[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 1



SAUDI ARABIA:

Saudi Arabia executes convicted murderer in Medina



Saudi Arabia has decapitated a convicted murderer amid rising concerns about 
the growing number of executions in the country.

In a statement on Sunday, the Interior Ministry said Saudi national, 
Abdelrahman al-Jahni, was found guilty of shooting another man dead during a 
dispute.

Jahni's sentence was carried out in the holy city of Medina.

His decapitation brought to 5 the number of people executed since Saudi King 
Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud took office on January 23 after the death of his 
predecessor King Abdullah.

The Interior Ministry added that the death penalty reveals the Saudi 
government's commitment to "maintaining security and realizing justice."

According to the London-based rights group, Amnesty International, Saudi Arabia 
has one of the highest execution rates in the world.

The country has come under particular criticism from rights groups for 
executions carried out for non-fatal crimes.

The number of executions in the kingdom has been constantly on the rise in 
recent years. The country carried out the death penalty against 87 people last 
year, up from 78 in 2013.

Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery, and drug trafficking are all punishable 
by death under the Saudi penal code.

(source: presstv.ir)








IRAN:

Hard-line judge reportedly assigned case of Post reporter Jason Rezaian, jailed 
in Iran



An Iranian judge known as the "hanging judge" for his harsh sentencing 
practices has been named to hear the case of a Washington Post reporter who has 
been imprisoned in Tehran for more than 1/2 a year, a human rights group said 
Saturday.

Jason Rezaian, The Post's Tehran bureau chief, will be tried before 
Revolutionary Court Judge Abolghassem Salavati, according to the International 
Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. In a report posted on its Web site, the 
advocacy group said the Iranian judiciary had announced that the 38-year-old 
reporter would be put on trial "soon," though it provided no further 
information on the precise nature of the charges he faces.

The Web site quoted a defense lawyer, Mohammed Saleh Nikbakht, who has been 
seeking to represent Rezaian, as saying he has told Rezaian's family that "for 
certain reasons," he cannot do so. The reporter has not seen a lawyer since he 
was taken into "temporary detention" July 22. On Wednesday, the head of the 
Tehran judiciary, Gholamhossein Esmaeeli, said the result of the trial would be 
announced after a verdict has been reached.

The Post's executive editor, Martin Baron, said in a statement Sunday: "There 
has been no justice in the case of our colleague Jason Rezaian since the 
beginning. He was held for months without knowing the accusations against him. 
Now that the case is proceeding to trial, the charges still have not been 
specified. He still hasn't been allowed to see a lawyer. This case has 
unfolded, and continues to unfold, without a hint of fairness and justice. 
Jason should be released immediately. What has happened to him is an 
abomination and deserves the world's condemnation."

The Iranian jurist selected to preside over the case is notorious for his 
actions as head of the Revolutionary Court's Branch 15, responsible for 
adjudicating cases involving what Iran considers national security crimes and 
what human rights activists deem to be politically motivated charges. Iranian 
authorities have not explained why Rezaian has been detained, beyond offering a 
vague statement saying he is accused of activities beyond the scope of 
journalism.

The assignment of Rezaian's case to Salavati's courtroom appears to sharpen an 
ongoing struggle between moderates surrounding President Hassan Rouhani and 
hard-liners allied with Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Salavati is among a handful of Revolutionary Court judges known for the stiff 
sentences they impose on those who challenge the government's authority. They 
have meted out lengthy prison terms and lashings as punishment for alleged 
offenses by journalists, lawyers, activists and minority groups. Salavati 
regularly imposes the harshest sentences of all, including the death penalty 
for anti-government protesters. That has earned him a reputation as a hanging 
judge, or as human rights groups call him, the "judge of death."

"He's responsible for handing down some very, very severe sentences," said 
Faraz Sanei, an Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch. "Most of the really 
high-profile cases have gone to him. It's not entirely clear to me why."

Many of those cases have gained international attention, prompting the European 
Union in 2011 to place sanctions on Salavati and other Iranian law-enforcement 
officials who the bloc said had committed human rights abuses. Salavati has 
never been sanctioned by the United States, according to an official from the 
Treasury Department, which maintains the list of individuals and institutions 
under sanctions.

