[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Aug. 10



CHINA:

Former Senior Officer Gets Death Penalty with Reprieve


A military court on Monday sentenced Gu Junshan, former deputy head of the 
General Logistics Department of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, to death 
with a 2-year reprieve for corruption.

Gu was found guilty of embezzlement, accepting bribes, misuse of state funds, 
bribery and abuse of power. He has been deprived of his political rights for 
life and had all his personal assets confiscated, according to a statement from 
the court.

Gu was also stripped of his rank of lieutenant general, and all the illicit 
funds and materials involved will be confiscated, the statement said, adding 
that the military procuratorate had added the charge of bribery during the 
trial.

(source: English CRI)






UNITED KINGDOM:

We May Have Abolished the Death Penalty Here Long Ago, Yet We Remain Involved 
in Its Continuing Use Worldwide


To mark 100 days of the 1st Conservative government in nearly 20 years, 
HuffPost UK is running 100 Days of Dave, a special series of blog posts from 
grassroots campaigners to government ministers, single parents to 1st-year 
students, reflecting on what's worked and what hasn't, whilst looking for 
solutions to the problems we still face.

Earlier this month, 4 August, Pakistan hanged Shafqat Hussain, who was 
sentenced to death while he was still a child. Depressingly, this is not an 
isolated event. In June, Aftab Bahadur went to the gallows, even though he was 
just 15 when he was convicted. And in May, Faisal Mehmood was executed - even 
though the prosecutor in his case had argued against a death sentence as he was 
underage.

This might seem like an issue that is very distant from the human rights record 
of the British government. Yet it comes at a time when the Foreign Office has 
quietly scrapped its death penalty strategy; when the Home Office continues to 
support the efforts of Pakistan and other countries to send people to the 
hangman's noose; and while an unknown number of British citizens continue to 
languish in death row cells in Pakistan and around the world.

The government's widely-praised strategy for ending the death penalty had been 
in place since 2010, and the timing of the decision to scrap it is deeply 
unfortunate. Around the world - with a few happy exceptions, notably the US - 
the death penalty is seeing a resurgence: at the time of writing, Pakistan had 
executed over 200 people so far this year, while both Saudi Arabia - now at 110 
- and Iran are set to exceed the substantial totals they reached in 2014. China 
hides its death penalty behind a wall of secrecy, but the numbers of victims 
each year are thought to be in the thousands. Egypt continues to sentence 
people to death by the hundreds in appalling mass-trials.

At the same time as dropping the strategy, the FCO admitted that it would be 
scrapping the term 'human rights countries of concern' - a label which had 
previously caused annoyance to countries such as China, Iran, Pakistan and 
Saudi Arabia.

The depressing conclusion is that the government made these changes in order to 
have a quieter life when it came to human rights issues. Ministers were often 
questioned by MPs and others on how Saudi Arabia, for example, could be both a 
human rights country of concern - according to the FCO - and a priority market 
for British weapons - according to the Department for Business.

Similarly, a loosening of the government's obligations on the death penalty and 
human rights may make it easier - and less embarrassing - for the Home Office 
to continue with policies which contribute to the death penalty overseas. This 
is the result of an ill-thought-out counter-narcotics strategy, which sees 
millions of pounds of UK public money lavished on security forces in countries 
such as Pakistan - funding which then helps send non-violent, alleged drug 
offenders to the hangman's noose.

In short, a lack of safeguards on who we are prepared to fund, and on what 
conditions, means that UK cash is contributing to hangings overseas. The 
victims of those executions are, at worst, exploited drug mules. But all too 
often, due to the fondness of the police in Pakistan for extracting confessions 
through torture, they are likely innocent.

To add insult to injury, among those victims are a number of British citizens. 
It is hard to say how many - Pakistan's government has said five Britons are on 
death row for drugs offences, while the UK has said it is aware of none, and is 
disturbingly incurious about the discrepancy. Britain is now in the crazy 
position of having one department - the Home Office - helping sentence its 
citizens to death, while another - the FCO - tries with varying success to stop 
them from being executed. Joined-up government it is not.

These are knotty problems, but as so often a bit more openness would help us 
towards a solution. Yet, while the prime minister is fond of the clich??? that 
"sunlight is the best disinfectant", his government appears to be heading in 
the opposite direction.

The Home Office is so tight-lipped about its counter-narcotics programmes that 
Reprieve is having to fight a court case to extract the most minimal 
information about what measures it takes on human rights abuses - possibly 
because they know that such measures are inadequate to the point of being 
non-existent. Meanwhile, a renewed push against Freedom of Information - a 
cause which all too often is favoured by the government of the day, whatever 
its stripe - is taking place.

But no amount of censorship can conceal the fundamental point: that while we 
may have abolished the death penalty in this country long ago, we remain 
involved in its continuing use around the world - and therefore responsible for 
doing what we can to bring it to an end. As a start, we need to see the Home 
Office open up a bit more - and the FCO think again about whether the best way 
to react to the abuses of our allies it to tip-toe around them.

(source: Clare Algar is the executive director of Reprieve----Huffington Post)






EGYPT:

Egyptian court issues 10 preliminary death sentences in 'El-Zawahiri cell' 
case----The brother of Al Qaeda leader Ayman El-Zawahiri will be sentenced 
along with 58 remaining defendants on 27 December


Cairo Criminal Court issued preliminary death penalty sentences to 10 
defendants convicted of running a terrorist organisation connected with 
Al-Qaeda.

Another 58 defendants charged in the case, including Mohamed El-Zawahiri, the 
brother of Al-Qaeda chief Ayman El-Zawahiri, did not receive sentences on 
Monday.

The court will issue its verdict on the remainder of the defendants on 27 
December.

The defendants were charged with operating a terrorist organisation which aims 
use force in order to oust the regime, attack police personnel, attack Egyptian 
Christians, and commit terrorist attacks to spread chaos.

52 of the defendants are in custody, 13 are being tried in absentia, and 3 have 
died.

In 1999, Mohamed El-Zawahiri was sentenced to death in absentia for a handful 
of terrorist attacks in Egypt, including the 1997 killing of 62 foreign 
tourists in the Upper Egyptian city of Luxor.

In June 2011, a military court accepted El-Zawahiri's appeal against the death 
verdict and the case was closed. He subsequently returned to Egypt.

El-Zawahiri is currently behind bars.

(source: Ahram Online)