[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Aug. 11



MALAYSIA:

Sirul safe in Australia, but Azilah on death row with no sign of reprieve


It has been 7 months since former chief inspector Azilah Hadri, along with his 
colleague, were sentenced to death for the murder of Mongolian woman Altantuya 
Shaariibuu.

But while his accomplice, fellow ex-commando Sirul Azhar Umar had escaped the 
death penalty by moving to Australia prior to his conviction, Azilah has been 
forgotten and uncertainty surrounds his fate. Sirul is now being held in an 
Australian immigration detention centre.

It is unclear if Azilah's lawyers have filed for an application to obtain a 
pardon or for a review of the Federal Court's guilty verdict - the last 
remaining avenues for him.

His lead counsel Datuk Hazman Ahmad would not comment despite several calls 
made and a text message sent by The Malaysian Insider to seek clarification.

On January 13, a five-man bench apex court retained the conviction and death 
sentence by a High Court against Azilah and ex-corporal Sirul.

Hazman had immediately said then that he would file an application to seek 
clemency from the Sultan of Selangor as the crime was committed in the state.

3 months later, the lawyer said he would apply for a review of the Federal 
Court's unanimous guilty verdict handed by chief justice Tun Arifin Zakaria.

These steps are required procedure as stipulated in the Federal Constitution 
for anyone convicted and sentenced to death.

The chance of being granted a review is slim, however, as the Federal Court 
rarely allows reviews for criminal cases.

Lawyer Ragunath Kesavan said only in rare cases had the highest court in the 
land allowed reviews, and that too only for civil cases where a wrong 
application of the law had been made.

"To my recollection, the apex court had never allowed a review of its own 
verdict in a criminal case that involved capital punishment," said the former 
Malaysian Bar president, adding that Azilah's better option would be to commute 
the death sentence to a jail term.

Lawyer M. Visvanathan said a review or an application for pardon must be done 
expeditiously.

"There is already a written judgment on the verdict and any review application 
must be done speedily. One cannot be sitting on it," he told The Malaysian 
Insider.

Similarly, he said the application for pardon or clemency must be made to the 
Pardons Board as the life of a person was involved.

"Usually, the Prisons Department will act if the condemned prisoner has no 
lawyer to do the paper work," he added.

Evidence in court revealed that Altantuya, a Mongolian translator, was murdered 
before her body was blown up by C4 explosives on October 18, 2006, in the 
outskirts of Shah Alam, near the capital city Kuala Lumpur.

Former political analyst Abdul Razak Baginda, a confidant of then deputy Prime 
Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, was charged with abetting Azilah and Sirul but 
was acquitted by the High Court in 2008 without his defence being called. The 
government did not appeal.

Despite the conviction, the motive for the murder was never revealed.

Former attorney-general Tan Sri Abu Talib Othman in a previous interview said 
Sirul or Azilah should "tell all" to the Selangor Pardons Board to avoid the 
gallows.

However, Talib said nothing would change if they decided to talk now since the 
judicial process was completed.

"Actually, the Pardons Board is the final court of clemency although it cannot 
substitute the finding of guilty to that of not guilty.

"Under our Federal Constitution, no death can be executed without going to a 
Pardons Board," he had said.

He said their lawyers could write to the Sultan of Selangor and the board 
chairman, and extend a copy to the menteri besar, who is a member of the board.

"The board can consider any relevant matter in coming to a just decision as to 
whether the death sentence should be executed," he added.

Talib, who served as Attorney-General (A-G) between 1980 and 1993, said the 
board was not bound by the opinion of the present A-G although it must consider 
his advice.

Sirul was not present in January when the Federal Court upheld conviction and 
sentencing for Altantuya's murder. It was later found that he had fled to 
Australia in October last year.

Sirul was later arrested in Brisbane, and is currently being held at an 
immigration detention centre in Sydney.

Malaysia is attempting to request that Sirul be extradited to Malaysia.

However, Australian law dictates that a person facing the death penalty in his 
or her home country cannot be extradited.