In a case that was widely publicized in the United States, Salavati imposed an 
8-year prison sentence on two American hikers who were picked up near Iran???s 
border with Iraq in 2009 and accused of espionage. After spending more than 2 
years in prison, the 2 were released on bail.

Salavati has frequently locked up critics of the government. In 2012, he gave 
the daughter of the moderate former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, 6 
months in jail after she said in an interview with a foreign, Persian-language 
online publication that the country was being run by "thugs and hoodlums." She 
was charged with engaging in "propaganda against the system."

For many Iranians, Salavati's name is intimately connected with the show trials 
of hundreds of protesters arrested after the disputed reelection of President 
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 2009. Dozens were paraded before the judge in 
nationally televised proceedings in which they confessed to participating in 
protests inspired by Western intelligence agencies. Several of the protesters 
were sentenced to death, including one who had admitted to throwing a rock.

"He's known for issuing death sentences and very heavy prison sentences for 
basically political charges," said Rod Sanjabi, executive director of the 
Connecticut-based Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. "Typically, the 
chances are there has been coercion and the extraction of a confession, and the 
likelihood of inadequate rights of counsel. That is how cases function in the 
Revolutionary courts. But even within that context, he has a reputation of 
being a hanging judge with no apparent legal knowledge."

Sanei, of Human Rights Watch, said some former prisoners and lawyers who have 
appeared in court before Salavati say they were not allowed to present a 
defense. Others accuse the judge of being a rubber stamp for Iran's 
intelligence services.

"A lot of people we've spoken to in the last 5 or 6 years claim there was 
actually collusion between the judiciary, especially the Revolutionary Court, 
and the Ministry of Intelligence," Sanei said.

Despite his notoriety, Salavati remains a shadowy figure. His resume is 
unknown, and it is not clear he ever attended law school. It's also not certain 
that Salavati is his real name. According to Sanei, many Revolutionary Court 
judges use pseudonyms.

Salavati and other Revolutionary Court judges do not have the last word in the 
Iranian judicial system, though. Death-penalty cases automatically go to the 
Supreme Court for a final decision, while national security cases are sent to 
appellate courts that often reduce, but sometimes increase, prison terms.

Rezaian is a dual American-Iranian citizen, a status that the Iranian 
government says renders him subject to Iranian laws. His family has reported 
that his health is failing and that his emotional strength is waning during his 
lengthy time behind bars.

(source: Washington Post)






VIETNAM:

Equality must be at the heart of judicial reform: President



President Truong Tan Sang said draft amendments to the Criminal Code and 
Criminal Procedure Code must reflect the principle of justice and equality 
while protecting the interests of the State and people.

Sang was chairing a session of the Central Steering Committee for Judicial 
Reform in Ha Noi which was reviewing reports on amendments to legal documents.

A representative from the Ministry of Justice said one of the major amendments 
related to reducing the the number of death sentence. The ministry said the 
amendment aimed at imposing death penalty on only serious crimes so that the 
principle of respecting human rights was realised.

The death sentence amendments are also aimed at bringing Vietnamese law in line 
with world trends.

Regarding a proposal to include more kinds of crimes in law documents, the 
drafting committee said it believed it was more necessary to focus and regulate 
current kinds of crimes.

Some important amendments were also suggested for the Criminal Procedure Code, 
including the right of people arrested to refuse to give evidence that was 
against their interests.

The current Criminal Procedure Code states that the court has the duty to bear 
the burden of proof and the right to collect evidence. Meanwhile, defendants 
have the right to, but are not obliged, to prove they are innocent.

Many participants at the session suggested that the law should be amended so 
that it clearly states that those arrested and defendants have the right not to 
provide evidence that are against them.

President Sang said the draft amendments would improve Viet Nam's legal system 
and provide better protection for human rights.

He said the law amendment projects should be completed soon.

(source: Vietnamnet)








UNITED KINGDOM:

Foreign Office criticised over death row Brit



The Foreign Office has been criticised for doing "very little" to help a Briton 
facing the death penalty in Ethiopia despite knowing that his conviction is 
baseless, it has been claimed.

Political activist Andargachew Tsige, 59, from London, has been detained in the 
country since his removal from an airport in Yemen in June last year and is 
facing execution over convictions for terrorist planning.

