[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

July 19



BRITAIN/IRAN:

Vigil marks 10th anniversary of Iran hanging 2 gay teens


A vigil took place in London today to mark the 10th anniversary of the hanging 
of 1 Iranian gay teenagers.

10 years ago, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni were hanged publicly in the city 
of Mashhad.

Today in London, the Peter Tatchell Foundation and the African LGBT group Out 
and Proud held the vigil, attended by around 30 people.

"Asgari and Marhoni were found guilty of male rape after an unfair trial. LGBTI 
campaigners inside Iran doubt the rape allegations and believe they were hanged 
because they had gay sex. International human rights organisations like Amnesty 
International and Human Rights Watch have often accused the Tehran regime of 
hanging people on flimsy evidence and on trumped up charges," said protest 
coordinator Peter Tatchell, Director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation. "On 19 
July, we stand for life, liberty and love. Mahmoud and Ayaz were only children 
when they were sentenced to die. I remember the photos of their tears in the 
police van as they were driven to the gallows. It was a heart-breaking sight. 
This vigil is our attempt to make sure their state-sponsored murder is not 
forgotten and to stand in solidarity with LGBTI people in Iran.

"Iran's penal code makes no distinction between consensual and forced 
homosexual acts. Both are punishable by execution. Regardless of the youth???s 
guilt or innocence, the death penalty is a violation of human rights and should 
be abolished.

"We also remember the many other victims of Tehran's tyranny: students, 
political dissidents, women, trade unionists, human rights defenders and 
religious and ethnic minorities.

"We welcome the nuclear deal with Iran. But what about human rights for the 
Iranian people?" he queried.

Edwin Sesange, the coordinator of Out and Proud who attended and spoke at the 
vigil, added: "We support freedom and equality for LGBTI Iranians. They suffer 
grave persecution. Iran has the death penalty for homosexuality. Our hearts go 
out to the family and friends of the executed. Whatever the truth about the 
allegations against Mahmoud and Ayaz, hanging is barbaric. They should not have 
suffered this cruel death. We urge the abolition of the death penalty in Iran 
and every country."

The vigil urged Iran to stop all executions, particularly of minors, and to 
stop the arrest and persectution of LGBT people.

It also urged the British Government to stop deporting LGBT asylum seekers back 
to Iran and to oppose foreign military intervention in the country.

(source: Pink News)






SUDAN:

Espionage Charges Against South Sudanese Pastors Facing Death Penalty Are 
Baseless, Says Prominent Witness


Evidence produced by the prosecution proves that espionage and other charges 
against 2 South Sudanese pastors facing the death penalty have no basis, a 
prominent witness told a court in Khartoum, Sudan, as the defense team closed 
the case.

Ex-army general and 2010 presidential candidate Abdul Aziz Khalid testified 
that the evidence presented by the prosecution was not classified, and 
therefore the security and espionage charges against the pastors were without 
basis, according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide USA.

Sudan's National Intelligence and Security Services charged pastors Yat Michael 
and Peter Reith, both from the Presbyterian Evangelical Church from the seceded 
nation of South Sudan, with at least six crimes including undermining the 
constitutional system, espionage, promoting hatred amongst sects, breach of 
public peace and offences relating to insulting religious beliefs.

Undermining the constitutional system and espionage carry the death penalty or 
life imprisonment.

"We ... renew our call for these unwarranted and extreme charges to be dropped 
and for Rev. Yat Michael and Rev. Peter Reith to be released unconditionally 
and without further delay," Mervyn Thomas, chief executive of Christian 
Solidarity Worldwide, said.

The next hearing is scheduled for Thursday, when the judge will hear closing 
statements. The verdict is expected on Aug. 5.

The pastors were denied access to their legal team before the hearing, despite 
an earlier direction from the judge that they would be allowed 15 minutes with 
their lawyers, the Christian group said.

"Despite repeated requests to the court and prison service, neither the 
pastors' legal team nor their families have been given permission to visit them 
in Kober Prison," it said.

This denial is in violation of fair trial principles, as articulated in Article 
14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Sudan 
is a party, Thomas said.

"The denial of family visits is a further measure to increase their mental and 
emotional distress; a cruel and unjust action on the part of the State," he 
added. "We urge the African Union in particular, and the wider international 
community, to challenge Sudan on its treatment of the pastors and its failure 
to protect and promote freedom of religion or belief and the right to a fair 
trial."

