[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
Rick Halperin
rhalperi at smu.edu
Mon Nov 23 09:40:40 CST 2015
Nov. 23
INDIA:
5 get death penalty for rape and murder of Odisha minor
A local court in Odisha's Keonjhar district today pronounced death sentence to
5 accused in the rape and murder of a minor girl in Beklundi village in the
district in 2012.
Pronouncing the quantum of sentence, Champua Additional District and Sessions
Judge court today awarded death sentence to the 5 accused.
On the day of the crime, the victim did not return home from morning tuition at
Barbil basti. Following this, the family members launched a frantic search and
found her body with injury marks on her body about 1 kilometer from the
village.
According to reports, the deceased, a Class VIII student of a high school in
Barbil, was attacked by some persons earlier also but her family had not taken
the matter seriously.
While 5 of the accused were awarded death sentence, 2 others accused in the
case are yet to be apprehended by the police.
The convicted are Mata Munda, Mangal Prusty, Jiten Munda, Harjit Singh and
Biswanath Munda.
(source: Odisha Sun Times)
IRAN----executions
Iranian Authorities Hang 5 Prisoners Including Afghan Citizen
According to confirmed sources, Iranian authorities have executed at least 5
prisoners in the span of 4 days.
Close sources and the human rights group HRANA report that 3 prisoners were
hanged by Iranian authorities on Wednesday November 18 at Zahedan Central
Prison (Sistan & Baluchestan) for alleged drug related offenses. The names of
the prisoners have been reported as Hassan Doroiee Moghaddam, Morteza Lakzaie,
and Nazir Ahmad Reigi. A confirmed source who asked to be anonymous tells IHR:
"Nazir Ahmad Reigi is an Afghan citizen who was held in prison for 6 years
prior to his execution."
According to the Kurdistan Human Rights Network, two prisoners were hanged at
Miandoab Prison (West Azerbaijan). One of the prisoners has been identified as
Ali Latini, a man who was sentenced to death for an alleged drug related
offense. No confirmed information is available about the other prisoner.
Official Iranian sources have been silent on these 5 executions.
(source: Iran Human Rights)
INDONESIA:
Moratorium or not, Indonesia could be abandoning the death penalty
A number of news outlets reported last week that Indonesia had placed a
moratorium on the death penalty. Indonesian's co-ordinating security minister,
Luhut Panjaitan, was said to announce this by saying:
We haven't thought about executing a death penalty with the economic conditions
like this.
However, Panjaitan later denied this meant an end to capital punishment in
Indonesia:
No, I told them we will not carry out executions for the time being because we
are now focusing on the economy.
What is a moratorium?
A moratorium means the suspension of executions. It may be official and
announced, or simply practised.
Therefore, on the face of it, Indonesia has entered a moratorium of an
indeterminate period. The dozens on death row in Indonesia may eventually see
their sentences commuted to life imprisonment.
The last - unofficial - moratorium in Indonesia ran from 2008 to 2013 under the
presidency of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY). SBY is reported to have deeply
disliked capital punishment. But his replacement, Joko Widodo, embraced
executions as part of a hardline stance against drug offending.
Capital punishment globally
140 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. 58 retain
the death penalty.
Many jurisdictions have abandoned capital punishment in recent years. A
moratorium is a well-established step along the path to full abolition.
However, capital punishment remains a global human rights concern. In 2014, at
least 22 countries carried out 607 or more executions. At least 2,466 people
were sentenced to death around the world.
The 5 countries responsible for the most executions, according to confirmed
data, were Iran (289), Saudi Arabia (90), Iraq (61), the US (35) and Sudan
(23). These statistics do not include the suspected thousands of executions in
China, which does not report statistics.
Are the reasons for a moratorium important?
There are many persuasive arguments against capital punishment. The death
penalty violates the right to life, inflicts torture and is especially wrong
where it is carried out in discriminatory ways or for crimes that are not
really serious.
Further, the death penalty risks the lives of innocent people wrongly
convicted. It has no proven special deterrent value.
Where a country introduces a moratorium or abolishes the death penalty, it
might seem reasonable to assume that public and political opinion has
identified the practice as wrong. However, capital punishment has often been
abandoned for reasons that have little or nothing to do with the ethics of the
practice.
