[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Aug. 16



IRAN----execution

Prisoner hanged, 7 others at imminent risk


Iran's fundamentalist regime has hanged a prisoner and transferred 7 others to 
solitary confinement in preparation for their execution, which is expected to 
be carried out on Monday.

A prisoner only identified by the initials Z.P. was hanged on Friday in the 
central prison of Rasht, northern Iran.

Seven other death row prisoners were transferred to solitary confinement on 
Saturday in Bandar Abbas Prison, southern Iran, to face imminent execution.

They have been identified as Hossein Karimi, 25; Siamak Fadaii, 24; Zaher 
Amroddin, 24 (an Afghan citizen); Vazirahmad Amroddin, 22 (Afghan); 
Amir-Hossein Abdol-Khaleq, 22; Mansour Mehdizadeh, 68; and Gholam Fayezi, 28.

(source: NCR-Iran)






SOUTH AFRICA:

SA's death penalty is not yet dead


We have yet to come to terms with the full meaning and implications of the 
Marikana tragedy. Although the report released by the Marikana Commission of 
Inquiry goes some way towards this goal, the foundational moral dilemmas raised 
by the loss of every life in this conflict have yet to be properly articulated.

What the world witnessed at Marikana was the extrajudicial execution of South 
African citizens in a country that had formally abolished the death penalty.

Those who, from all sides, perished had not been indicted. Nor were they 
brought to any court of justice. No verdict had been pronounced.

Formal or informal, deliberate or spontaneous, the decision to spill their 
blood and bring their lives to an end did not conform with the fact that, in 
South Africa, the death penalty had been outlawed.

That these extrajudicial executions happened in the way they did was not only a 
grave instance of discrimination and inequality before the law, it was an 
indictment of the state.

For justice to be obtained, compensation and reparations are morally in order.

What is the state and why are we convinced of its necessity in the first place 
if not for the reason that it will protect our lives by excluding from the 
political sphere the greatest of evils - violent death?

Originally, the raison d'etre of the state was to expel death from the 
community. Its single most important role is not to decide who must live and 
who must die - it is to guarantee a secure life for all its citizens. This it 
does by distancing life from death, in law and in practice.

Because of our history of institutionalised racism, the state in South Africa 
was configured in such a way that, on matters of life and death, the law did 
not protect everybody equally.

For blacks in particular the law, death and the state tended to collude too 
often and for too long in an endless nightmare.

It was always as if, to ritually reaffirm the life of the state, black people 
had to be sacrificed in one way or the other, preferably through some form of 
an execution in place of an absent justice.

The right to liberally spill black people's blood is what kept giving life to 
the South African state.

It is what finally turned it into the breathing corpse we called apartheid.

The execution of black men and women in this country was not accidental - it 
was always politically determined.

To justify these executions, the state alleged that, should the black man not 
be executed, he might turn out to destroy the state and thus return all to a 
state of nature in which a far greater number of men and women could die.

But as we have come to know, the true cipher of racism is not the demand for 
security; it is nihilism. It is the coincidence of death and the norm.

The formal abolition of the death penalty does not mean that many are still not 
condemned to death. In fact, the death penalty has morphed into countless forms 
of extrajudicial executions.

Blood is still spilt, either in the hands of state organs or those of countless 
private executioners.

We have entered a new period in our history when processes of accumulation, 
privatisation and deregulation are not necessarily happening through primitive 
dispossession, but through chaos and disorder.

What we call corruption is a key device in this new political economy.

Post-apartheid South Africa is not only a nation in which most of its citizens 
are propertyless in a society in which consumption rules, but also a nation of 
privately armed citizens. A systemic redistribution of the means of violence is 
the inevitable corollary of this new political economy.

A police force in military garb, hundreds of private security firms and a 
public culture deeply nostalgic of the environments of enclosure typical of 
apartheid have all conspired to produce an increasingly fragmented, fearful and 
vulnerable nation.

In the face of generalised mortal risk, the nation is willing to believe that 
each individual can be his or her own police officer, judge and executioner.

This new regime of risk and insecurity and this mode of redistribution of the 
means of violence undermine community and foster a society of atomistic 
individuals isolated before power, separated from each other by fear, mistrust 
and suspicion, and prone to mobilise under the banner of a mob or militia 
rather than a community built around networks of solidarity.

This raises all sorts of questions, the most important of which is what freedom 
and citizenship mean in an armed society.

What does a term like "civil society"

mean in such a context?

We recognise the features of an armed society in the proliferation of weapons 
and the incidents of violence and death related to the use of guns.

An armed society is anything but a polite or decent society.

In an armed society, speech is not the highest form of human association. An 
armed society is not devoted to the freedom and equality of its component 
members.

