[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

May 29


CHINA----execution

China executes teacher for sexually abusing 26 girls



China's top court said it has executed a primary school teacher found guilty of 
raping or sexually abusing 26 girls.

Li Jishun had committed the crimes between 2011 and 2012 while teaching at a 
village school in Gansu province.

He preyed on pupils aged 4 to 11 who were "young and timid", according to a 
statement by the Supreme People's Court reported by local media.

It said there have been more than 7,000 child sex abuse cases in recent years 
and that the trend is on the rise.

'Grave threat'

Li had raped 21 of his victims and sexually abused the other 5 in classrooms, 
dormitories, and the forest surrounding the village near Wushan town.

The statement said that some of his victims had been raped or abused more than 
once. It made no mention of how he was caught.

But it said that the Gansu court had found him "a grave threat to society" and 
noted that he had committed the crimes within just 1 year.

"The Supreme People's Court thus believes that it was appropriate for Li Jishun 
to be executed," it said.

Local media ran the story with caricatures of the man depicting him as a wolf 
gobbling up children.

His sentencing was met with widespread approval on China's microblogging 
platform Weibo, with many expressing shock at the youth of his victims.

"4 years old? I can't believe it," said one. "A death sentence is too good for 
this man," wrote another commenter.

In a rare disclosure of abuse statistics, the Supreme People's Court told local 
media that the courts heard 7,145 cases of child sexual abuse between 2012 and 
2014.

The figures showed that the number of cases went up by about 40% during those 
years.

(source: BBC news)








IRAN----executions

3 Men Executed in Front of Children - 4 Executed in Prison in Iran



3 men were hanged in public in Mashhad (northeastern Iran) Wednesday, reported 
the Iranian state media. According to the Iranian state broadcasting, the men 
were charged with armed robbery, kidnapping, keeping arms. 2 of the men were 27 
year and the 3rd was 38 years old. None of them were identified by name. 
Pictures published in the Iranian media show several minors and children 
watching the executions.

The official Iranian news agency IRNA reported about the execution of 1 man 
charged with murder. The execution took place on Thursday May 28 in the prison 
of Gachsaran (Western Iran).

2 men were hanged in the prison of Kerman (Southeastern Iran), according to 
unofficial reports. The men who have not been identified by name were charged 
with murder.

(source: Iran Human Rights)

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

Iran Executed 59 people in Mere 6 Days, Monitoring Group Alleges



An Iranian monitoring group has alleged that the government, in a matter of 
mere 6 days, has secretly executed 59 'activists' in the largely Shia-Muslim 
populated country.

According to France-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a 
political umbrella coalition of 5 Iranian opposition political organisations, 
Iran carried out "a wave of secret execution inside the country's prisons".

The NCRI report noted that between 19 May and 21 May, the Iranian regime 
executed 37 people in prisons or on the streets of various cities. Similarly, 
at least 22 peope were executed between 23 May and 25 May.

Criticising the increase in number of executions, the group which is headed by 
Maryam Rajavi, a popular Iranian politician living in exile in France, noted in 
the report: "The executions are aimed at raising the atmosphere of terror in 
the society in order to prevent any public expression of dissent in the 
country."

On the recent spate of executions in Iran, Soona Samsami, NCRI's US 
Representative, told IBTimes India: "The political climate of repression and 
censorship in Iran, coupled with lack of due process in the judiciary, create 
severe difficulties in finding the truth behind Iran's executions."

"However, one thing is certain: the regime continues to use the death penalty, 
not as a deterrent to drug abuse or to stem ordinary crimes, but as a means of 
inflicting terror in a young and increasing restless and enraged population," 
Samsami said.

Samsami also hit out at Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's failure to curb 
human rights abuses in the country.

"Hassan Rouhani's approval of these barbaric hangings notwithstanding, there is 
no room for reform in a constitution with a non-representative 'Supreme 
Leader,' and a judiciary that executed 30,000 political prisoners in a matter 
of months in 1988 alone. Ironically, Mostafa Pourmohammadi, one of the three 
people who sat on the "death commission" that sent these political prisoners, 
mostly MEK members, to the gallows, is Rouhani's Justice Minister," she added

The Huffington Post earlier this month had reported that an estimated 347 
executions were carried out in Iran since the beginning of the year. In 2014, 
the total number of executions was 735, which according to Oslo-based 
organisation Iran Human Rights was a 10 % increase from the previous year.

"There is an internal conflict going on now between the hard-line judiciary and 
Rouhani's moderate administration," Iranian human rights campaigner Taghi 
Rahmani told BBC. "And it's the activists who are paying the price."

The highly criticised execution reports have come at a time when Iran is 
inching towards reaching an agreement on the final nuclear deal. The United 
States, Iran, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China on 2 April reached a 
tentative agreement for a nuclear deal.