31 American states retain capital punishment in law but only about 8 states
currently practise it. The number of executions has dropped significantly in
recent years. Oklahoma introduced a moratorium in 2014, following the botched
and torturous execution of Clayton Lockett.
Similar incidents have led doctors to refuse to participate in executions, and
pharmaceutical companies to refuse supply of the most-tested lethal injection
drugs.
In the US, as in Indonesia, moratoriums have come in response to the high costs
of death-penalty prosecutions and executions.
A win for death penalty opponents?
This is not Indonesia's 1st moratorium on capital punishment. And the practice
could easily be reinstated. This may depend on whether the current moratorium
is purely motivated by the economy, or whether it is also an indirect response
to international condemnation of the most recent executions.
The 2 factors are possibly related. Foreign investors are more cautious about
Indonesia due to the controversy caused by its recent executions of foreign
nationals.
Whether Indonesia's new moratorium is genuine or temporary, this is an advocacy
moment for Australia to seize.
Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs responded to the executions of
Australian drug smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran in Indonesia in
April with a call for abolitionist lobbying across Asia and the Pacific. Triggs
noted that the death penalty has been abandoned in New Zealand, Cambodia, Timor
Leste, the Philippines, Bhutan and Nepal. De facto moratoriums are operating in
Fiji, Thailand and Laos.
Philip Ruddock is chairing a federal parliamentary inquiry into Australia's
advocacy for the abolition of the death penalty. Asked whether Indonesia's
economic justification for the moratorium might be a strategy to mask its
desire to respond to international pressure, he said:
My view is that any change is desirable ... There are a very large number of
Indonesians on death row in other countries that [the Indonesians] work hard to
have released, so they have an interest in seeing a more just outcome in
relation to dealing with these issues around the world.
During his recent visit to Indonesia, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull refrained
from raising capital punishment. But in line with the parliamentary inquiry's
objectives, Turnbull could capitalise on the moratorium by renewing dialogue
with Indonesia on the issue.
(source:Amy Maguire, Lecturer in International Law, University of
Newcastle----The Conversation)
PAKISTAN:
Hanging of wheelchair-bound Pakistan prisoner to go ahead despite no new
guidelines----Abdul Basit due to be hanged on Wednesday despite fears that
execution of disabled prisoner could mean prolonged and cruel death
Abdul Basit, 43, who is paralysed from the waist down, had received a
last-minute reprieve in September after the duty magistrate said the execution
was impossible under prison rules as he was unable to stand on the gallows.
But a fresh death warrant for Basit was issued by the Faisalabad district court
on Friday after the provincial government insisted the execution can proceed
without waiting for new guidelines.
Campaigners fear that any attempt to hang Basit could see him either facing
decapitation or prolonged strangulation as the procedures set out in prison
rules for assessing the length of rope only cover prisoners able to stand.
A prison official told the Telegraph that a letter requesting new instructions
for carrying out executions for disabled prisoners had been sent to the
interior ministry in September, but that none had been received.
"In our report from jail authorities, we clearly mention that Abdual Basit is
paralysed," said the official, under condition of anonymity.
The duty magistrate will now decide if the execution goes ahead on Wednesday.
Basit's mother Nusrat Perveen said she had been asked to pay her son a final
visit on Tuesday before his execution the following morning.
"I was shocked when jail officials asked me to have a final meeting with my
son," she said. "He is still paralysed and unable to move himself, he is unable
to stand on the gallows-board."
"I sent a mercy petition to the president weeks ago to pardon my son but
received no reply. I appeal to the president and prime minister of Pakistan to
pardon my son on humanitarian grounds."
Sara Belal of Justice Project Pakistan, a non-profit law firm representing
Basit, said: "Nothing has changed since Basit's execution was halted earlier
this year, on the grounds that his disability could mean that he might suffer
from a prolonged, needlessly cruel execution."
International human rights groups reacted with outrage to the decision, which
they claim violates Pakistani and international laws.
Reprieve, the international human rights group, described the decision as
"bewildering".
The group says Basit's paraplegic condition is the result of mismanagement of a
tubercular meningitis infection he contracted in prison in 2010.
Basit, a former administrator at a medical college, was convicted in May 2009
of the murder of the uncle of a woman with whom he was allegedly in a
relationship. He has always maintained his innocence.
(source: The Telegraph)
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