Sirul's lawyer is expected to file a legal challenge on any attempt to 
extradite the convicted murderer as legal experts share the view that the 
process will take time.

(source: themalaysianinsider.com)






UNITED KINGDOM/PAKISTAN:

Help Reprieve expose Theresa May's "aid for executions"


Reprieve needs your help in securing an urgent Parliamentary Inquiry into Home 
Office "aid for executions".

In recent years the UK Home Office has been Europe's largest funder of brutal 
overseas raids which see drug mules sent to death row.

Reprieve's investigation has revealed that the Home Office has given at least 
20million pounds worth of support to aggressive law enforcement operations in 
countries which execute drug offenders, such as Iran and Pakistan.

Home Office funding frequently comes with targets which end up encouraging 
death sentences, and Reprieve has identified a number of specific cases where 
UK support has enabled executions.

Right now there are at least 5 British drug offenders on Pakistan's death row, 
who were almost certainly caught with Home Office support. Despite its funding 
for the force which arrested these Britons, the UK has not been able to 
convince the Pakistani authorities to reveal their names, so they have been 
abandoned on death row without any support from their government.

The Home Office is charged with developing and implementing the UK's 
international drug policy, and should act to reflect Britain's opposition to 
the death penalty. However, the Home Office has refused to permit parliamentary 
or public scrutiny of its overseas counter-narcotics initiatives, and will not 
disclose any details regarding the cost, focus or effectiveness of these 
programmes.

Back in 2012 Parliament's Home Affairs Committee recommended that the UK 
government 'ensure that no British or European funding is used to support 
practices that could lead to capital punishment, torture, or other violations'. 
This recommendation has clearly been ignored.

Reprieve is now calling for an urgent inquiry by the Home Affairs Committee 
into the Home Office's "aid for executions". As The Guardian reported this 
weekend, we have joined individuals like Richard Branson and charities like 
Human Rights Watch in signing an open letter which has put this request in 
writing. Now we are asking all our supporters to email Committee Chairman Keith 
Vaz and support our call for an inquiry.

(source: Reprieve)

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

Britain has an obligation to oppose the execution of the next Shafqat Hussain 
---- Philip Hammond's decision to drop the UK government???s opposition to the 
death penalty could not have been more poorly timed, writes Maya Foa from 
Reprieve


The Foreign Office could hardly have picked a less opportune moment to ditch 
explicit mention of the death penalty in its human rights' priorities.

24 hours after the news broke that Philip Hammond would abandon the British 
government's longstanding pledge to fight for global abolition of capital 
punishment, Pakistan carried out a shameful execution that shocked the world.

Shafqat Hussain was a juvenile when he was arrested. On the strength of a false 
"confession" that was brutally tortured out of him, he was sentenced to death 
for a crime which equated to involuntary manslaughter. He would spend the next 
12 years on Pakistan's 8,500-strong death row, and was finally hanged on 
Tuesday night, despite strenuous protests from supporters in Pakistan and all 
over the world.

As the international community reacted to Hussain's death, the Foreign Office's 
focus was elsewhere - principally justifying the decision to no longer 
"prioritise" such injustices in discussions with governments like Pakistan's. 
One official explanation was that UK diplomats struggled to remember all 8 of 
the UK's human rights priorities, so needed to cut that number down to a more 
manageable list of 3.

There may, however, be one upside to the FCO's appalling timing. That is that 
Hussain's hanging reminds us why the UK first pledged to fight the death 
penalty everywhere. The brutality and injustice of Hussain's story, carries a 
powerful message for our government about where its priorities should lie.

The poor, the disenfranchised, the powerless and abused are most often marched 
to the gallows

Hussain was the 202nd victim of the Pakistani government's brutal execution 
drive, which began in December 2014. His case exposes a tragic truth about 
Pakistan's resumption of hangings, one which is mirrored in capital punishment 
campaigns in every corner of the globe: that it is the most vulnerable 
individuals in society - the poor, the disenfranchised, the powerless and 
abused - who are most often marched to the gallows. As the saying goes, those 
without the capital get the punishment.

