[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Aug. 19



VIETNAM:

Vietnam court overturns death penalty for Nigerian drug mule


A court in Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City reduced a death sentence previously 
handed to a Nigerian man for bringing methamphetamine into Vietnam to life 
imprisonment, local online newspaper Thanh Nien (Young People) News reported 
Tuesday.

The indictment on Monday said Ejiogu Benjamin Ikechukwu had nearly 3.3 
kilograms of the drug in metal tubes and a laptop charger in his luggage as he 
flew to the city-based Tan Son Nhat Airport in June 2012. He had transited in 
Qatar.

The 33-year-old man said he only planned to go to Vietnam to buy clothes to 
resell them in Nigeria and had no idea about the drug in his luggage. He said a 
man asked him to carry the tubes and the charger to Vietnam and someone would 
pick them up.

A Ho Chi Minh court in August 2013 sentenced him to death, but he applied for 
an appeal. The People's Supreme Court then canceled the verdict, ordering a new 
investigation. Investigators could not track down the people who had used him 
as a drug mule.

Those convicted of smuggling more than 600 grams of heroin or more than 2.5 
kilograms of methamphetamine in Vietnam face death penalty. The production or 
sale of 100 grams of heroin or 300 grams of other illegal narcotics is also 
punishable by the death penalty.

(source: Xinhua News Agency)

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

Hanoi court announces death penalty for cocaine-smuggling Filipino----The Hanoi 
People's Court sentenced a Philippine national to death for drug trafficking on 
August 18.


40-year-old Emmanuel Sillo Camacho was arrested with cocaine hidden in his 
luggage at Noi Bai international airport on December 7, 2013.

Security forces discovered the white powder inside 18 socks with the total 
weight exceeding 3,408 grams.

Camacho admitted that 4 months before the arrest, he met a woman named Jessica 
through Facebook who was living in Brazil. At their face-to-face meeting, 
Jessica hired the man to smuggle drugs into Vietnam, adding that she would 
offer him a job in Brazil or other countries with wages up to 1,500 USD per 
month.

The court said Camacho overlooked the Vietnamese law for a quick profit and 
deserved the capital punishment based on the large amount of cocaine sized 2 
years ago.

Jessica's identity is still under investigation.

(source: Vietnam Nnews Agency)






EGYPT:

Counterterrorism Law Erodes Basic Rights ---- Broad 'Terrorist Acts' List May 
Criminalize Civil Disobedience


Egypt's new counterterrorism law increases authorities' power to impose heavy 
sentences, including the death penalty, for crimes under a definition of 
terrorism that is so broadly worded it could encompass civil disobedience. 
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi enacted the law on August 15, 2015.

The new law also gives prosecutors greater power to detain suspects without 
judicial review and order wide-ranging and potentially indefinite surveillance 
of terrorist suspects without a court order.

"With this sweeping new decree, Egypt's president has taken a big step toward 
enshrining a permanent state of emergency as the law of the land," said Nadim 
Houry, deputy Middle East and North Africa director. "The government has 
equipped itself with even greater powers to continue stamping out its critics 
and opponents under its vague and ever-expanding war on terrorism."

The law makes it a crime to publish or promote news about terrorism if it 
contradicts the Defense Ministry's official statements and would allow the 
courts to temporarily ban journalists from practicing their profession for 
doing so. It also makes anyone judged to have facilitated, incited, or agreed 
to a vaguely defined terrorist crime - whether in public or in private - liable 
for the same penalty that they would receive if they had committed that crime, 
even if the crime does not occur. The law eliminates any time limit for 
bringing terrorism prosecutions.

Egypt has had no lower house of parliament, which drafts laws, since it was 
dissolved by court order in 2012. In its absence, al-Sisi has issued at least 
175 laws and decrees since taking office in June 2014. The government has 
repeatedly postponed elections for a new parliament. By law, the new parliament 
will have only 15 days after its 1st session to review and amend all 
legislation passed in its absence before that legislation becomes final.