There were, however, several issues that were yet to be resolved and the 
countries had opted for a 30 June deadline to reach a comprehensive agreement. 
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, however, noted on Thursday that 
arriving at a final deal by 30 June will be difficult, if the other side stuck 
to what he called excessive demand, Reuters reported.

(source: IB Times)








ALGERIA:

Algerian court condemns 12 to death for 2008 bombing



A court in Algeria has handed down death sentences to 12 people and condemned 2 
others to life imprisonment over their involvement in a bomb explosion that 
claimed the lives of a Frenchman and his driver back in 2008.

On Wednesday, the Algiers Criminal Court found the accused "forming an armed 
terrorist group and premeditated voluntary homicide."

The defendants given the death penalty are all members of the Katibat el-Arkam 
network, a splinter group of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). They are 
at large and Algerian judicial officials tried them in absentia.

The 2 present in the court, identified as Khaled Asalah and Brahim Brahim, 
admitted being AQIM members and taking part in several terrorist attacks.

Engineer Pierre Nowacki of the French enterprise BTP Razel and his Algerian 
driver were killed on June 9, 2008, when a bomb explosion ripped through their 
vehicle as it was travelling on a road in the town of Beni Amrane, located some 
80 kilometers (49 miles) east of the capital, Algiers.

7 people sustained injuries minutes later when a second blast struck the town.

The French national had been supervising repair work on a railway tunnel in the 
area.

(source: Albawaba news)








SAUDI ARABIA----execution

Saudi beheads Pakistani national for drug trafficking



Saudi authorities have beheaded a Pakistani national convicted of drug 
trafficking, bringing to 90 the number of such executions amid international 
outcry over the "very disturbing" trend.

The Saudi Interior Ministry said in a statement carried by the official Saudi 
Press Agency that the man, identified as Ihsan Amin, was decapitated in the 
capital, Riyadh, on Thursday after being found guilty of heroin smuggling.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International has described Saudi Arabia's use of death 
penalty as unprecedented, and said the toll is "one of the highest recorded by 
the organization during the same period for more than 3 decades."

The London-based watchdog said on Thursday that almost half of the executions 
carried out so far this year were for drug-related offences, and about 1/2 of 
those put to death have been foreigners.

"These do not fall into the category of 'most serious crimes', and the use of 
the death penalty for such offences violates international law," it said.

"With the year yet to pass its midpoint, the (Persian) Gulf kingdom has raced 
towards this shocking toll at an unprecedented rate," said Deputy Director of 
Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Program Said Boumedouha.

"This alarming surge in executions surpasses even the country's own previous 
dreadful records," he noted.

On Wednesday, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary 
or arbitrary executions expressed concern about a surge in the number of 
executions carried out in Saudi Arabia.

"It is certainly very disturbing that there is such a fast pace of executions 
at the moment," Christof Heyns said.

In Saudi Arabia, rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking all 
carry the death penalty. Beheadings are carried out in public using a sword.

Muslim scholars and clerics have on occasions criticized Saudi authorities for 
indicting and then executing suspects without giving them a chance to defend 
themselves.

(source: Albawaba news)



PAKISTAN----execution

PIA fokker hijackers executed after 17 years



Pakistan on Thursday morning executed seven death-row prisoners, including 
three hostage takers trying to hijack Karachi bound PIA Fokker plane allegedly 
to India in 1998, with more than 30 passengers on board, after it took off from 
Turbat city in Baluchistan province.

The execution of 2 hijackers, Shahsawar Baluch and Sabir Baluch, took place in 
Hyderabad jail while the third one, Shabbir Baluch, was hanged in Karachi 
prison. They were given death punishment in 1998 and their appeals were turned 
down by the higher courts as well. The president had also rejected their mercy 
petitions. The anti- terrorism court's judge, Abdul Ghafoor Memon, had issued 
death warrant for them last week.

The hijacker had forced the pilot to take the plane to India but the pilot, 
Captain Uzair, had landed the plane at Hyderabad airport, a main city in 
southern Sindh province. He had deceived the hijackers by convincing them that 
the plane ran short of fuel and that he had landed at the Indian state of 
Gujarat. Hyberabad's then top administration and police officers, while 
impersonating as Indian officials, had held talks with the hijackers. Late at 
night, the Pakistan security agencies had overpowered the hijackers and had 
arrested them.

The hijackers had demanded that Baluchistan province should not be used for 
nuclear tests, following India's testing of nuclear weapons. Pakistan, however, 
had tested its nuclear devices in Chaghi, Baluchistan, 4 days after the 
hijacking incident.