Hussain was a young man from an impoverished family. He had travelled from his 
remote village to the city to try to find work. His parents, who had no means 
of contacting him and no money to visit their young son, only discovered he had 
been arrested when he had already been in prison for days. Still just a child, 
Hussain had by that point endured nine days of brutal police torture; beaten, 
electrocuted, and burned with cigarettes. When his older brother asked him 
about the torture, he wet himself with fear at the very memory.

Police torture in Pakistan is endemic. Common methods used by the police in 
Pakistan include hanging people by their limbs for hours on end (strappado, as 
patented by the Spanish Inquisition) and beating the painful nerve endings on 
the soles of the feet (falaka, a notorious method developed by the Saudis). The 
aim, of course, is to extract a "confession" from the person being tortured. 
And it works.

The method was so successful in Hussain's case that he himself said that he 
would have sworn "that a deer was an elephant" at the end of it. Though torture 
is prohibited in Pakistani and international law and Hussain's forced 
confession should therefore have been excluded, he was sentenced to death by 
hanging following an abbreviated and fundamentally flawed trial in one of 
Pakistan's notorious anti-terrorism courts, despite the crime of which he was 
accused having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.

There is a cruel irony in the fact that the Pakistani government's response to 
the tragic terrorist attack on the school in Peshawar in which 132 children 
were massacred has been to kill more children in unlawful judicial executions. 
As a response to terrorism, it is an odd one indeed.

Yet we know that Pakistan has already executed at least 3 prisoners who were 
juveniles when they were arrested: Faisal Mehmood was executed on 27 May, 
despite the fact that even the prosecutor in his Supreme Court appeal argued he 
should not face the death penalty as he was under 18 at the time of the alleged 
crime. Aftab Bahadur, who was 15 when he was sentenced to death, was executed 
on 10 June.

There have been over 200 executions since the moratorium broke in December 
2014. That's an average of one a day, with some days seeing as many as 6 
carried out across the country. With Pakistan ignoring calls from the UN and 
domestic human rights bodies to halt the executions, there is no indication 
that this pattern will change in the near future.

Among those who may be 1st in line for execution are Abdul Basit, a paraplegic 
who's wheelchair bound, and Khizar Hayat, a paranoid schizophrenic who has no 
concept of what is to happen to him. Khizar and Abdul are not terrorists; even 
the Pakistan government accepts as much. They are, like Hussain, vulnerable 
individuals caught in the sharp teeth of Pakistan's inexorable and bloodthirsty 
execution machine. Killing these men will do nothing to make Pakistan safer; it 
is terror with another face - and we have a duty not to look the other way.

It is all too easy for politicians in the UK, many of whom were not born when a 
British noose last swung, to forget that such brutality comes as standard in 
administering the death penalty. But the raw injustice of Hussain's treatment 
is not unique.

>From Pakistan and Iran to the United States and Japan, it is all too often 
innocents who bear the brunt. The UK has a responsibility to oppose this 
injustice wherever it finds it. Philip Hammond should take note.

(source: Maya Foa is the director of the death penalty team at Reprieve----The 
Guardian)

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

Family dispute: Man sentenced to death for killing sister


The Ghotki district and sessions court awarded on Monday death penalty to an 
accused for killing his sister over a matrimonial dispute in 2012.

Ghotki 3rd additional sessions judge Shafi Muhammad Pirzada announced on Monday 
the verdict of the murder case and awarded death penalty to the accused, 
Mushtaq Naseerani, for murdering his sister. The court also imposed a fine of 
Rs100,000 on the accused and acquitted 6 other suspects due to lack of evidence 
against them.

Muhstaq's 10-year-old sister Bhagul was engaged to a close relative when she 
was born. As she grew older, the relatives started pressurising the family to 
get her married. However, the girl's brother and mother refused to marry her 
due to some family dispute. Out of fear that the other party might involve 
tribal elders or kidnap the girl, Mushtaq killed his sister. The case was 
registered with the Mirpur Mathelo Police.