Campaigners claim emails show the Government believes there is insufficient 
evidence to connect him to any terrorist activity and knew immediately that 
Ethiopia's actions were unlawful.

Maya Foa, director of the death penalty team at campaign group Reprieve, said 
the Foreign Office, however, had done "very little" about the case.

"This is the problem," she said. "What they need to be asking for is for this 
man, who has been unlawfully rendered, unlawfully held, to be released."

A Foreign Office spokesman said that there was "deep concern" over Tsige's 
detention and that pressure was being put on the Ethiopian authorities to 
follow due legal process.

He added: "We strongly oppose the death penalty in his as in all cases."

(source: Herald Scotland)








RUSSIA:

Russian Exit From Council of Europe Could Jeopardize Death Penalty Moratorium



As Russia considers exiting the Council of Europe after its voting rights were 
suspended for the 2nd year in a row last week, the fate of Russia's death 
penalty moratorium hangs in the balance.

Russia issued a moratorium on the death penalty in 1996 shortly after joining 
the Council of Europe. All of the council's other 46 member states have 
formally abolished the death penalty in peace time.

The moratorium has proven controversial in Russia. Reinstatement of the death 
penalty was supported last year by 52 % of the Russian population, a survey by 
the independent Levada Center revealed. Notably, the 2014 results represented a 
9 % decrease from 2012, when the Moscow-based pollster conducted a similar 
survey.

In recent years several high-ranking Russian officials, including Investigative 
Committee head Alexander Bastrykin, have called for the death penalty to be 
reinstated for particularly gruesome crimes.

On Saturday in an interview with state television channel Rossiya 24, the 
speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament, Sergei Naryshkin, said that 
while he is personally opposed to the death penalty, a discussion of its 
reinstatement is under way as Russia considers leaving the Council of Europe.

However, he added that Russia "has its own principles that comply with many 
positions, norms and conventions of the Council of Europe independent of 
whether we are a member of the council."

The Council of Europe promotes collaboration between all member states in 
Europe.

It also oversees the European Court of Human Rights, which in December upheld a 
ruling that Russia should pay 1.9 billion euros ($2.1 billion) to shareholders 
of defunct oil giant Yukos. According to ECHR statistics, Russia lost 
significantly more claims than any other member state during the course of 
2014.

Naryshkin confirmed in the state TV interview that Russia exiting the Council 
of Europe would mean exiting the European Court of Human Rights as well.

Russia's voting rights in the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly were 
initially suspended last year over the country's annexation of Crimea from 
Ukraine. That suspension was prolonged in a decision by the assembly on 
Wednesday. Russia subsequently said it would boycott the assembly until at 
least 2016.

Last week 2 Russian lawmakers, including Communist Party leader Gennady 
Zyuganov, were reportedly assaulted by a pair of Ukrainian statesmen at the 
Parliamentary Assembly.

1 of the Ukrainian officials, Dmytro Linko, said in a Facebook post that he 
"smacked" Zyuganov in the face. Following the incident, the Parliamentary 
Assembly said it would improve its security measures.

(source: The Moscow Times)


AUSTRALIA:

In 2014 The AFP Was Involved In 100 'Potential Death Penalty Situations'



12 Australians could end up on death row it has emerged, following an 
investigation into the Australian Federal Police's involvement in death penalty 
crimes found that the Bali 9 duo aren't the only 2 facing execution.

Fairfax Media reports at least a dozen Australians face serious charges 
carrying the death penalty, with most of the offences believed to be drug 
smuggling in Asia.

The report reveals the AFP have been extensively involved in death penalty 
cases for almost a decade, and just last year co-operated with foreign police 
in 100 cases known as "potential death penalty situations".

While the police authority said it played no part in the investigations of the 
12 Australians, in 2009 it was summoned to the Federal Court after they tipped 
off Indonesian officials about Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.

Since the arrest of the Bali 9, new guidelines have been established for such 
cases after the judge cleared the AFP of wrongdoing but said that new protocols 
were needed.

If providing a foreign police service with a tip-off about Australians, the AFP 
now must consider the severity of the crime and the profile of those involved, 
such as their age.

