[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 27



NIGERIA:

NLC insists on death penalty for looters


The President, Nigeria Labour Congress, Ayuba Wabba, and the factional National 
Deputy President, NLC, Mr. Issa Aremu, have insisted on capital punishment for 
corrupt government officials and others individuals.

The NLC noted that corruption had become pervasive and endemic, adding that it 
had led to the death of many innocent Nigerians.

Wabba spoke in Ilorin on Saturday during his condolence visit to Aremu who lost 
his 91-year-old mother, Hafsat.

He further said there had been a collapse of social services and basic 
amenities as few Nigerians corruptly enrich themselves to the detriment of the 
majority.

Wabba said, "We must canvass for capital punishment. It is only people who are 
stealing that will go against it. If we are campaigning for capital punishment 
and people are kicking against it, we must be consistent because people are 
reaping from where they did not sow.

"We are facing challenges because many people have appropriated the resources 
needed to drive development. Schools are not developing; there are no drugs in 
hospitals. People have helped themselves and Nigerians are suffering. We have 
the right to demand for good governance and accountability."

The NLC boss claimed the crisis that factionalised the labour union had been 
resolved.

Wabba said the strength of any labour union lay in its solidarity and oneness. 
He stated that all labour unions were bound together by the quest for 
improvement in the living and working conditions of workers.

"We never had a faction. We were not divided over the issues of unity and 
issues that will advance the interests of Nigerian workers. We have been the 
same," he added.

On his part, Aremu said many Nigerians were dying from corruption as a result 
of avoidable deaths from decayed and unavailable infrastructure and social 
amenities.

(source: Punch.com)






CANADA:

Alberta filmmaker questioning capital punishment after making doc


Doubts still linger over the guilt of the last man hanged to death in Alberta.

Filmmaker Rick Smallwood was a firm believer in capital punishment until he 
started working on a documentary titled The Grease Pit about Robert Cook, who 
was hanged in November 1960 at the Fort Saskatchewan Jail.

Now, he's not so sure.

"I put it to the interviewees, do you think this guy was guilty? The most 
(common) answer I got was, 'Yes, probably,'" Cook said. "It was always 
probably."

The Grease Pit delves into the brutal June 1959 slaying of Robert's father 
Raymond Cook, his wife Daisy and their 5 children in Stettler. The adults were 
shot and the kids were clubbed to death with the double-barrelled shotgun, 
before all 7 were stuffed into a grease pit in the family garage.

Robert was charged with capital murder based on circumstantial evidence, amid 
doubts expressed by media at the time.

In the documentary, Smallwood speaks with Robert's defence lawyer and an RCMP 
officer who responded to the grisly murder scene.

By most accounts, Robert was a "very likable young guy," despite being a 
habitual thief always in trouble with the law. Some believe he did commit the 
murder but had no recollection of the crime.

He maintained his innocence until the moment he was hanged, at age 23, in a 
dingy storage room-turned-execution chamber inside the jail. It was the only 
execution ever carried out in that room.

The recent slaying of 2-year-old Hailey Dunbar-Blanchette and her father Terry 
Blanchette has spurred some calls for the return of the death penalty, 
including a Facebook group called Justice for Hailey and Terry that has close 
to 1,700 members.

Smallwood knows the feeling.

"I have to admit, when this murder happens my first thought is, this guy should 
hang," he said.

Aside from the doubts he found in the Cook slayings, examining the sentencing 
process has also gotten him thinking about the morality of capital punishment.

"I have to wonder if the process they put these prisoners through to execute 
them, this whole draconian way they do it, is any better than what these guys 
did? And aren't we a little above that as a society?" he said. "It really has 
had me thinking."

The documentary is available through robertcook.ca

(source: Edmonton Sun)






CHINA:

Reducing death penalty offenses is a step in the right direction


China recently passed an amendment canceling the death penalty for a number of 
several criminal offenses, including the smuggling of weapons and ammunition, 
nuclear materials and fake currency, as well as for counterfeiting banknotes, 
organizing prostitution, forcing others into prostitution, and obstructing 
military operations.

A total of 13 criminal offenses were removed from the list of crimes punishable 
by death in the bill passed by the National People's Congress, the 2nd of its 
kind in 4 years.