The government revived its discussion of a draft counterterrorism law - which 
had been proposed following the 2013 removal of former President Mohamed Morsy 
by the military - after the assassination of Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat 
on June 29, 2015, in a Cairo car bombing. In a speech at Barakat's funeral on 
June 30, al-Sisi said that "the prompt hand of justice is tied by the laws, and 
we can't wait for that," and pledged to amend Egypt's laws "to implement the 
law and justice in the fastest possible time."

Since Morsy's overthrow, the government has focused its crackdown on the Muslim 
Brotherhood, Morsy's former organization, arresting thousands of its members, 
while courts have sentenced hundreds to death. On the day of Barakat's funeral, 
Egypt's State Information Service blamed the Brotherhood for his killing - 
which the Brotherhood called "reprehensible" - without presenting any evidence.

Egypt's cabinet labeled the Brotherhood a terrorist group in December 2013 and 
April 2014. Cairo's Court of Urgent Appeals, normally meant to handle temporary 
civil injunctions, designated the Brotherhood a terrorist group in February 
2014, but that ruling remains on appeal and legal analysts have said that the 
court likely exceeded its jurisdiction. No competent court in Egypt has 
designated the Brotherhood a terrorist group, though prosecutors have filed 
thousands of cases accusing Brotherhood members of terrorism or membership in a 
terrorist group.

"Barakat's assassination and the ongoing conflict in the Sinai Peninsula show 
that the Egyptian government faces a serious and deadly insurgency," Houry 
said. "But eroding basic rights, curtailing dissent, and using 'terrorism' as a 
cudgel against opponents is no way to win the battle for hearts and minds."

Provisions of Egypt's New Counterterrorism Law

--The new Law 95 of 2015 for Confronting Terrorism largely maintains the 
overbroad definition of terrorism in Egypt's penal code. Under this definition, 
a "terrorist act" encompasses any "use of force or violence or threat or 
terrorizing" that aims, among other things, to:

--Disrupt general order or endanger the safety, interests or security of 
society; harm individual liberties or rights; harm national unity, peace, 
security, the environment or buildings or property; prevent or hinder public 
authorities, judicial bodies, government facilities, and others from carrying 
out all or part of their work and activity.

Such a framework far exceeds a definition of terrorism that the United Nations 
Security Council unanimously adopted in 2004 and that the UN special rapporteur 
on counterterrorism and human rights subsequently endorsed. That definition 
says that terrorism is an act committed with the intent to kill, cause serious 
bodily injury, or take hostages with the aim of intimidating or terrorizing a 
population or compelling a government or international organization.

Egypt's new counterterrorism law also runs counter to a basic principle in 
international human rights law that requires laws to be precisely drafted and 
understandable as a safeguard against their arbitrary use and so that people 
know what actions constitute a crime.

The new counterterrorism law will affect any person or group designated under 
Egypt's Terrorist Entities Law, issued in February 2015, which created a 
procedure for courts to approve prosecutors' nominations of individuals or 
groups as officially designated terrorists. Egyptian human rights groups have 
strongly criticized the Terrorist Entities Law for relying on an ambiguous 
definition of terrorism similar to the broad one included in the new 
counterterrorism law.

The counterterrorism law punishes a dozen different acts with the death 
penalty, making it the mandatory punishment for anyone convicted of funding a 
terrorist group or terrorist act. Other crimes that can incur the death penalty 
if they result in death include manufacturing weapons; damaging a gas, water, 
or electricity network; or compelling another person to join or remain in a 
terrorist group. The law does not require that the death be intentional. Under 
international law, even countries that maintain the death penalty have to 
restrict its application to the most serious crimes. Human Rights Watch opposes 
the use of the death penalty at all times as a uniquely final and inhumane 
punishment.

The law also makes it a crime to join or participate in a terrorist group "with 
knowledge of its purposes" and prescribes a minimum 10-year prison sentence for 
any member who receives military or security training. A terrorist group must 
consist of a minimum of 3 people.

The law attaches stiff penalties for incitement or the propagation of ideas 
that advocate what Egypt defines as terrorism, potentially criminalizing even 
private expressions of opposition to the government. In article 6, the law 
states that "incitement to commit any terrorist crime ... whatever the means 
used" shall be punishable in the same way as the crime itself regardless of 
whether such incitement is "public or non-public" or "has an effect."