Yesterday it emerged that condemned Bali 9 duo, Chan and Sukumaran, have sent 
Indonesia president Joko Widodo hand-written letters in Bahasa as part of a 
last-ditch effort to have their death sentences reviewed.

(source: Business Insider)

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

The Australians on death row you don't know about: A dozen more could face the 
death penalty overseas, including 2 grandmothers



As many as 12 Australians are on death row overseas facing possible execution, 
not including Bali 9 leaders Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan.

According to Fairfax, the dozen Australians, including 2 grandmothers, have all 
committed serious crimes abroad which carry the death penalty and they could be 
next to face the executioner.

The unlucky 12 are in addition to the Bali 9 duo and Pham Trung Dung, who is on 
death row in Vietnam for trafficking heroin.

According to Fairfax, a 71-year-old grandmother is among the 12 inmates 
possibly facing execution overseas. It is understood that the majority of the 
cases are related to drug trafficking offences.

In a report released to Fairfax, the Department of Foreign Affairs is noted as 
being heavily involved with many of the cases. However, speaking to the 
publication, the Department of Foreign Affairs said it did not play a part in 
any of the 12 cases.

'These figures are subject to revision and represent the best of our knowledge. 
As a matter of policy we do not disclose the names or locations of these 
consular clients,' a spokesman for DFAT said.

While the DFAT declined to comment on individual cases, the report stated that 
it had helped with the investigations of 239 'potential death' cases in the 
past 3 years.

Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, were arrested in 2005 when they attempted to 
smuggle 8.3kg of heroin from Bali to Australia.

Despite their attempts to rehabilitate themselves behind bars, they are both 
now facing death by firing squad in Indonesia.

They have appealed for clemency from the Indonesian government with an 
Australian campaign founded by friend and artist Ben Quilty supporting them 
from their home country.

Death row inmate Pham Trung Dung, an Australian of Vietnamese origin, was 
arrested in May 2013 when custom officials reportedly found 4 kilograms of 
heroin in his luggage as he was boarding a flight from Ho Chi Minh City to 
Australia.

A court heard in June 2014 that Dung had been living in Australia with his 
partner, To Quyen, since 2000 and travelled to Vietnam with her and his 2 sons 
in 2013 to visit family

. It was in Vietnam that Dung reportedly agreed to transport 2 bags of heroin 
given to him by an acquaintance to take to another acquaintance in Australia.

According to online paper VnExpress, Dung said he knew it was illegal but could 
not pass up the $40,000 payout.

Up until now, the public were only aware of 2 other Australians who were 
possibly facing execution - Sydney man Peter Gardner and Australian mother of 4 
Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto.

Gardner made headlines last year when he was arrested for allegedly attempting 
to traffic 30 kilograms of methamphetamine, also known as the drug ice out of 
China.

The 25-year-old was taken into custody along with Kalynda Davies, also from 
Sydney, who has since returned to Australia.

Guangzhou Customs claim they found the drugs in 60 vacuum-sealed bags inside 
Gardner's luggage while he was on his way to Sydney on Flight CZ325, the Sydney 
Morning Herald reported.

His 2 pieces of hand luggage had to be forced open by authorities in an 
interrogation room in Baiyun Airport as the zippers were super glued.

It is believed to be the most ice local customs have ever found leaving the 
country.

In another case of drug trafficking abroad, Australian mother Maria Elvira 
Pinto Exposto, 52, was arrested on December 7 after arriving at Kuala Lumpur 
International Airport en route from Shanghai to Melbourne.

A routine customs check discovered a hidden compartment in a bag she carried, 
which contained 1.5 kilogrammes (3.3 pounds) of suspected crystal 
methamphetamine, or 'ice'.

Her lawyer has since protested her innocence, claiming Ms Exposto had become 
involved in an online romance with a person claiming to be a US serviceman.

She reportedly travelled to Shanghai to meet him, only to discover that another 
person had been posing as her supposed love interest.

It was there that she was tricked into carrying the drugs, her lawyer said.