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

Final verdict: ATC awards death sentence to cleric's murderer


An anti-terrorism court awarded a death sentence on Monday to Shakirullah Jan 
for murdering prominent Shia cleric Agha Ziauddin Rizvi.

The death penalty was handed down during a hearing in the court of judge Raja 
Shahbaz. Jan was also sentenced to 20 years in the slammer and fined Rs2 
million.

At least 4 others who were involved in the case - Naqeeb Ahmed, Maulvi Nadeem, 
Qari Bilal and Bashir Ahmed - received 10 years of rigorous imprisonment. The 
court acquitted 5 others - including Nawab Alam, Azhar Wali, Aurangzeb and Shah 
Raees - for lack of evidence.

Rewind

On January 8, 2005, the cleric's vehicle was ambushed by armed assailants in 
Gilgit. The attackers opened fire on him and 2 of his security guards died on 
the spot. Rizvi was initially wounded and airlifted to Rawalpindi. He died 5 
days later at the Combined Military Hospital, Rawalpindi. The murder sparked 
unprecedented sectarian violence in Gilgit and a large number of people were 
killed.

Over the past 8 years, Jan and 4 others who were convicted in the case 
repeatedly evaded arrest. In December 2012, Jan escaped from a jail in Gilgit 
along with another inmate, Arifuddin. Following the jailbreak, the then 
Gilgit-Baltistan government suspended 6 jail officials and ordered a judicial 
enquiry.

(source for both: The Express Tribune)

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

SC upholds award of death penalty on 2 counts in double murder case


Supreme Court (SC) has upheld high court decision on awarding death sentence, 
on 2 counts to one Ikhlaq Ahmad convicted in double murder case.

Ikhlaq Ahmad had killed 2 persons, including Ashim Khan and Nawazish over a 
land dispute. A 3-member bench of SC presided over by Justice Anwar Zahir 
Jamali, took up the case for hearing today.

The court was told that Ikhlaq Ahmad had murdered 2 persons, which had been 
proved from all the evidence. The subordinate court awarded capital punishment 
to him, which was upheld by high court. Therefore, it is requested that 
awarding of death penalty on 2 counts be upheld.

The counsel for the convict prayed the court to set aside the death sentence 
awarded by high court, on 2 counts. The apex court rejected the plea seeking 
nullification of orders on awarding death penalty on 2 counts.

(source: The Nation)

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

Pakistan's growing rate of executions ---- Pakistan's special Anti-Terrorism 
Courts are already overwhelmed with over 17,000 cases, 85 percent of them 
unrelated to militancy and sectarianism


In the famous Liaquat Hussain vs Federation of Pakistan case, the Supreme Court 
(SC) of Pakistan ruled the Ordinance establishing military courts to be 
illegal. This time, because it was an amendment to the Constitution, in a 
landmark decision a 17-judge bench has rejected all applications challenging 
the 21st Amendment, which established military courts.

In light of the petitions filed challenging the amendment, in April, the SC of 
Pakistan had suspended the death sentences of convicted terrorists by military 
courts. This had made the lifting of the moratorium to combat terrorism and 
support for military courts temporarily counterproductive to the intention for 
which it was passed. Those convicted of terrorism through military tribunals 
were not being executed while many of those convicted of lesser crimes are 
being executed at an increasingly alarming rate.

Pakistan has executed more people in the past seven months than Saudi Arabia. 
And that is saying a lot, since Saudi Arabia itself has executed more people in 
the past 7 months - over 100 - than it has in all of 2014. Almost 1/2 of those 
were for nonviolent drug crimes. According to the independent Human Rights 
Commission of Pakistan, 196 people have been executed in Pakistan since the 
lifting of the moratorium in December 2014. The majority of those are unrelated 
to militancy or sectarian violence.

After the devastating terror attack on a Peshawar school, which killed 148 
people, most of them children, Prime Minister (PM) Nawaz Sharif partially 
lifted the 6-year moratorium on executions as part of a 20-point National 
Action Plan (NAP) to combat terrorism. Pakistan's legislators passed the 21st 
amendment to the constitution and the Pakistan Army Amendment Bill to 
temporarily allow military tribunals to try militants accused of waging war 
against the state. Its newly formed military courts were supposed to make it 
easier for terror suspects to be convicted as they often went free due to lack 
of evidence.