The move shows China is inclined to diminish the use of the death penalty, 
especially for economic or non-violent crimes.

Under the revised Criminal Code, officials convicted of corruption and given a 
2-year stay of execution are entitled to have the penalty commuted to a life 
sentence based on the criminal acts committed - a state of affairs that has 
already existed in practice for some time. They are not entitled to any further 
reduction or parole, however.

It has been more common over the past decade to read news of executed criminals 
who were later found to be innocent, something a nation which wishes to 
consider itself civilized should not tolerate. Similar miscarriages of justice 
undoubtedly took place in the past and the mere fact that such cases are now 
being openly reported marks a step forward in itself.

Though the number of death sentences handed out has been gradually reduced in 
recent years, China still executes more people by far than any other country in 
the world and the standard rationales offered of "national conditions and 
cultural traditions" only go so far.

(source: Editorial, Want China Times)






MALAYSIA:

7 including army doctor to be charged with Kevin Morais murder tomorrow


7 men, including a military doctor, will be charged tomorrow (Sept 28) with the 
murder of Mr Anthony Kevin Morais, the deputy public prosecutor (DPP) whose 
body was found in an oil drum filled with cement on Malaysia Day in Subang Jaya 
last week.

5 of them will be charged with murder under Section 302 of the Penal Code, 
while 2 others, including the military doctor, will be charged with abetting 
the murder which falls under Section 109 of the Penal Code, sources told The 
Malaysian Insider.

All 7 suspects face the death penalty if convicted.

Police had earlier said that Morais was the DPP in the case where the military 
doctor, a colonel in his 50s attached with the pathology lab at the Tuanku 
Mizan Military Hospital, was charged with unlawful trade in December 2013.

In September last year, the doctor, who was on a RM100,000 (S$32, 430) bail, 
had claimed trial to 2 bribery charges involving RM700,000 (S$227,000) for 
allegedly recommending 3 companies to supply medicine and disposable medical 
tools to the hospital.

The 7 will be charged at the Magistrate's Court at the Jalan Duta court complex 
tomorrow, even as Mr Morais's remains are still left unclaimed at the Kuala 
Lumpur Hospital mortuary.

Mr Morais's brothers - Charles, David and Richard - are believed to be unhappy 
over the uncertainty over the cause of death, and decided not to claim the 
remains pending the complete post-mortem report.

A memorial mass was held at the St Joseph's Church in Sentul yesterday, after 
the family held a 3-day wake at the Nirvana Memorial centre in Kuala Lumpur.

The funeral mass will be held at the Church of the Divine Mercy in Shah Alam on 
October 3.

Mr Morais went missing on September 4 after he was abducted by several men 
following a fender bender along Jalan Dutamas during morning rush hour traffic.

He was grabbed by the suspects after he came out of his car to inspect the 
damage.

Mr Richard lodged a missing person's report the following day at the Jinjang 
police station after it was discovered his brother had not reported for work 
and calls to his 2 mobile phones went unanswered.

Police then found a burnt-out Proton Perdana, with its chasis and engine 
numbers erased, in a plantation in Hutan Melintang, Perak. Mr Morais was last 
seen driving a government-issued Proton Perdana.

A day later, Attorney-General Mohamed Apandi Ali issued a statement that Mr 
Morais was not part of the government task force which had earlier investigated 
government-owned 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) over its debt 
controversies.

Mr Apandi was addressing speculations on social media about the possible links 
between Mr Morais's disappearance and the high-profile probe into the state 
investment vehicle.

According to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), Mr Morais served 
as a DPP in MACC's legal and prosecution division for 10 years until he 
returned to the Attorney-General's Chambers in July last year.

Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar was the 1st to disclose several 
days later that police suspected foul play in Mr Morais's disappearance, adding 
that the case was re-classified as abduction.

This was after the emergence of closed-circuit television camera (CCTV) footage 
which showed the fender bender and Mr Morais being bundled into a pick-up 
truck.

12 days after his abduction, police were led to a swamp in Taman Subang Mewah 
in USJ 1, Subang Jaya, where they found Mr Morais's body in a cement-filled 
steel drum.