(source: Daily Mail)



INDONESIA:

Bloody Murderers - A Rebuttal to 2 Death Penalty Advocates; Ignorance or 
Deception? An op-ed by 2 Foreign Ministry staffers defending the use of the 
death penalty for drug crimes falls flat in both its appeal to empirical data 
and its appeal to international law, which does not consider trafficking a 
capital offense, the author argues



Astari Anjani and Dimas Muhamad, a duo representing the Indonesian Foreign 
Affairs Ministry, believe that the death penalty is the right punishment for 
convicted drug traffickers.

Last week, in an opinion piece for the Jakarta Globe, Anjani and Muhamad 
described the death penalty as a "vital" tool for "saving Indonesia from [its] 
drug scourge," and an "important part of our comprehensive strategy to win the 
war on drugs."

At the beginning of their article, Anjani and Muhamad argued that drug use 
"claims lives," and that drug traffickers should therefore be put to death as 
recompense. "Bloodless murderers," the authors explained, do not deserve to 
live; not after all of the drug-related deaths that they have caused.

Having dealt with this fallacy in a previous article, I now propose that we 
turn to consider some of the authors' less emotive arguments for the efficacy 
and fairness of the death penalty. Bear in mind, however, that Anjani and 
Muhamad's entire case for capital punishment does seem to hinge on precisely 
the above claim - that all convicted drug traffickers are somehow culpable for 
thousands of deaths, and must therefore be punished in kind.

It seems to me, therefore, that if we refuse to grant Anjani and Muhamad the 
above claim - which we most certainly should - then the rest of their argument 
is rendered null and void. However, knowing that Anjani and Muhamad are bound 
to disagree with such an early victory proclamation, I think it is only fair 
that we hear out the rest of their case, in the interests of leaving no stone 
unturned.

Legal and empirical claims

Following their opening reference to "bloodless murderers," Anjani and Muhamad 
went on to argue for the death penalty on the basis of: One, an appeal to 
empirical data, and 2, an appeal to international legal norms.

Both of these arguments fail to present a compelling case for the death 
penalty, albeit for different reasons. First, Anjani and Muhamad's appeal to 
empiricism - i.e. the claim that the death penalty has a proven "deterrent" 
effect - is both impossible to establish and quite obviously superseded by 
greater evidence to the contrary. 2nd, Anjani and Muhamad???s appeal to 
international legal norms was - to put it mildly - entirely composed of some 
convenient fantasies.

The authors argued points 1 and 2 in that order, but in the interests of saving 
the best for last, I shall begin with point 2, the appeal to international law.

"One can argue that capital punishment is not effective enough or inhumane," 
Anjani and Muhamad rightly conceded, "but when all is said and done every 
country has the sovereign right to prosecute criminals in accordance with its 
national laws and international law norms that it agreed to."

All perfectly true. But then in comes the fiction:

"Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), 
which Indonesia has ratified, allows the death penalty under certain 
conditions, which Indonesia has met ...

"The death sentence can only be imposed for the most serious crimes, and 
Indonesia deems drug trafficking to fall into this category. Despite the debate 
on what is meant by 'the most serious crimes,' the ICCPR's preparatory works 
show that the omission in defining the term was intended by the negotiating 
parties to leave room for state-specific interpretation [emphasis added]."

The notion that there is still an ongoing debate as to the meaning of the 
ICCPR's term "most serious crimes" is a total falsehood. In fact, all United 
Nations legal entities have confirmed that drug trafficking is an economic 
crime, committed for financial gain, and does not result in a direct loss of 
life. Drug offenses, therefore, do not meet the criteria of a "most serious 
crime."

In 1984, in a document titled "Safeguards Guaranteeing Protection of the Rights 
of Those Facing the Death Penalty," the Economic and Social Council of the 
United Nations proposed a clear definition of the term "most serious crimes." 
That definition, which was later endorsed by the UN General Assembly, 
established that a "most serious crime" must result in an "intentional" and 
direct loss of life, thereby excluding economic crimes such as drug 
trafficking.

Later, in 1997, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary 
or Arbitrary Executions clarified that the term "intentional" should be 
"equated to premeditation and should be understood as [a] deliberate intention 
to kill."

Even the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has long recognized 
that drug trafficking is not a lethal offense, and that this distinction is 
clear under international law. In 2010, for example, the executive director of 
the UNODC confirmed: "UNODC advocates the abolition of the death penalty and 
calls upon member states to follow international standards concerning 
prohibition of the death penalty for offenses of a drug-related or purely 
economic nature."

