential clemency by that time, the government will 
take necessary steps for his execution," the minister said adding the execution 
can be done on the short verdict of a court.

The law minister expressed hope about getting the short verdict from the SC on 
Jamaat-e-Islami leader Kamaruzzaman very soon.

Anisul said he would send the statement of the UN human rights experts to the 
foreign ministry to find out its authenticity and then will take a decision 
about it.

In a press release today, UN special rapporteurs on summary executions, 
Christof Heyns, and on the independence of judges and lawyers, Gabriela Knaul, 
said that capital punishment "may be imposed only following a trial that 
complied with the most stringent guarantees of fair trial and due process."

On Monday, the apex court upheld the death penalty for Kamaruzzaman, a key 
organiser of the infamous Al-Badr Bahini responsible for abducting, torturing 
and killing freedom fighters, intellectuals and pro-liberation people in 1971.

(source for both: The Daily Star)

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

UN rights experts urge Bangladesh to halt the execution of opposition party 
leader Muhammad Kamaruzzaman


2 United Nations human rights experts today urged the Government of Bangladesh 
to stay the execution of Muhammad Kamaruzzaman, leader of the opposition 
Jamaat-e-Islami party, condemned to death for crimes against humanity.

The UN Special Rapporteurs on summary executions, Christof Heyns, and on the 
independence of judges and lawyers, Gabriela Knaul, expressed serious concern 
at reports that Mr. Kamaruzzaman could be executed as early as Thursday 6 
November 2014 at midnight.

Earlier this week, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court confirmed Mr. 
Kamaruzzaman's sentence to death handed down by the Bangladesh International 
Crimes Tribunal on 9 May 2013.

The International Crimes Tribunal is a special domestic court with the 
jurisdiction to try and punish any person accused of committing atrocities, 
including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, in Bangladesh, 
including during the country's 1971 independence war.

The UN human rights experts have on several occasions expressed alarm regarding 
serious violations of fair trial and due process guarantees in the judicial 
proceedings before the Tribunal that were reported to them.

"In countries that have not abolished the death penalty, capital punishment may 
be imposed only following a trial that complied with the most stringent 
guarantees of fair trial and due process," the experts noted. "Any death 
sentence executed in contravention of a Government's international obligations 
is tantamount to an arbitrary execution."

"A person sentenced to death must also have the right to seek pardon or 
commutation of his sentence," Mr. Heyns and Ms. Knaul stressed.

The UN Special Rapporteurs also reiterated their calls that all the defendants 
before the International Crimes Tribunal, including the Appellate Division, 
receive fair trials.

The Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, 
Christof Heyns (South Africa), is a director of the Institute for International 
and Comparative Law in Africa and Professor of Human Rights Law at the 
University of Pretoria, where he has also directed the Centre for Human Rights, 
and has engaged in wide-reaching initiatives on human rights in Africa. He has 
advised a number of international, regional and national entities on human 
rights issues. Learn more, log on to: 
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Executions/Pages/SRExecutionsIndex.aspx

Gabriela Knaul (Brazil) took up her functions as UN Special Rapporteur on the 
independence of judges and lawyers in 2009. Ms. Knaul has a long-standing 
experience as a judge in Brazil and is an expert in criminal justice and the 
administration of judicial systems. Learn more, log on to: 
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Judiciary/Pages/IDPIndex.aspx

(source: ohchr.org)