4 more convicts were also executed in different areas of the country for 
murders. They were executed in Sahiwal and Sargodha in Punjab, Haripur in 
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and Karachi.

A moratorium on the death penalty had been in force in Pakistan since 2008, but 
executions were restarted in December after Taliban militants had gunned down 
about 150 people, most of them children, at the Army Public School in Peshawar.

The moratorium was initially lifted only for those convicted of terrorism 
offences, but in March was extended to cover all capital offences. Since then, 
over 125 people have been executed all over the country. There are nearly 8000 
death-row prisoners in jails across Pakistan.

The United Nations, the European Union, Amnesty International and Human Rights 
Watch have called on Pakistan to re-impose its moratorium on the death penalty.

(source: Times of India)








EGYPT:

Council of Europe head appeals Morsi death sentence



The head of the Council of Europe has written to Egypt's Grand Mufti asking him 
not to approve hundreds of death sentences hanging over jailed dissidents - 
including former president, Mohamed Morsi.

Thorbjorn Jagland wrote to Professor Shawki Abdel-Karim Allam on Thursday in 
the hope that capital punishment will not be applied to Morsi and over 100 
Muslim Brotherhood activists.

Egyptian law requires death penalties to be referred to the Grand Mufti, the 
highest religious official in the country.

"The Council of Europe is firmly opposed to the death penalty as a cruel and 
inhumane punishment which denies human dignity and integrity and can never be 
undone," Jagland wrote in the letter.

Last year, hundreds of Egyptians were sentenced to death but rulings on only a 
few dozen were actually upheld, the rest converted into jail sentences of 25 
years.

Morsi and 12 codefendants were sentenced to 20 years in prison last month for 
allegedly mobilizing supporters to "intimidate, detain and torture" dozens of 
anti-Morsi protesters during clashes outside eastern Cairo's Ittihadiya 
presidential palace in December 2012.

The former president currently faces multiple criminal trials on charges that 
include espionage and ???insulting the judiciary,??? charges he says are 
politically motivated.

(source: World Bulletin)

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

Oxford postgraduate sentenced to death by Egyptian government



Students throughout the university have expressed their outrage at the death 
sentence granted to Oxford student Sondos Asem in Egypt.

The 28 year old researcher and graduate student Sondos Asem is studying at the 
Oxford University Blavatnik School of Government and is a member of the Freedom 
and Justice party. Asem was sentenced to death in absentia on Saturday 16th May 
in Egypt after being charged with espionage and conspiring with the Palestinian 
movement Hamas, in relation to her position as the International Media 
Co-Ordinator for the former Egyptian President Morsi. Mohamed Morsi, alongside 
his former aides and scholars such as Emad Shahin, have also been sentenced to 
the death penalty although Asem is the only female charged. In occurrence with 
Egyptian law, this preliminary sentence will be sent to the Grand Multi for 
approval.

Students from across the university have since expressed their solidarity with 
Asem and defended her against the accusations of the government.

On 22nd May, current MPP and DPhil students at The Blavatnik School of 
Government voiced their concerns on the departmental website. The 78 students 
from 51 countries affirmed their solidarity for their friend. The students 
posted: "We are appalled to hear that Sondos is being prosecuted for simply 
doing her job as a Foreign Media Co-ordinator in the office of a democratically 
elected president.

"Sondos is as passionate and committed to the principles of public service as 
any of us. Whether it is lending an ear to friends, debating philosophy, 
praying together, or playing football with classmates, Sondos is an invaluable 
part of our community.

Like all of us, she came here to learn how to improve people's lives through 
good government ...We note that the judgment against her has yet to be 
reviewed. However, we are deeply saddened that these actions mean Sondos will 
be unable to return to Egypt or visit her family until she has been cleared of 
the charges."

They continued: "we condemn this ruling and urge people and governments to 
speak up for the rule of law and against this injustice".

Sondos' college Women's Football Team also proposed a motion to the Collrgr JCR 
that the college (where Asem is a member of the MCR and plays for the team) 
condemn the death sentence. This motion, which passed unopposed, stated that 
the 'ruling was unjust and politically motivated' and contrary to the "rule of 
law" fundamental "in a democratic society". The JCR also resolved to "follow 
Blavatnik's example in fully condemning the ruling", to "urge the college to 
provide support and assistance to Sondos" and to demonstrate their "solidarity" 
with a "friend, peer and teammate". One Wadham College student added: "What has 
happened to Asem is deeply troubling. As a college and as university it is our 
responsibility to stand behind Asem and fight back against what can only be 
described as a gross injustice".

Speaking to the OxStu, Asem said: "The support I have received so far from my 
fellow students is what makes me stronger. I am impressed by the level of 
political awareness, human rights advocacy, and empathy on the part of my 
fellow students in Oxford and my college. This has proved to me that people can 
share the same values despite coming from different countries and cultures.