In addition to the three examples cited above, three other United Nations legal 
entities have confirmed that executing citizens for drug offenses is in direct 
contravention of Article 6 (1) and Article 6 (2) of the ICCPR.

This position has been echoed, over the years, by the United Nations Human 
Rights Committee (2005 and 2008); the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and 
Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (2009); and the UN 
Special Rapporteur on the Right of Everyone to the Enjoyment of the Highest 
Attainable Standard of Physical and Mental Health (2010).

The ICCPR, as I am sure Anjani and Muhamad are aware, was adopted almost half a 
century ago, in 1966, and brought into effect in 1976. Needless to say, during 
the intervening half-century up until now, the United Nations has indeed 
rigorously studied and debated the terms of the ICCPR. But that debate is well 
and truly over - as far as capital punishment for drug offenses is concerned - 
and for Anjani and Muhamad to claim otherwise is either plain ignorance or 
calculated deception.

Either way, both the letter and the spirit of the law are now abundantly clear: 
Under no circumstance may a signee to the ICCPR take the life of a citizen 
following conviction on a drug offense.

Statistics

Moving swiftly on to Anjani and Muhamad's 2nd line of argument - the appeal to 
empirical data - here we confront a whole new set of fallacies.

Anjani and Muhamad believe that executing drug traffickers really does "work." 
They believe that capital punishment has a proven "deterrent" effect on other 
(would-be) drug traffickers, and they point to the proud example of Singapore 
as testament to this claim.

"Despite many claims to the contrary," the authors explained, "several studies 
have affirmed the deterrent effect of the death penalty. A Wall Street Journal 
article mentions that every execution of a murder convict prevents 74 murders 
in the following year. And in Singapore, which applies the death penalty, the 
number of drug offenders has declined by 2/3 since the 1990s."

Anjani and Muhamad's initial claim is entirely false. In the United States, 
capital punishment for convicted murderers appears to have no correlation 
whatsoever with homicide rates. In fact, if there is any correlation at all 
between execution and homicide in the United States, it most certainly cuts in 
the opposite direction. In the year 2000, for instance, the New York Times 
reported that "10 of the 12 states without capital punishment have homicide 
rates below the national average [...] while half the states with the death 
penalty have homicide rates above the national average."

This is all quite besides the point, anyhow, for sentencing murderers to death 
is not the same as sentencing drug traffickers to death. Conveniently, those 
who support the death penalty for convicted murderers need only look to one 
statistic to try and "prove" that capital punishment works: i.e. the homicide 
rate. Does it go up, down, or stay the same?

In many ways, however, the much-vaunted "deterrent" effect of executing drug 
traffickers is not just more difficult to establish; it is impossible to 
establish.

How exactly are we supposed to know when the execution of one drug trafficker 
has successfully "deterred" another from committing the same crime?

Defenders of capital punishment for drug trafficking are thus confronted with a 
vast array of possible "success indicators," all based on statistics, but none 
of which can really prove that the death penalty actually works.

Consider it this way: What would be the tell-tale sign that capital punishment 
deters drug traffickers?

Could it be a decrease in the total number of drug users? A decrease in drug 
arrests and drug seizures? A combination of these 2 things? Or is it safer to 
just assume that the more drug traffickers we kill, the more drug traffickers 
we deter?

There really is no reliable success indicator for the policy of executing drug 
traffickers. Even if we caught a hundred traffickers tomorrow, and promptly 
executed every single one of them, at what point could we honestly say to 
ourselves: "Aha! Now we know for sure that those executions did the job! Now we 
know for sure that hundreds of others have been deterred!"

Strictly speaking, it is impossible to tell whether capital punishment deters 
drug traffickers, because it is impossible to establish a causative link 
between - think of it this way - the execution of drug trafficker A, and the 
deterring of would-be drug trafficker B.

Just imagine: how would a research paper aim to demonstrate the existence of 
such a link? Where would the researchers look to assemble a sample group of 
safely "deterred" drug traffickers? And how would they question the samples: 
"On a scale of one to 10, how much did the death of drug trafficker A convince 
you that drug trafficking is not your dream job?" Clearly, the supposed 
"deterrent effect" that capital punishment has on other drug traffickers is not 
a testable hypothesis.