While international law allows governments to prohibit speech that directly 
encourages a crime or is intended to result in criminal action, even if no 
crime is committed, the UN special rapporteur on counterterrorism has proposed 
that countries adopt a more specific definition of incitement that criminalizes 
the public distribution of a message that incites a terrorist act and creates 
"a danger" that it may be committed. Countries such as Tunisia, Jordan, and 
Lebanon have all criminalized incitement to terrorism that occurs in public or 
results in a terrorist act.

Egypt's new terrorism law goes beyond this by also criminalizing private, 
ineffectual incitement and by linking that incitement to a definition of 
terrorism that includes using force or threats to "disrupt general order" or 
"harm national unity," which could conceivably include civil disobedience. 
Egyptian authorities have prosecuted many Brotherhood members on terrorism 
charges for engaging in sit-ins or blocking roads during protests. Anyone who 
privately urges another to participate in such actions may face prosecution 
under the new terrorism law.

The law further restricts freedom of expression in article 35, which states 
that anyone who publishes or even promotes "untrue" news about acts of 
terrorism or news that contradicts official Defense Ministry statements about 
counterterrorism operations can be punished by a fine of 200,000-500,000 
Egyptian pounds (US$25,000-$64,000). If the person publishes the news as part 
of their occupation, a court can bar them from practicing their profession for 
up to a year. The law also punishes anyone who uses a website for the purpose 
of "promoting ideas or beliefs advocating the commission of terrorist acts" 
with at least 5 years in prison.

Egypt's Journalists Syndicate strongly opposed an earlier draft of article 35, 
which prescribed a prison sentence for anyone who published false news about 
counterterrorism operations. Egypt???s Supreme Judicial Council, the 
judiciary's governing body, also criticized several elements of the draft law, 
including a shortening of the appeals process. Both appeared to have succeeded 
in convincing the government to limit some of its changes.

The law significantly strengthens prosecutors by removing some judicial 
oversight of their actions. Article 46 allows prosecutors or other 
investigators to order surveillance and recording of terrorist suspects' 
communications, Internet use, and "whatever takes place in private places" for 
indefinitely renewable 30-day periods without a court order. Previously, 
investigating judges held the power to order home inspections and surveillance. 
The law also establishes undefined special courts within the normal judiciary 
to handle terrorism cases.

The law further reduces judges' roles by giving prosecutors more power to order 
detention in terrorism-related cases. Under the new law, an arresting officer 
can hold a terrorism suspect for 24 hours without a warrant, during which a 
prosecutor can order the person held for 7 more days without judicial review. 
The new law puts the prosecutor in charge of subsequent pretrial detention, 
which under Egypt's recently amended criminal procedure code can be renewed for 
up to 2 years in cases in which the suspect faces a life sentence or the death 
penalty. Previously, a minor offenses appeals court judge reviewed and ruled on 
such detention orders, though in practice, courts have regularly approved 
prosecutors' requests to hold in pretrial detention thousands of people 
arrested in the fallout from Morsy's removal.

Under Egypt's law, a terrorism suspect can appeal their detention to a 
competent court, which must rule within 3 days. An arresting officer must 
inform a suspect of the reason for their arrest, but a suspect is only allowed 
to contact their relatives and consult with a lawyer "without prejudice to the 
interests of the evidence gathering."

Human Rights Watch has documented how police and officers of the Interior 
Ministry's National Security Agency have forcibly disappeared dozens of people, 
some of whom were held without access to a lawyer for weeks and subsequently 
accused of terrorism crimes. The new counterterrorism law raises the 
possibility that such detentions could become legalized.

A fundamental principle of international law, applicable even during states of 
emergency, is that every detainee should be brought promptly before a judge to 
review their detention (usually, within a few days of being detained).

Mimicking language already contained in Egypt's decades-old Emergency Law, the 
new law also gives the president, in article 53, power to take "appropriate 
measures to protect the general order and security" to confront the danger of 
terrorism or in case of an environmental catastrophe. This includes the power 
to order 6-month curfews or evacuations in defined areas, subject to a majority 
vote in parliament within seven days, or cabinet approval if parliament is not 
in session.

(source: Human Rights Watch)