Pakistan's special Anti-Terrorism Courts (ATCs), a parallel legal system, are 
already overwhelmed with over 17,000 cases, 85 percent of them unrelated to 
militancy and sectarianism. The conviction rates have been very low. The ATC in 
Islamabad did not have a single conviction last year. The ATC in Rawalpindi 
previously acquitted banned sectarian group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi's (LeJ) Malik 
Ishaq, a US designated global terrorist, from 3 counts of terrorism. He had 
taken responsibility for numerous terror attacks including bombings in Quetta, 
which killed 200 civilians, mostly Shias, and orchestrated the attack on the 
Sri Lankan cricket team while behind bars. But it is likely he would have been 
acquitted again had he not been shot dead last month in a gun battle between 
the police and supporters who tried to free him.

The ATCs have been criticised for long delays and lack of security, and are 
often deemed ineffective. In the past, they have been used for political 
victimisation. The Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, and later amendments, defined 
terrorism vaguely as "anything, which causes death, or grievous bodily harm to 
a person." In contrast, the recent 21st constitutional amendment and amendment 
to the Pakistan Army Act allow trial by military courts for members of 
"terrorist groups using the name of religion or a sect" who "raise arms against 
Pakistan's civil or military installations, armed forces or law enforcement 
agencies, abduct a person for ransom, possess, fabricate, or transport 
explosives, fire-arms, suicide jackets, design vehicles for terrorist activity, 
receive foreign funding for such crimes, or act to create terror or overawe the 
state." They did not extend to political, nationalist, separatist groups or 
other crimes. It gave discretion to the federal government to approve and 
transfer the case of any suspected terrorist accused of such offenses to be 
tried under the act.

Although the amendments passed both parliament and Senate unopposed, they were 
criticised in the media and by human rights groups both inside and outside the 
country. These are genuine concerns for a country that has continually 
struggled with marital law and seen its own sitting Prime Minister tried in an 
ATC by a military dictator. Asma Jahangir, a leading human rights advocate, 
raised many concerns on behalf of the SC Bar Association in a petition 
challenging the amendments.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's government quietly lifted the moratorium on executions 
for all capital cases whereas the SC placed a stay order on the executions of 
those convicted by the military courts.

This is a considerable problem for Pakistan, which has over 8,000 people on 
death row, one of the largest in the world according to Justice Project 
Pakistan. Some of those are charged with the controversial blasphemy law, such 
as the case of Asia Bibi. Her death sentence has only now been suspended by the 
SC during the process of appeals. Some human rights groups have also cautioned 
Pakistan on executing those who may have been tortured or those who were minors 
at the time of their confessions. A few controversial cases have made 
headlines, one of Shafqat Hussain whose execution was halted 4 times due to the 
controversy of his age at conviction but he was executed last Tuesday. Then 
there is the case of mentally ill Khizar Hayat and another of Aftab Bahadur 
Masih, who was executed last month amidst fears he was a juvenile, only 15, 
when convicted and tortured into confessing.

In an essay in The Guardian, Bahadur questioned the greater purpose his death 
would serve. "While the death penalty moratorium was ended on the pretext of 
killing terrorists, most of the people here in Kot Lakhpat are charged with 
regular crimes. How [will] killing them stop the sectarian violence in this 
country?" he inquired. Indeed, it makes little sense that Bahadur's case was 
tried under the special courts for Speedy Trial Ordinance meant for terrorists. 
Certainly, such executions do not help make Pakistan any safer but can at times 
amount to more injustices taking place within a criminal justice system, which 
needs much improving.

The age-old adage "not only must justice be done, it must be seen to be done" 
applies here. Pakistan must do more to ensure that the right people - hardcore 
terrorists - are being executed, especially as there remain innumerable looming 
threats. Peshawar based journalist, author and terror expert, Aqeel Yousafzai, 
who is in favour of the military courts, believes up to 1,000 local militants 
and 10 Taliban commanders have joined Islamic State (IS) in Pakistan, posing a 
big threat to the region in the future.