So the debate as to whether the death penalty "deters" others should really end 
here, at an obvious impasse. But, once again, in the interests of leaving no 
stone unturned, I will try to consider the issue through the same lens as 
Anjani and Muhamad, and take their success indicators to be as instructive as 
they make out.

Suffice it to say, then, that Anjani and Muhamad's empirical case falls down on 
at least 2 counts: One, as mentioned above, Anjani and Muhamad commit the 
fallacy of presuming correlation implies causation. And 2, they can only point 
to a mere handful of societies that bear out their hypothesis.

For Anjani and Muhamad to win the empirical case, they would need demonstrate 
that most of the countries that uphold the death penalty for drug offenses also 
have very low rates of drug use and/or drug seizures, just like Singapore. But 
clearly this is not the case.

The vast majority of the world's statistics on drug use and drug seizures 
suggest that there is no correlation between capital punishment and prevalence 
of drug use or drug trafficking.

Consider Iran, for example, a country with some of toughest and most brutally 
applied anti-drug laws in the world. In 2010 and 2011, Iran executed more than 
500 people each year for drug trafficking. And yet, in 2014 a UNODC report 
claimed that 6 percent of Iranians - some 4.6 million people - are addicted to 
an illegal drug. This is probably the highest addiction rate out of any society 
on Earth, and yet Iran is 2nd only to China in the amount of drug offenders it 
executes each year. (China considers all statistics on capital punishment to be 
a state secret, though there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that China does 
indeed execute more drug offenders than Iran.)

Many other examples that do not meet the requirements of Anjani and Muhamad's 
hypothesis are much closer to home; right under our noses, in fact, on the 
Southeast Asian mainland.

Myanmar, for example, keeps a mandatory death sentence for drug traffickers, 
but in 2013 still managed to produce 89 percent of Southeast Asia's opium crop, 
from 60,000 hectares of poppy fields.

Thailand, likewise, also retains legal provisions for executing drug 
traffickers, and yet still has huge problems with drug smugglers entering from 
Myanmar, and soaring rates of methamphetamine addiction. Just last year, 
Thailand's Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) estimated that 1.3 
million Thais - or 2 % of the country's total population - are addicted to an 
illegal drug. Additionally, Thailand is known to have around 150,000 so-called 
"drug addicts" detained at controversial, compulsory treatment centers, 
undergoing military drills in the name of "rehabilitation."

Similar non-correlations between capital punishment and rates of drug use and 
drug trafficking can be found in Laos, Vietnam, China and Malaysia. Each of 
these states still upholds the death penalty for convicted drug traffickers, 
and yet each of these states still has a thriving market for illegal drugs, 
particularly meth.

Clearly, then, capital punishment has no observable effect on rates of drug 
use, and does not appear to "deter" drug traffickers from targeting these most 
dangerous markets. So why should Indonesia buck the trend?

Anjani and Muhamad - and President Jokowi - please take note.

(source: Commentary----Patrick Tibke is a Jakarta-based writer and a recent 
graduate of the Southeast Asian Studies program at SOAS, University of London. 
His interests include human rights, labor rights and drug policy; The Jakarta 
Globe)

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

Lindsay Sandiford: 'Time on death row is running out'



A British woman, sentenced to death for drug smuggling in Bali, has written to 
the UK government asking for legal help or funding for an appeal.

Lindsay Sandiford, 57, from Cheltenham, says time is running out and she could 
be executed within a few weeks.

The Foreign Office said it stood "ready to provide support at this difficult 
time, if requested".

Sandiford was found with cocaine worth an estimated 1.6m pounds when she 
arrived in Bali from Thailand in May 2012.

Sandiford, who faces death by firing squad, claims she was forced to transport 
the drugs to protect her children, whose safety was at stake.

Tough laws

In a letter passed to the BBC, Sandiford appealed to UK Foreign Secretary 
Philip Hammond, who is due to visit Indonesia this month.

She said she currently had no legal representation and could not afford to pay 
for a lawyer, which meant she had been denied the opportunity to fully 
challenge her death penalty and the right to file for clemency.

She also said she had received little or no help from the Foreign Office since 
her arrest.