It was also reported that police made several arrests in the Klang Valley, 
Penang and Kedah in their investigations.

Hundreds of people attended his wake over the last 3 days, and colleagues in 
the legal fraternity have described Morais as a brilliant prosecutor, 
approachable, humble, a mentor, teacher and patriot.

(source: TodayOnline.com)


SRI LANKA:

Death Penalty Or Right To Life?


With the increasing number of murders, sexual offences and drug smuggling in 
the nation, President Maithripala Sirisena recently spoke of re-introducing the 
capital punishment with the approval of parliament in a bid to eradicate these 
crimes.

Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe said the government was willing to 
implement the death penalty if it was necessary to avert the increasing trend 
in serious crimes in the nation and stressed the need to expedite 
investigations and punish offenders.

"We will try our best to prevent the increasing trend in crime and we will take 
steps to combat it also by implementing capital punishment," he said.

At present, there are over 1,115 inmates sentenced to death for murders and 
drugs smuggling detained at the Bogambara, Mahara and Welikada Prisons in Sri 
Lanka. The Department of Prisons confirmed that the prisoner who was sentenced 
to death recently was imprisoned about a month back.

He also said that most of the prisoners who were sentenced to death were 
murderers, adding that there are 40,000 high court cases, and therefore it is 
hard to keep a count on how many of them are given death sentences as sometimes 
it seems that almost every day the judges around the country give the verdict 
of death for serious crimes if the suspect is proven guilty with strong 
evidence. There was one even last week, he added.

However, the oldest inmate who was sentenced to death due to the commitment of 
murder is 84-year-old while the 1st prisoner on the death row has been there 
for the last 18 years since 1997, with the government spending Rs. 300 every 
day including food and clothing for the inmates.

However, the expenses of water and electricity used by them were not included 
in the said Rs. 300, claimed the Commissioner of Prisons (Operations) H. M. N. 
C. Dhanasinghe.

There are around 600 inmates on whom the re-appealing of the cases has been 
cancelled due to the nature of their crimes and 400 prisoners have re-appealed 
against their verdicts. In the meantime, the hearings of the re-appealed cases 
in courts are pending and the final verdict will decide on whether to reduce 
the period of life in prison or to cancel the appeal depending on the judge's 
decision.

Commissioner of Prisons (Operations) confirmed that approximately 5 female and 
over 1,000 male inmates were sentenced to death in Sri Lanka, adding that the 
department awaits the President???s decision to carry out the executions.

If an individual is arrested with more than 4 grams of drugs in his or her 
possession and if proven guilty, that person will be sentenced to death 
depending on the strong evidences.

Meanwhile, the department had already received around 15 applications for the 
post of hangman and the interviews of the applications will be held within 3 
weeks.

However, responding to the questions by The Sunday Leader, the Commissioner of 
Prisons said that the death penalty does not apply to the criminals who commit 
sexual offences unless they commit murder following the abuse, but will be 
sentenced for 10-20 years in prison.

Meanwhile, the Director for Human Rights Watch's South Asia Meenakshi Ganguly 
said, "Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty because it is inherently 
inhumane," adding that the death sentence as a punishment should be totally 
abolished.

She went on to say that Sri Lanka should not engage in what might appear to be 
a populist idea in the country. "Surely, the government knows that there is no 
clear evidence that the capital punishment serves as an effective deterrence 
for serious crimes. Therefore the criminal justice system should be 
strengthened which will be more effective to prevent serious crimes in the 
country," she said.

She further noted that the death penalty is incompatible with human rights and 
human dignity.

The death penalty violates the right to life which happens to be the most basic 
of all human rights. It also violates the right not to be subjected to torture 
and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment. Furthermore, 
the death penalty emasculates human dignity which is natural to every human 
being.

In the meantime, many human rights activists claim that there is a risk of 
executing innocent people in the justice system. There have been several, and 
always will be, cases of executions of innocent people. "Even we have 
experienced one in the recent past. No matter how developed a justice system 
is, it will always remain vulnerable to human failure. Unlike prison sentences, 
the death penalty is irreversible and irreparable," they said.