Pastor Michael was arrested last December from the city of Omdurman in Sudan, 
after he preached on a Sunday. Pastor Reith was arrested in January, after he 
wrote a letter to the government's Office of Religious Affairs in Khartoum 
about the arrest of Michael.

The Islamist government in Khartoum is known for persecuting minorities.

(source: christianpost.com)






INDIA:

Yakub Memon: Chronicle of a hanging foretold


Yakub Memon, the brother of Ibrahim 'Tiger' Memon, is to be hanged at the end 
of this month.

He was sentenced by a man I have known for 2 decades, judge PD Kode, in whose 
anti-terror court I used to be a reporter.

Kode's death sentence to Yakub Memon for conspiracy surprised some, including 
his lawyer Satish Kanse. A few years ago he told rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt that 
"Yakub never participated in military training in Pakistan... He didn't plant 
bombs or RDX, nor did he take part in the landing of the weapons. Those who 
have been awarded the death penalty were involved in one of these deadly 
actions. The charges against Yakub don't involve any of these crimes."

But he will hang anyway, the 1st in the case to do so.

The man prosecuting him, Ujjwal Nikam (who famously lied about Pakistani Ajmal 
Kasab demanding biryani) made these observations about Yakub Memon: "When he 
was first brought to court, I remember seeing him as this quiet and reserved 
person. He is a chartered accountant so took detailed notes of the evidence. He 
was quiet and aloof, never mingled with the others and only spoke to his 
lawyer.An intelligent man, he closely monitored the entire trial."

I noticed the same things in my time in the court. Memon was silent and 
observant. There was only one time I noticed him show emotion. It may have been 
in late 1995 or early 1996. JN Patel, who was at that time the trial judge was 
giving bail to many of the accused in this period. There was some hope but of 
course not the Memon men. I remember Yakub shouting and acting violent (without 
hitting anyone). He said: "Tiger was right. We should not have come back."

I wonder if he has changed in the years. Reports say he is today in solitary 
confinement (which is illegal according to the Supreme Court) in Nagpur, 
waiting for the hangman while a final attempt to move the court takes place.

My friend R Jagannathan of firstpost.com wrote a very fine piece arguing why 
the state should not hang Yakub Memon. Or at least why, in his words, the rush 
to do this did not pass the smell test. He argues that those scheduled to hang 
for 2 other crimes, the assassinations of Rajiv Gandhi and Punjab chief 
minister Beant Singh, have not yet been hanged.

3 of Rajiv's assassins - Santhan, Murugan and Perarivalan - had their death 
sentences commuted after the Tamil Nadu assembly asked for mercy. Beant's 
assassin Balwant Singh Rajaona has proudly acknowledged his guilt and has in 
fact been demanding that he be hanged, but has been kept alive, perhaps also 
due to the efforts of the Punjab assembly.

Jagannathan writes: "What is apparent to all but the innocent eye is this: 
where a convicted killer or assassin or terrorist has strong political backing, 
neither the centre nor the courts seem to develop the spine to deliver justice 
impartially as intended.

Now consider how the same centre, states and courts are keen to "uphold the 
law" when it comes to another category of killers: Ajmal Kasab, Afzal Guru, 
and, now, possibly, Yakub Memon. All Muslims, and their only common link to the 
hangman's noose seems to be that they lack political support."

I agree and it is for this reason that I think Memon will be hanged, though the 
blasts happened before the assassinations.

For me, the hanging will be the last part of a long association with the 
judicial process of the blasts. I met those accused of the crime on my 1st day 
as reporter. I reached Mumbai's Arthur Road jail late in the evening.

The jail gates were shut but there were a dozen women, most wearing burqa, 
outside. They wanted to submit a note seeking permission for home food to be 
given to their husbands, or sons or brothers, who were undertrials and hadn't 
got bail. The women didn't write English and one of them asked if I did. Soon I 
was writing permission notes for all of them.

As I was finishing, a guard came out of the jail gate and, pointing to a dark 
window near the top of the facility, said the jailor wanted to see me. I 
followed him in and was taken to the jailor, a man called Hiremath, who asked 
what I was doing. I told him, and he softened. He volunteered to show me 
around. "Do you want to meet Sanjay Dutt?" he asked. I said yes and that is how 
I got to know the men accused of the blasts regularly meeting them in court and 
jail. Some of them, like Dutt, are back in jail. Others, like Mohammed Jindran, 
a quiet and well spoken middle class man, were killed. And now of course Yakub 
is ready to be hanged.