Sandiford said there was a risk the Indonesian authorities might interpret this 
as a lack of commitment by the government to her case.

The Foreign Office said it had consistently provided and offered consular 
support to Sandiford, which she currently declined to accept.

"We are closely following Lindsay Sandiford's case in Indonesia. We stand ready 
to provide support at this difficult time, if it is requested," said a 
spokesman in the British embassy in the Indonesian capital Jakarta.

"The UK strongly opposes the death penalty in all circumstances without 
exception. We have made representations about the death penalty to the 
Indonesian government, and we will continue to do so."

Last year, Sandiford challenged the UK's government's policy not to fund 
Britons facing capital charges abroad.

Although the UK's top court dismissed the appeal, the judges called on the 
government to look at her case "urgently".

The Supreme Court's written ruling said "the local courts seem to have ignored 
the substantial mitigating factors in her case".

The judges cited age, mental problems, lack of previous criminal record and 
co-operation with police.

They said there was a "remarkable disparity of her sentence with those members 
of the syndicate whom she helped to bring to justice".

The BBC's Karishma Vaswani said Indonesia had some of the toughest drug laws in 
the world, and last month it executed 6 people - including 5 foreigners - on 
drug related offences.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo had recently declared he would reject all 
clemency appeals from drug convicts, she added.

(source: BBC news)

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

Australians on Indonesia death row file fresh legal appeal



2 Australians on death row in Indonesia applied for a new judicial review of 
their cases on Friday in a bid to halt their executions, with their lawyer 
calling for the men to be given a "2nd chance".

However, the attorney general's office in Jakarta said judges would likely 
reject the request for a fresh judicial review from the leaders of the "Bali 9" 
drug-smuggling gang.

Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were arrested in Bali in 2005 and sentenced to 
death the following year for attempting to smuggle eight kilograms (18 pounds) 
of heroin out of the Indonesian holiday island.

In December, Sukumaran lost an appeal for presidential clemency, a death row 
convict's last chance to avoid the firing squad.

Chan's appeal was rejected earlier this month, removing the final hurdle for 
Jakarta to push ahead with executing the pair. Authorities have insisted they 
be put to death together as they committed their crime together.

However, their lawyers are battling to take the case back to court and on 
Friday the pair, in their early 30s, filed applications for a fresh judicial 
review.

Ketut Sulendra, an official from the district court in the Balinese capital 
Denpasar, went to Kerobokan jail on the island to assist the men in completing 
their applications. Judges will now consider their requests.

The pair have already lost one judicial review during their lengthy appeal 
process, and the attorney general's office has insisted there are no more legal 
avenues open to them after the rejection of their clemency appeals.

But their lawyer, Todung Mulya Lubis, said that it was "a matter to be dealt 
with by the courts", not the attorney general, and that executions should not 
go ahead while the legal process was ongoing.

He said that the legal team was seeking 20 years imprisonment rather than the 
death penalty.

"These 2 men, the prisoners, have changed a great deal ... I think they deserve 
a 2nd chance."

Authorities have not fixed a date or location for their execution.

Tony Spontana, spokesman for the attorney general's office, said that he 
expected the Denpasar court to reject the application, as the legal norm was 
that "a judicial review will not prevent an execution".

Authorities executed 6 drug offenders, including 5 foreigners, earlier this 
month, sparking a diplomatic storm.

(source: Bangkok Post)








JORDAN:

Jordan Threatens Mass Executions of ISIS Prisoners ---- Proposed Prisoner Swap 
Remains Unresolved



The proposed swap that would see ISIS freeing a held Jordanian pilot and a 
Japanese reporter in trade for a female prisoner behind held by the Jordanian 
government remains unresolved over 24 hours after the deadline passed.

Jordanian officials began holding off on the planned exchange at the last 
minute, demanding to see proof that the captured pilot was still alive before 
the exchange would take place.

Now they don't seem to be holding out much hope at all, and are instead 
threatening mass execution of all ISIS detainees they are holding if something 
happens to the hostage pilot.

Jordan had put the death penalty on hold for 8 years, but resumed executions in 
December, killing 11 people. Officials say they can fast-track the killing of 
all the ISIS detainees at a moment's notice.

(source: antiwar.com)