They also claimed that the death penalty can be used in a disproportional 
manner against the poor, minorities and members of racial, ethnic, political 
and religious groups.

As the General Assembly of the United Nations recently stated that there is no 
conclusive evidence of the deterrent value of the death penalty (UNGA 
Resolution 65/206), it is significant to note that the implementation of the 
capital punishment in order to eradicate serious crimes in many countries is at 
stake as the increasing number of crimes are still on the rise.

Just because the public request the government to take away the life of a human 
being does not mean that it is always the right way of eradicating the crimes 
in future whereas it is the duty of the justice system and the judiciary 
officers to emphasize the unsuitability of capital punishment with human rights 
and human dignity, claims the human rights activists adding that it should be 
abolished.

Nimalka Fernando, a lawyer and a human rights activist in Sri Lanka, says that 
she is alarmed that our leaders are taking decisions of this nature with scant 
disregard to the international standards and human rights law.

"At least I expected the Yahapalanaya (Good Governance) leaders to have a 
better sense and wisdom when taking decisions" she added.

She went on to say that she is concerned that the President is not receiving 
proper guidance from the advisors and hopes the international experts around 
him will tell him that introducing death penalty is a violation of basic 
fundamental human rights. "You cannot remove the life of a person to bring 
justice to another. The present norm is life imprisonment and not death 
penalty," she said.

"It looks as if the Sri Lankan experts have to be exposed to the international 
standards. They have remained under Mahinda Rajapaksa so much that they cannot 
think straight now", she further said.

It is noteworthy, that the request from the public for the capital punishment 
in the country indicates the desire to be free from crime. Nevertheless, there 
exist more effective ways to prevent crimes, claim the Human Rights activists.

(source: The Sunday Leader)






SAUDI ARABIA:

Saudi Arabia's Troubling Death Sentence


On September 14, local media reported that an appeals court and Saudi Arabia's 
Supreme Court had upheld the death sentence of Ali al-Nimr for participating in 
protests four years ago. He was 16 at the time. Today, he awaits the execution 
of his sentence, which stipulates that al-Nimr should be beheaded and that his 
headless body should be strung up for public display.

Among the "crimes" for which al-Nimr was convicted were "breaking allegiance 
with the ruler," "going out to a number of marches, demonstrations, and 
gatherings against the state and repeating some chants against the state," and 
using his cell phone to incite demonstrations. He was also accused of 
sheltering men wanted by police, helping wanted men avoid police raids, and 
attacking police with Molotov cocktails and rocks, although prosecutors offered 
no clear details of injuries to police officers. Al-Nimr denied the charges and 
told the court that security officials coerced a "confession."

Saudi Arabia is 1 of the only 3 countries in the world known to maintain the 
death penalty for people who allegedly committed crimes as children -- along 
with Sudan and Iran. So there was nothing to stop Saudi authorities from 
bringing al-Nimr to trial before its notorious terrorism court, which sentenced 
him to death in May 2014.

True, Saudi Arabia has ratified international treaties that prohibit executing 
anyone for offenses committed when they were under 18. Yet despite this 
obligation, under the Saudi system, someone who exhibits physical signs of 
puberty can be tried as an adult. In January 2013, Saudi Arabia executed a Sri 
Lankan domestic worker convicted of murdering a newborn when she was 17, and in 
March of the same year authorities executed two Saudi men convicted of 
committing armed robbery before they turned 18.

And al-Nimr is far from alone. In fact, he's part of a rising trend. Saudi 
Arabia has one of the highest known execution rates in the world and so far 
this year, it has executed 135 people. Saudi diplomats have been trying to 
deflect criticism of the country's soaring execution rate. In September, the 
country's permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva dismissed 
the criticism as "protecting the rights of the killer."

In fact, just under half of all executions in Saudi Arabia in any given year 
are not for murder, but for nonviolent drug crimes or even occasionally for 
dubious "crimes" such as sorcery. And those accused of serious crimes don't 
always get fair trials. Al-Nimr's case is a prime example.

Saudi's internal security service arrested al-Nimr in February 2013 in 
connection with an uprising by the country's minority Shia citizens in Saudi 
Arabia's Eastern Province in 2011. They were demanding an end to longstanding 
discrimination by the government and protesting Saudi Arabia's role in 
suppressing peaceful protests in neighboring Bahrain.