(source: Aakar Patel, ABP Live)

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

Why Yakub Memon Should Not Be Hanged


Don't get me wrong on this, I support the death penalty - for rapist-murderers, 
child killers, terrorists and even acid-throwers. But I go with our Supreme 
Court's caveat, that it should be reserved for the "rarest of rare" cases. 
Yakub Memon, who could be executed on July 30 for his role in the Bombay blasts 
of 1993 does not fit that criterion.

Punishment in a civilised democracy must balance between retribution on behalf 
of the victim and the possibility of the rehabilitation of the criminal. And, 
of course, it must meet the requirement of proportionality, in other words, the 
punishment must fit the crime.

In my view, Yakub Memon was a second-level actor in the conspiracy and not 
deserving of what is called the "supreme" punishment. The main conspirators are 
Dawood Ibrahim, his brother Anees, Yakub's elder brother Mushtaq "Tiger" Memon 
and the unknown ISI officers who helped them to stage the horrific Bombay 
blasts of 1993 that took the lives of 257 people. All of them are hiding in 
Pakistan. There were also others, such as the 10 small-time hoods who actually 
planted the bombs, others who were involved in landing the RDX explosives and 
storing them at various locations in Mumbai.

Yakub is not innocent. He was aware of the conspiracy and even aided it, but he 
was not the main player. More important was his behaviour subsequent to his 
escape from India and his role in exposing the Pakistani hand in the blasts.

Yakub's return

Just before the blasts on March 12, 1993, the Memon family slipped out of 
Mumbai on a flight to Dubai via Karachi. During the Karachi stopover, they 
slipped out and entered Pakistan without any immigration formalities. As the 
heat built up, they were whisked away to Bangkok and brought back to Pakistan 
after a few days, traveling on Pakistani passports with new identities. Nearly 
17 months after they fled, in August 1994, Yakub was dramatically arrested in 
New Delhi along with 6 members of his family, which included 3 women. However, 
Tiger and another brother, Ayub, remained in Pakistan.

The government hailed it as a big catch. Before the magistrate who remanded 
him, Yakub said that he had returned of his own volition to surrender before 
the Indian authorities. The police, however, showed him as being arrested at 
New Delhi railway station and the media was told that he had been sent on a 
clandestine mission to trigger blasts on Independence Day. Privately, police 
sources acknowledged that Yakub had been "arrested" in Kathmandu. In reality, 
he and his family were pushed across the border on July 28 and interrogated by 
the Intelligence Bureau. Thereafter onAugust 5 he was taken to New Delhi 
railway station and formally arrested.

Helping nail Pakistani role

The value of Yakub in proving Pakistan's complicity in the Bombay blasts was 
invaluable. Subsequently, Yakub persuaded 6 other members of his family to 
return and face the law - his brothers Essa and Suleiman and his wife Rubina, 
his own wife Raheen and his mother Hanifa and father Abdul Razzak.

Between March 12, 1993, and Yakub's return, Pakistan played a cat and mouse 
game with India, first denying the presence of the Memons in Karachi, then 
acknowledging it when evidence was provided. But they claimed that the Memons, 
who had no visas for Pakistan, had left for places unknown.

Yakub provided the Indian authorities with knowledge of the Pakistani officials 
who assisted the family in Dubai and Karachi, as well as details about the 
Pakistani passports and other identity documents issued to them by the 
Pakistanis, thus nailing Islamabad???s lies. He also had a few micro-cassettes 
of conversations of Tiger and his associates that he had taped surreptitiously 
in Dubai and a few other items of proof.

The information he provided played an important role in the trial of the 
accused but instead of being treated as an approver of sorts, he became a fall 
guy. Since the authorities did not have Tiger in their hands, they wanted 
another Memon to hang.

There has been a pattern in India in relation to the death penalty. Sometimes, 
really nasty criminals get amnestied, either by the Supreme Court or the 
President. In March, President Mukherjee commuted the death sentence of Man 
Bahadur Dewan who was sentenced to death for killing his wife Gauri and 2 minor 
sons, Rajib and Kajib, in September 2002. The President did so at the 
recommendation of the Home Ministry which sought leniency because of Dewan's 
poverty-ridden background. His predecessor, Pratibha Patil commuted 30 death 
sentences, including 7 to murderers who had also raped their victims, several 
of whom were children. The Home Ministry recommendations that must have led to 
this Presidential action would probably make nauseating reading.

