[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

April 14



GLOBAL:

At Doha Crime Congress, UN experts cite 'shift' as more States move away from 
death penalty


As the 13th United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice 
continued its work in Doha, Qatar today, high-level UN, academic and Government 
experts at a panel discussion on death penalty advocated moving away from the 
punishment as there is no empirical evidence that it deters crime. "Over the 
lifetime of the United Nations, the balance has shifted, and today, more than 
160 Member States have either abolished the death penalty or do not practice 
it", said UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, Ivan Ivan Simonovic, 
who moderated the discussion.

"Despite these positive developments, however, a number of States continue to 
impose the death penalty," he told the panel, one of the many events taking 
place during the UN Crime Congress, which opened Sunday and is expected to 
conclude on 19 April.

The participants at the panel included the Minister of Justice of Italy, Andrea 
Orlando, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary 
executions, Christof Heyns, the Deputy Director in Penal Reform International 
in charge of regional Middle East and North Africa office, Haitham Shibli, a 
non-governmental organization working on penal and criminal justice reform, and 
Jeffrey Fagan, Professor at Columbia Law School in New York.

Mr. Simonovic stressed that Amnesty International noted in a recent report on 
global sentences and executions that in 2014 there were fewer registered 
executions but there was an increase of people condemned to death.

"The spread of drug trafficking and terrorism is an important factor for many 
States when considering to retain or even reintroduce the death penalty," he 
added, noting that China, Iran, Viet Nam, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and Malaysia 
have the highest rate of executions for drug trafficking.

The event, organized with Italy, provided the opportunity to present a 
publication by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) 
Moving away from the Death Penalty, Arguments, Trends and Perspectives. The 
book, launched at UN Headquarters in October 2014, has been translated into 
Arabic and will be available soon, said Mr. Simonovic.

"The world is certainly moving away from the death penalty, in just the way the 
world moved away from slavery, from judicial torture and from other such 
practices", Mr. Heyns said, recalling that in 1948, only 8 States had taken the 
death penalty out of their laws.

"Now, 99 have done so," he said, adding that only 5 States now execute more 
than 25 people a year - China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United States.

The Special Rapporteur stressed that "the most important consideration coming 
into play over the last 7 years is that it is not clear that the death penalty 
has any special deterrence value. In fact, there is no evidence to that 
effect."

"The death penalty creates a false sense of security," he continued, 
underscoring that the punishment will not solve the problem of criminal 
activity and that countries should rather focus on better policing and 
addressing underlying causes.

Mr. Heyns said that there has been a "shift" regarding death penalty. "It seems 
that it is a matter of decades before there will be a situation where it is 
very likely that very few States will still have the death penalty officially 
in their books."

Regarding the situation in the Middle East and North Africa, Mr. Shibli 
stressed the use of death penalty on a very wide and vague scope in the region.

He took the examples of Yemen, where there are more than 360 crimes punishable 
by death penalty, Morocco where there are more than 325, and Egypt with more 
than 40. "It is widely used in the criminal law as a punishment in the region," 
Mr. Shibli said. "Generally in the region now, especially after the political 
instability, the governments feel more at ease in using the death penalty."

Mr. Fagan discussed the situation in the United States, where capital 
punishment is a legal sentence in more than 30 states. He pointed out empirical 
research that shows that "there is no evidence that death penalty has any 
greater deterrent effect than would other punishments."

"Deterrence is one of the essential justifications. Without that justification, 
I think there is a constitutional issue," he added.

He said that because of that evidence, things are changing in the United 
States. "There is a deep change in the American society in respect to the 
beliefs about the death penalty," he concluded.

(source: UN News Centre)






SAUDI ARABIA----execution

Indonesian beheaded in Saudi Arabia


Saudi Arabia on Tuesday beheaded an Indonesian domestic worker who knifed to 
death a Saudi woman described in press reports as her employer.

The interior ministry said Siti Zainab was executed after being convicted of 
stabbing and beating Saudi woman Noura al-Morobei to death.

The sentence was carried out on Tuesday in the Muslim holy city of Medina, the 
ministry said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

Zainab's execution brings to 60 the number of foreigners and Saudis executed 
this year, according to an AFP tally.

Jakarta's embassy in Riyadh declined to comment on her case.

According to Indonesian newspaper Kompas, Zainab was convicted of killing her 
employer in 1999, despite concerns about her mental health.

Her execution was delayed until the victim's children were old enough to decide 
whether the punishment should go ahead, the Saudi interior ministry said.

Indonesia 4 years ago announced a moratorium on sending migrant workers to the 
kingdom, but the Saudi newspaper Arab News reported in January that 
negotiations between the 2 countries over the recruitment of domestics had 
resumed.

Rights groups regularly denounce abuse and even torture of impoverished women 
from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Nepal who work as 
maids in Gulf countries.

Saudi Arabia in 2013 passed new rules that grant domestic workers 1 day's rest 
a week and guarantee the payment of their salaries.

Drug trafficking, rape, murder, apostasy and armed robbery are all punishable 
by death under the kingdom's strict version of Islamic sharia law.

Saudi Arabia has seen a surge in executions this year, compared with the 87 
death sentences carried out in 2014.

(source: Agence France-Presse)






INDONESIA:

Norway's prime minister calls on Indonesia to halt executions of Bali Nine duo


Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg has reportedly asked Indonesia's 
President Joko Widodo to halt the executions of Australians Myuran Sukumaran 
and Andrew Chan. Ms Solberg visited Jakarta for bilateral talks on Tuesday and 
afterwards told the Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang that she "asked explicitly 
not to implement the imminent death sentences".

She said Mr Joko had responded that it was part of Indonesia's legal system and 
that Indonesia faced a huge drug problem.

"My experience is that they are listening," Ms Solberg said.

"But it is important to mobilise internal support to liquidate the death 
penalty.

"We as politicians must always point this out to politicians from Indonesia, 
but I think it's just as important what civil society in Indonesia says."

Sukumaran, 33, and Chan, 31, await execution on a central Java island for their 
roles in the Bali Nine effort to smuggle heroin out of Indonesia in 2005.

The Norwegian newspaper on Tuesday splashed a story about Sukumaran, who worked 
with Norwegian academics and students to initiate rehabilitation programs in 
Kerobokan prison, where he spent most of the past decade.

Student Espen Nordstrom has met Sukumaran around 20 times and told the 
newspaper the Australian regretted the choices he had made when he was younger.

"He always seemed incredibly quiet and had a big smile," he said.

Sukumaran turns 34 on Friday, an occasion that is being marked in London with 
an exhibition of his paintings, held with the support of Amnesty International.

The Australian pair and 8 other drug offenders are next in line for the firing 
squad, but Jakarta has not set a date.

Norway is firmly against capital punishment. It has strong ties with Indonesia 
in various areas, including conservation, climate change and energy.

(source: news.com.au)