Authorities held him nearly nine months without taking him before a judge, and 
did not allow him to have a lawyer during his interrogation. Many of the 
broadly framed charges against him don't resemble recognizable crimes under 
international law. The court also failed to investigate al-Nimr's allegations 
that officials mistreated him in detention.

Family members told Human Rights Watch that following al-Nimr's arrest in 
February 2012, authorities did not permit them to visit for 4 months. When 
authorities finally brought him before a judge for the 1st time, in December 
2013, they allegedly did not allow him to inform his family or appoint a 
lawyer, and did not provide him a copy of his charge sheet.

The court held 3 more sessions before the authorities allowed al-Nimr to 
appoint a defense lawyer. Despite court orders to the contrary, prison 
officials did not allow al-Nimr's lawyer to visit him in prison to help prepare 
a defense before or during his trial.

The court found al-Nimr guilty in May 2014 solely on the basis of a confession 
he signed during his interrogation, even though he said in court that one of 
his interrogators wrote it and that he signed under duress without reading it. 
The court ruled the confession admissible anyway, since he had signed it. 
Family members said that al-Nimr agreed to sign the statement only after 
interrogators told him that if he did, they would then release him.

Al-Nimr's life is now in the hands of Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, 
whose decision will signal whether he is committed to reforming the justice 
system or to perpetuating the status quo of gross due process violations and 
executing child offenders. If King Salman believes in justice he should 
acknowledge the serious flaws in the case and commute the sentence.

(source: Human Rights Watch)






JORDAN:

The king demanded vengeance and 'Zarqawi's woman' was sent to the gallows


Just after nightfall Feb. 3, a warrant arrived at the city's main women's 
prison for the execution of Sajida al-Rishawi. The instructions had come from 
King Abdullah II himself, then in Washington on a state visit, and were 
transmitted from his private plane to the royal court in Jordan's capital.

A clerk relayed the message to the Interior Ministry and then to the prisons 
department, where it caused a stir. State executions are complicated affairs 
requiring many steps, yet the king's wishes were explicit: The woman would face 
the gallows before the sun rose the next day.

The chief warden quickly made the trek to the cell where Rishawi had maintained 
a kind of self-imposed solitary confinement for close to a decade. The 
prisoner, 45 now and no longer thin, spent most of her days watching television 
or reading a paperback Koran, seeing no one and keeping whatever thoughts she 
had under the greasy, prison-issued hijab she always wore. She was not stupid, 
yet she seemed perpetually disconnected from whatever was going on around her. 
"When will I be going home?" she asked her government-appointed lawyer during 
rare meetings in the months after she was sentenced to death. Eventually, even 
those visits stopped.

Now, when the warden sat her down to explain that she would die in the morning, 
Rishawi nodded her assent but said nothing. If she cried or prayed or cursed, 
no one in the prison heard a word of it, according to Jordanian officials who 
described the sequence of events for a new book, "Black Flags: The Rise of 
ISIS."

That she could face death was not a surprise to anyone. In 2006, a judge 
sentenced Rishawi to be hanged for her part in Jordan's worst terrorist attack: 
3 simultaneous hotel bombings that killed 60 people, most of them guests at a 
wedding party. She was the suicide bomber who lived, an odd, heavy-browed woman 
made to pose awkwardly before TV cameras showing off the vest that had failed 
to explode. At one time, everyone in Amman knew her story, how this 35-year-old 
unmarried Iraqi had agreed to wed a stranger so they could become a 
man-and-wife suicide team; how she panicked and ran; how she had wandered the 
city's northern suburbs in a taxi, lost, stopping passersby for directions, 
still wearing streaks of blood on her clothes and shoes.

But nearly 10 years had passed. The hotels had been rebuilt and renamed, and 
Rishawi had vanished inside Jordan's labyrinthine penal system. Within the 
Juwaida women's prison, she wore a kind of faded notoriety, like a valuable 
museum piece that no one looks at anymore. Some of the older hands in the state 
security service called her "Zarqawi's woman," a mocking reference to the 
infamous Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who ordered the hotel 
bombings. The younger ones barely remembered her.