"This death sentence is not just about me, it is one example of the injustice 
that thousands of other women and men, are suffering due to repression in 
Egypt".

Asem was a high profile and vocal presence throughout Egypt and had a range of 
roles including acting as the Senior Editor of Ikhwan Web, the Muslim 
Brotherhood english-language online website. In a 2011 interview, she voiced 
her concerns surrounding the misconceptions relating to the Muslim Brotherhood 
stating: "It's a big misconception that the Muslim Brotherhood marginalises 
women" as "50 % of the Brotherhood are women".

Asem also affirmed that as an organisation: "We believe that a solution to 
women's problems in Egyptian society is to solve the real causes, which are 
illiteracy, poverty and lack of education."

The final sentence will be pronounced on June 2nd.

Due to security concerns for Asem and college members, we cannot detail which 
college she is currently attending

(source: The Oxford Student)

NIGERIA:

Outgoing Delta premier pardons death row inmates



Some 9 years after his arrest and controversial conviction, a Delta State 
prisoner on death row, has been granted freedom ahead of Democracy Day.

Outgoing Governor, Emmanuel Uduaghan, announced he had granted pardon to Moses 
Akatugba, and three others facing the death penalty in the state.

The governor disclosed this after Valedictory State Executive Council Meeting 
in preparation for Friday's inauguration of Senator Ifeanyi Okowa as the State 
Governor.

He said the pardon was granted based on a report from the State Prerogative of 
Mercy Council and reviewed by the State Attorney General.

"I have granted pardon to Moses Akatugba, I have signed his warrant of release, 
he was the young man who was sentenced to death when he was 16 years old and 
his case has been trending on the social media and Amnesty International has 
also intervened" Uduaghan said.

Akatugba, then a student, was just 16 years old when he was arrested under 
suspicion of armed robbery in Nigeria.

The arrest grabbed international headlines.

It is reported soldiers shot him in the hand and beat him on the head before 
taking him to the police station where he was assaulted repeatedly before he 
was forced to sign pre-written confessions.

Last year, Akatugba was sentenced to death, after 8 years awaiting trial in 
prison.

It is said the sentence was based only on his forced confession and the 
testimony of the robbery victim, which was full of contradictions.

The governor also announced the pardon of 3 unnamed inmates facing death 
penalty in the state to prison terms. "I have also commuted the death sentence 
of 3 others to various prison terms" he added.

He meanwhile disclosed that the ban on youth activities in Oghara had been 
lifted. He thus charged the youth to maintain the peace and liaise with the 
traditional institution to work out modalities on how to carry out their 
activities.

(source: News24Nigeria)








INDONESIA:

Executions fail to dent Jakarta's drug war----1 month since the executions of 2 
Australians and 6 others, it seems they didn't have the deterrent effect 
Indonesia's president had hoped for.



The agency on the frontline of Indonesia's "drugs emergency" senses the death 
penalty will eventually prove an effective deterrent, despite even prison 
officials being busted since the executions of 8 offenders 1 month ago.

Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were among the men killed by 
firing squad at midnight on April 29.

Since then, a prison guard on the same penal island where the executions took 
place, Nusakambangan, was caught with drugs.

A prisoner told investigators he paid the man to smuggle 364 grams of 
methamphetamine out of the jail.

And last week, a guard in West Java was caught with 16 kilograms of 
methamphetamine and several hundred ecstasy pills he claims were not his but 
drugs he had seized from prisoners.

Although there is no evidence the death penalty deters crime, President Joko 
Widodo believes executing death row drug convicts will be "shock therapy" for 
would-be offenders.

So far this year, Indonesia has executed 14 people.

Asked if the recent arrests showed the policy was flawed, National Narcotics 
Board (BNN) spokesman Slamet Pribadi argued it would take time to work.

"For now, maybe not," he told AAP.

"But it will in the future."

Mr Slamet promised the BNN would begin to show headway in Mr Joko's war on 
drugs within 3 to 6 months.

"Our intelligence data has shown talk among drug mafias saying beware of the 
BNN," he claimed.

"What does that mean actually? I don't know.

"My interpretation is that in general, this prevention must have worked."

Indonesia's attorney general's office has finished an evaluation on last 
month's executions and will soon start planning more.

Australia's ambassador to Indonesia, Paul Grigson, remains recalled, with a 
date for his return still under consideration.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other groups have submitted a 
blueprint to Australia's federal government to renew the way it campaigns for 
global abolition.

Parliamentarians against the death penalty, a group co-chaired by Philip 
Ruddock and Chris Hayes, will discuss its plans later this month.

(source: sbs.com.au)