As a deterrent, militants must know they will be punished severely. At the same 
time, the state must seek to provide fair trials for all civilians, even for 
those who commit the most perverse crimes. Pakistan is not alone; this is a 
monumental task for any country.

One solution for Pakistan would be to make its military courts more transparent 
and ensure a fairer trial by addressing some of the concerns of the SC Bar 
Association. The National Commission on Human Rights (NCHR) Chairman Justice 
(retd) Ali Nawaz Chowhan has acknowledged the necessity to help the military 
fight an insurgency and asked that the commission be allowed as observer in the 
military courts to ensure more transparency. Along with this, more should be 
done to ensure that intelligence agencies and security forces collect evidence 
admissible in court. Detainees should also have the right to appeal their 
detention in the federal courts. More accountability in military courts may 
offer a temporary solution to extra-judicial killings and disappearances. It is 
worth noting that the number of those killed in custody across Khyber 
Pakhtunkhwa and the tribal belt, as reported by The New York Times, has said to 
have significantly gone down since the approval of military courts.

Another solution is to reform the existing ATCs. Pakistan must offer more 
protection for both judges and witnesses and make it easier to define and 
convict its "jet-black terrorists." It must not muddle the necessity to fight 
terrorism in these courts with those accused of lesser crimes or misuse them to 
persecute political adversaries. The problem lies in the definition of what 
accounts for "terrorism" as it is defined in Section 6 of the Anti-Terrorism 
Act 1997 and following amendments. This term needs to be redefined in light of 
the new reality faced by the nation and region at large.

During the month of Ramzan, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif temporarily suspended 
executions. As they now resume, Pakistan's legislators must examine its 
effectiveness in light of the war against terrorism. As Pakistan strengthens 
its resolve against terrorism, for which it has been applauded internationally, 
it must continue to make some very tough decisions ahead. Surely Pakistan 
cannot afford to lose the war on terror. But, at the same time, it must also 
balance and uphold its democratic and constitutional ideals.

(source: Meriam Sabih; The author is a freelance journalist and contributor for 
Al-Jazeera America----Daily Times)






BANGLADESH:

Bangladesh court sentences 2 Razakars for 1971 war crimes


A commander of the Razakars, an armed auxiliary force of Pakistani troops 
during Bangladesh's 1971 liberation war, was handed down the death penalty 
today while another from the notorious militia group was sentenced to life by a 
court here for genocide and war crimes.

Sheikh Sirajul Haque alias 'Siraj Master' was given the death penalty with 
Chairman of the 3-member International Crimes Tribunal 1 Justice Enayetur Rahim 
pronouncing the verdict.

Haque would be hanged to death or shot down as he was found guilty on 2 charges 
of genocide and 3 of crimes against humanity, the judge ruled.

Lawyers and legal experts said according to Bangladesh's penal code, convicts 
sentenced to death are hanged by the neck but the special tribunals could also 
order war crimes convicts to be executed by firing squads since they are being 
tried under a special law. Justice Rahim said 5 of the 6 charges brought 
against Haque was proved beyond doubt and he deserved no punishment other than 
the death penalty for the gravity of crimes he had committed.

The tribunal also sentenced fellow convict Khan Akram Hossain, a member of the 
Razakar force under Haque's command, to imprisonment until death for his role 
in the killing of about 50 people in southwestern Bagerhat district in 1971.

Haque and Hossain, both in their 70s, faced the trial in person and were 
present in the dock as the judgement was read out. A 3rd accused was also being 
tried along with the duo but charges against him were dropped as he died a 
natural death midway into the trial.

Since Bangladesh launched the war crimes trial, the 2 special tribunals, set up 
by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's secular government in 2010, have handed down 
death penalties to over 15 people.

About 3 million people were killed by the Pakistani army and their 
Bengali-speaking collaborators during the country's liberation war.

(source: oneindia.com)