Then, in the span of a month, everything changed. Zarqawi's followers, it 
turned out, had not forgotten Rishawi. The terrorists had rebranded themselves 
over the years and were now known in Jordan by the Arabic acronym Daesh - in 
English, as ISIS. And in early January, ISIS asked to have Rishawi back.

The demand for her release came in the middle of Jordan's worst domestic crisis 
in years. A Jordanian air force jet had crashed in Syria, and its young pilot 
had been captured alive by ISIS fighters. The group had broadcast photos of the 
frightened, nearly naked pilot being paraded around by grinning jihadists, some 
of them reaching out to embrace this great gift that Allah had dropped from the 
sky.

>From the palace to the security agencies, the king and his advisers steeled 
themselves for even more awful news. Either the pilot would be publicly 
butchered by ISIS, they feared, or the terrorists would demand a terrible price 
for his ransom.

True to form, ISIS announced its decision in macabre fashion. Less than a week 
after the crash, the captured pilot's family received a call at home, from the 
pilot's cellphone. On the other end, a stranger, speaking in Iraqi-accented 
Arabic, issued the group's singular demand.

We want our sister Sajida, the caller said.

The same demand was repeated, along with several new ones, in a constantly 
shifting and mostly one-sided negotiation. All the requests were routed to the 
headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Jordan's intelligence service, and all 
eventually landed on the desk of the imposing 47-year-old brigadier who ran the 
department's counterterrorism unit. Even in an agency notorious for its 
toughness, Abu Haytham stood apart, a man with a burly street fighter's 
physique and the personality of an anvil. He had battled ISIS in its many 
incarnations for years, and he had famously broken some of the group's top 
operatives in interrogation. Zarqawi himself had taken several turns in Abu 
Haytham's holding cell, and so had Sajida al-Rishawi, the woman ISIS was now 
seeking to free.

Outside Jordan, the demand made little sense. Rishawi had no value as a fighter 
or a leader, or even as a symbol. She was known to have participated in exactly 
1 terrorist attack, and she had botched it. Hardly "Zarqawi's woman," she had 
never even met the man who ordered the strike. If ISIS hadn't mentioned her 
name, she probably would have lived her remaining years quietly in prison, her 
execution indefinitely deferred for lack of any particular reason to carry it 
out.

But Abu Haytham understood. By invoking Rishawi's name, the terrorists were 
reaching back to the group's beginnings, back to a time before there was an 
ISIS, or a civil war in Syria; before the meltdown in Iraq that gave rise to 
the movement; even before the world had heard of a terrorist called Zarqawi. 
The Mukhabarat's men had tried to keep this terrorist group from gaining a 
foothold. They had failed - sometimes through their own mistakes, more often 
because of the miscalculations of others. Now, Zarqawi's jihadist movement had 
become a self-declared state, with territorial claims on 2 of Jordan's borders. 
And Rishawi, the failed bomber, was one of many old scores that ISIS was ready 
to settle.

In summoning this forgotten ghost, ISIS was evoking one of the most horrifying 
nights in the country's history, a moment seared into the memories of men of 
Abu Haytham's generation, the former intelligence captains, investigators and 
deputies who had since risen to lead the Mukhabarat.

Once, Zarqawi had managed to strike directly at Jordan's heart, and now, with 
the country's pilot in their hands, ISIS was about to do it again.

The black flags will come

Abu Haytham had been present that night. It was just before 9 p.m. on Nov. 9, 
2005, when the first call came in about an explosion at the Grand Hyatt across 
town. The early speculation was that a gas canister was to blame, but then came 
word of a 2nd blast at the Days Inn, and then a 3rd - reportedly far worse than 
the others - at the Radisson. He raced to the Radisson and pushed his way 
inside, past the rescue workers, the wailing survivors, and the recovered 
corpses that had been hauled out on luggage carts and deposited on the 
driveway. In the ballroom, through a haze of smoke and emergency lights, he 
could see more bodies. Some were sprawled haphazardly, as though flung by a 
giant. Others were missing limbs.