It is devoted to the cult of the gun, or the threat of it.

As things stand, there is absolutely no guarantee that there will not be a 
repeat of Marikana.

For Marikana to not be repeated, we will have to ponder the full ethical and 
legal implications of what actually happened.

The gun represents a form of violence whose main feature is to foster an 
undemocratic culture.

An undemocratic culture is one in which the gun turns into the privileged means 
that mediates the relationships between putatively free and equal citizens.

And wherever the rule of the people turns into the rule of property and the 
rule of property into the rule of the gun, the likelihood of extrajudicial 
forms of execution dramatically increases.

(source: Opinion; Achille Mbembe is the author of On the Postcolony, recently 
republished by Wits University Press----news24.com)






UNITED ARAB EMIRATES:

Indian's death sentence revoked after 'blood money' is paid


An appeal court has revoked the death penalty of an Indian man suffering in 
jail for a 'premeditated murder' which happened in 2009.

28-year-old Parvinder Singh's sentence was retracted to 11 years in jail along 
with blood money of AED 487,500 which is to be followed by deportation.

He also has to serve a separate jail term of 3 months for alcohol consumption, 
according to Khaleej Times.

Advocate Abdul Karim bin Eid defended Parvinder in court, saying that he could 
be released after 3 1/2 years since he has shown good behaviour in prison and 
has completed part of his jail term.

The blood money has to be deposited in court, as the victim of the murder is 
yet to be identified. Once the identity is found, the money will be handed over 
to the family of the victim.

The Ajman Public Prosecution charged Parvinder Singh and Muhan Singh with 
murder in 2009. Ajman Police found the unidentified man's body in the 
industrial area at Al Jurf.

During their investigation, the police found that Parvinder was involved in a 
bootlegging case and had beaten up the victim. He confessed to the crime and 
had even guided the police to the crime scene. He said that he held the victim 
back while his partner hit the victim with an alcohol bottle on the head. When 
the victim fell to the ground, bleeding excessively, they wrapped his head in a 
piece of cloth and took him to the sandy area in Al Jurf by car.

The prosecution demanded death sentence based on the forensic report which said 
that the victim suffered severe fractures on the skull which led to his 
eventual death.

The court charged Parvinder with 'premeditated murder' and with illegal alcohol 
trade. Parvinder said that he helped Muhan beat up the victim as he was selling 
alcohol in their 'specified' area.

The advocated entered an appeal on behalf of Parvinder which was rejected by 
the Ajman Court of Appeal in 2013.

The case was then taken to the Supreme Court, which returned the case to the 
Court of Appeal again this year.

Abdul Karim argued that his client did not kill the victim intentionally and 
that they lacked any evidence to prove it was a premeditated murder. He added 
that the forensic report contradicted the description of the victim and the 
date of incident.

Accordingly, the court revoked the death sentence imposed on the Punjab native. 
The victim remains unidentified.

(source: gdonline.com)






BANGLADESH:

1 gets death penalty for killing man


A Chittagong court has awarded death penalty to a person on charge of stabbing 
an aged man to death centring previous enmity.

The court also sentenced life-term for the same person as he also stabbed 
another person in the same incident, said court sources.

Chittagong Divisional Speedy Trial Tribunal's Judge Mahitul Haque Enam 
Chowdhury Sunday passed the order in presence of the accused, Radhashyam 
Horijon, 55, said the tribunal's prosecutor Advocate Ayub Khan.

He said the court sentenced the verdict as the charges against the accused were 
proved beyond any doubt.

According to case document, Radhashyam on July 27, 2013, stabbed Asok Kumar 
Horijon, 60, to death before Rajanigondhya Market at Hajigonj upazila of 
Chandpur district while another Nandalal Horijon was critically injured in this 
incident.

The deceased???s brother Bijoy Horijon lodged a case with Hajigonj police 
station accusing Radhashyam on that day while the accused was nabbed on that 
day soon after the incident.

The charges were formed against the lone accused in Chandpur District Court on 
March 2, 2014.

Later, the case was shifted in the speedy trial tribunal on November 11, 2014 
for the quick dismissal of the case.

The court announced the verdict after testifying 18 witnesses out of 22.

. (source: Dhaka Tribune)






PAKISTAN:

6 awarded death in Rawalpindi courts firing case


An anti-terrorism court (ATC) Saturday awarded death sentence, 8 times each, to 
6 convicts the district courts firing case, with 63 to 73 years rigorous 
imprisonment.

On October 12, 2011, the convicts gunned down Chaudhry Shaukat Ali, Muhammad 
Arshad and Ghalib Mithoo, besides a passerby Muhammad Iqbal, outside the 
district courts.