Politics in command

However, in cases of terrorism, courts and officials usually respond to the 
blood lust of society. People accused of terrorism, even those peripheral to 
the crime, are sentenced to death and hanged. In this category comes Afzal 
Guru, who, as the evidence clearly showed, was a side-show in the Parliament 
House attack case. Yet, somebody needed to hang since the actual perpetrators 
had been shot dead and the main conspirators were out of our reach in Pakistan.

In the Rajiv Gandhi case, too, Indian investigators only managed to lay their 
hands on some Indian Tamil dupes of the main conspirators. The chief villains - 
Prabhakaran and his intelligence chief, Pottu Aman - were in Sri Lanka, the 
main culprit dead while her support team led by '1-eye Jack' Sivarasan and his 
team committed suicide when they were surrounded by the police.

So Nalini, Murugan, G. Perarivalan and Chinna Shanthan were sentenced to death. 
Nalini's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2000, and earlier this 
year, the sentences of the other 3 were also commuted by the Supreme Court. The 
commutation had more to do with the political pressure brought by various 
political players in Tamil Nadu, rather than some change of heart of the 
system.

Politics is playing a role in the death sentence awarded to Balwant Singh 
Rajaona, convicted for the assassination of Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh. 
His execution was scheduled for March 2012, but has been stayed by the Home 
Ministry following appeals by the SGPC and various Sikh notables of Punjab.

To reiterate, Yakub is not innocent, but neither does he deserve the death 
sentence, given the background cited above. The charges against him are not of 
participating in the military training that was given to several of the 
conspirators by the Pakistanis, or of landing the RDX and placing the 
explosives. He was charged with financing the blasts, though his co-accused 
Mulchand Shah got just 5 years for the same charge. Indeed, his co-accused in 
the 3 charges he faced have all got lesser sentences for the same offence. 
Don't forget, of course, that the conviction took place under TADA, a law which 
has since been discredited and repealed.

In Yakub's case, the balance has shifted too much towards retribution and is 
disproportionate to his crimes.

It is for the Indian judicial system to reflect on whether the death sentence 
has become a whimsical lottery, tilted a bit against the Muslim community. 
Heinous criminals get away with barbaric crimes, terrorists who are politically 
convenient are given the benefit of doubt, but to make up for it, peripheral 
players in Islamist terrorist conspiracies feel the full might of the law.

(source: Op-Ed; Manoj Joshi----The writer is a Distinguished Fellow at Observer 
Research Foundation, Delhi----Eurasia review)






GAMBIA:

Gambia to reinstate firing squads: president


Gambia's President Yahya Jammeh has warned that death row inmates should expect 
to have their sentences implemented, apparently signalling an end to a 3-year 
unofficial moratorium on executions.

The military strongman said in a meeting with religious leaders broadcast on 
state television late on Friday that the move was a response to the spiralling 
murder rate.

"During Ramadan, someone buried her child alive. 3 days before Ramadan, someone 
in the Upper River Region threatened to kill someone and ended up killing the 
individual," he said.

He did not say whether death sentences for convicts already on death row would 
be brought forward, but he appeared to pre-empt criticism of any move to resume 
executions.

"If I am driving a vehicle on the road and you decide to cross in front of the 
vehicle, if the vehicle knocks you down and you die, am I the one that killed 
you or are you the one that killed yourself?" he said.

No official crime statistics are released by the government of mainland 
Africa's smallest country, which is surrounded by Senegal except for a narrow 
strip of Atlantic coast.

Jammeh announced in August 2012 that all death row prisoners would be executed 
by mid-September that year.

A week later the 1st batch of 9 convicts were executed by firing squad.

The killings caused international outrage, especially in Senegal, which had 2 
citizens among those put to death.

Rights groups estimate another 30 convicts face the firing squad but no 
executions have been announced since.

Jammeh, an outspoken military officer and former wrestler, has ruled the Gambia 
-- which has a population of just 1.7 million -- with an iron fist since 
seizing power in a bloodless coup in 1994.

He is often accused of rights abuses and the suppression of free speech, and is 
pilloried for paranoia as he regularly reshuffles his government.

The country currently allows the death penalty only for people convicted of 
causing someone's death through violence or the administration of toxic 
substances.

The government announced in June however it would hold a referendum on 
expanding the list of offences punishable by death to any crime deemed 
sufficiently serious by parliament.

All Gambians aged over 18 will be entitled to take part in the vote, a date for 
which has yet to be set.

(source: Agence France-Presse)