Just 2 days later came the news that one of the attackers - a woman - had 
survived and fled. A day after that, Sajida al-Rishawi sat in a chair in front 
of him.

The woman would never offer a useful syllable. "I don't know, I don't know," 
she would occasionally manage, in a soft mumble. Yet, already, Abu Haytham knew 
who was behind the act.

Zarqawi was, at the time of the bombing, the head of a particularly vicious 
terrorist network called al-Qaeda in Iraq. But the Jordanians had known him 
back in the days when he was Ahmad the hoodlum, a high school dropout with a 
reputation as a heavy drinker and a brawler. They had watched him wander off to 
Afghanistan in the late 1980s to fight the communists, then return as a 
battle-hardened religious fanatic. After a first try at terrorism, he had 
vanished into one of Jordan???s darkest prisons. This time, he emerged as a 
leader of men.

Still, few would have ever heard of Zarqawi had Washington not intervened. His 
terrorist career was at a dead end when the George W. Bush administration 
inadvertently made him a terrorist superstar, declaring to the world in 2003 
that this then-unknown Jordanian was the link between Iraq's dictatorship and 
the plotters behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The claim was wrong, 
yet, weeks later, when U.S. troops invaded Iraq, the newly famous and 
well-funded terrorist gained a battleground and a cause and soon thousands of 
followers. Over 3 tumultuous years, he intentionally pushed Iraq to the brink 
of sectarian war by unleashing wave after wave of savage attacks on Shiite 
civilians in their mosques, bazaars and schools. He horrified millions with a 
new form of highly intimate terrorism: the beheading of individual hostages, 
captured on video and sent around the world, using the Internet's new power to 
broadcast directly into people's homes. Along the way, he helped transform 
America's lightning victory in Iraq into the costliest U.S. military campaign 
since Vietnam. Although some would cast his movement as an al-Qaeda offshoot, 
Zarqawi's brand of jihad was utterly, brutally original.

But Zarqawi's excesses also deepened his adversaries' resolve. In 2006, with 
help from Jordan, U.S. forces discovered Zarqawi's safe house and flattened it 
with a 500-pound bomb. Two years later, his terrorist network appeared 
finished, but instead, his followers merely retreated, quietly gaining strength 
in Syria's lawless provinces until they burst into view in 2013, not as a 
terrorist group, but as an army.

This time, war-weary America would refuse to help until it was too late. There 
would be no serious effort to arm the moderate rebels who sought to deny ISIS 
its safe haven, and no airstrikes to harry ISIS's leadership and supply lines. 
Twice in a decade, a jihadist wave had threatened to engulf the region. Twice, 
it seemed to the Jordanians, the American response had been to cut a fresh hole 
in the lifeboat.

Zarqawi's successors called themselves by different names before settling on 
ISIS - or simply the Islamic State. But they continued to refer to Zarqawi as 
the "mujahid sheik," acknowledging the founder who had the audacity to believe 
he could redraw the maps of the Middle East. And, like Zarqawi, they believed 
their conquests would not end there.

In the prophetic passages of the Muslim holy texts known as the Hadith, Zarqawi 
saw his fate foretold. He and his men were the black-clad soldiers of whom the 
ancient scholars had written: "The black flags will come from the East, led by 
mighty men, with long hair and beards, their surnames taken from their home 
towns." These conquerors would not merely reclaim the ancient Muslim lands. 
They also would be the instigators of the final cataclysmic struggle ending in 
the destruction of the West's great armies, in northern Syria.

"The spark has been lit here in Iraq," Zarqawi preached, "and its heat will 
continue to intensify until it burns the Crusader armies in Dabiq."

The Mukhabarat's men had heard enough of such talk from Zarqawi back when he 
was their prisoner. Now the brazen claims were coming from his offspring. 
30,000 strong, they were waiting just across the border, calling for their 
sister Sajida.

'I'm going to war'

The charade of a prisoner swap ended abruptly Feb.?3, 2015, the day after 
Jordan's king arrived in Washington for the official visit.