ATC judge Asif Majeed Awan announced the death penalty, 8 times, to all the 
convicts.

3 of them namely Khizer Mahmood, Asif Mahmood and Liaquat Ali were also 
sentenced to undergo 63 years rigorous imprisonment while Adil, Safeer, Mutabar 
Ali alias Mula were awarded 73 years rigorous imprisonment, besides a fine of 
Rs 300,000 each.

The court also ordered confiscation of their movable and immovable properties.

The court acquitted the accused namely Kabir Ali, Muhammad Taj, Shama Bibi, 
Wajid Ali, Sabir Hussain and Farid Hussian due to lack of evidence.

3 other accused Ramzan, Fazal Dad and Mazhar Hussain were declared proclaimed 
offenders in the case.

(source: samaa.tv)






PHILIPPINES:

Duterte wants to restore death penalty for plunder


Mayor Rodrigo Duterte wants corrupt officials dead.

"Death penalty must be considered for plunder," Duterte said at the sidelines 
of the general membership meeting of the Manila Bankers Institute at a hotel in 
Manila last week. "Drastic measures must be done. Laws must be amended to make 
it easier to prosecute the corrupt," he said.

Duterte blames corruption for the country's continued poverty.

Duterte said the money pocketed by corrupt officials could have been spent on 
programs to uplift the economic condition of the poor.

But he said while laws should be made tougher against corruption, values 
education should also be strengthened and made mandatory in both public and 
private schools to mold future leaders into being true public servants.

Duterte has always said he never spent a single centavo of government money for 
his own good or that of his family.

"I make sure that every centavo was spent to where they should be spent - 
public good," the feisty mayor said.

He said that as a mayor, he made sure that applications for business permits 
were approved within 72 hours to combat bribery or under-the-table deals.

"The mayor asks for nothing in return, be it a condominium unit or bags of 
cash. Because the mayor is not on the take, nobody else in the city government 
dares," he pointed out.

Aside from toughening laws against corruption, Duterte said the present system 
of the government should be changed to federalism.

"While there is no perfect system of government, the unitary form that we have 
now has not worked well for us given the fact that we are an ethnically 
diversed country living in over 7,000 islands. The unitary form of government 
has centralized power in Metro Manila. It has also centralized corruption and 
prevented the growth of the regions, which are left with very little share of 
the national wealth," he said.

He said federalism would not only minimize corruption but could "also prove to 
be a more viable option to address the restive Bangsamoro in the Southern 
Philippines who are seeking self-governance."

Aside from corruption, Duterte said leaders should also fight criminality.

"I have no tolerance for criminals and the drug lords. They destroy our 
children. I believe that those who harm our children do not deserve to be part 
of society," he said.

(sourcce: inquirer.net)



NIGERIA:

Widow demands death penalty for husband's killer


A widow, Bose Azees, is demanding the death penalty for the man alleged to have 
beaten her husband, Ahmed Azees, to death.

Kola Adegbite, a local official of the Amalgamation of Motorcycle Operators and 
Riders Association of Nigeria (AMORAN), allegedly beat Azees to death with 
charm penultimate Sunday at Bank Bus stop, Ifo, Ogun State.

An argument had ensued between Adegbite, described as AMORAN ticketing officer, 
and the deceased over ticketing.

What followed, according to eye witnesses, was that Adegbite struck Azees with 
a ring. The victim slumped immediately.

Bystanders rushed to his aid and were in the process of taking him to the 
hospital when he gave up the ghost.

Bose, who is still shocked by the incident, says all she wants is justice.

"My husband's killer should be given the death penalty," she told The Nation as 
she recalled the circumstances surrounding his death.

She said: "my husband was not into Okada business full time. He was a 
bricklayer and only used his motorcycle to carry passengers in order to 
complement his income.

"He told Adegbite that he had no money to buy ticket, promising to do so as 
soon as he made some money later in the day.

"My husband pleaded with Adegbite, but he won't listen. It was in the middle of 
an altercation that the man (Adegbite) invited his colleagues to beat up my 
husband before hitting him with a deadly charm. He fell down with his tongue 
stretching out. He died on the spot.

"My husband and I did not plan it this way. All I want is justice."

A close relation who does not want to be named described the late Azees "as 
unassuming and hardworking."

A resident who asked for anonymity asked security agencies and local government 
authorities to monitor Okada riders in the community close to prevent a 
recurrence.

He recalled how 3 other commercial motorcycle riders were beaten up by AMORAN 
ticketing officials at Coker area of the town a month ago.

The suspect was arrested by policemen from the Ifo Police Station and has since 
been transferred to the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID), 
Eleweran, Abeokuta.

(source: thenationonlineng.net)