For Abdullah II, it was the latest in a series of exhausting journeys in which 
he repeated the same appeal for help. His tiny country was struggling with two 
burdens imposed from abroad: a human tide of refugees from Syria - about 
600,000 so far - and the cost of participating in the allied Western-Arab 
military campaign against ISIS. The trip was not going particularly well. 
Members of Congress offered sympathy but not much more; White House officials 
recited the usual pledges to bolster Jordan's defenses and struggling economy, 
but the kind of assistance Abdullah most desperately needed was nowhere in the 
offing. During previous visits, President Obama had declined Jordan's requests 
for laser-guided munitions and other advanced hardware that could take out 
ISIS's trucks and tanks. On this trip, there was no firm commitment even for a 
meeting between the 2 leaders.

Abdullah was at the Capitol, making a pitch to John McCain, the Republican 
chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, when one of the king's aides 
interrupted him.

The monarch stepped into the corridor, and on the small screen of a smartphone, 
watched ISIS deliver its final statement on the proposed prisoner swap. As 
video cameras rolled, masked jihadists marched the young Jordanian pilot into a 
small metal cage that had been doused with fuel. Then they lit a fire and 
filmed as the airman was burned alive.

By the time Abdullah returned to the meeting, McCain's aide had seen the video 
as well. The monarch kept his composure, but McCain could see he was badly 
shaken.

"Can we do anything more for you?" McCain asked.

"I'm not getting support from your side!" Abdullah finally said. "I'm still 
getting only gravity bombs, and we're not even getting resupplied with those. 
Meanwhile, we're flying 200 % more missions than all the other coalition 
members combined, apart from the United States."

The king continued with his scheduled meetings, but he had already made up his 
mind to return home. He was making arrangements when the White House phoned to 
offer 15 minutes with the president. Abdullah accepted.

In the Oval Office, Obama expressed condolences to the pilot's family and 
thanked the king for Jordan's contributions to the military campaign against 
ISIS. The administration was doing all it could to be supportive, the president 
assured the monarch.

"No, sir, you are not," Abdullah said, firmly. He rattled off a list of weapons 
and supplies he needed.

"I've got 3 days' worth of bombs left," he said, according to an official 
present during the exchange. "When I get home, I'm going to war, and I'm going 
to use every bomb I've got until they're gone."

There was one other item of business to attend to before his return. From the 
airport, Abdullah called his aides in Amman to start the process of carrying 
out a pair of executions. On Jordan's death row, there were 2 inmates who had 
been convicted of committing murderous acts on orders from Zarqawi. One was an 
Iraqi man who had been a mid-level operative in Zarqawi's Iraqi insurgency. The 
other was Sajida al-Rishawi. Both should be put to death without further delay.

The king foresaw that Western governments would protest the executions as acts 
of vengeance, even though both inmates had been sentenced long ago as part of 
normal court proceedings. But he would not be deterred. As far as he was 
concerned, the appointment with the hangman already had been delayed too long, 
he told aides.

"I don't want to hear a word from anyone," Abdullah said.

The king was still airborne at 2 a.m. Amman time when the guards arrived to 
collect Rishawi from her cell. She had declined the customary final meal and 
ritual bath with which devout Muslims cleanse the body in preparation for the 
afterlife. She donned the red uniform worn exclusively by condemned prisoners 
on the day of execution, along with the usual hijab to cover her head and face.

She was taken outside the prison to a van with a military escort for the drive 
to Swaqa, Jordan's largest prison, on a desert hill about 60 miles south of the 
capital. The vehicles arrived just before 4 a.m., as a full moon, visible 
through a light haze, was dipping toward the southwestern horizon.

Her last earthly view, before she was blindfolded, was of a small execution 
chamber with white walls and a row of tiny windows, and a few tired faces 
looking up from the witness gallery just below her.

An imam prayed as a noose with a heavy metal clasp was secured, and a judge 
asked if Rishawi cared to convey any last wishes or a final will. She gave no 
reply.

She likewise made no audible sound as the gallows' trap opened and she plunged 
hard into the darkness. It was 5:05 a.m., nearly 90 minutes before sunrise, 
when the prison doctor checked for a pulse.

"Zarqawi's woman" was dead, her execution the closing scene in the worst act of 
terrorism in Jordan???s history. But Zarqawi's children were pursuing the 
founder's far grander ambitions: the end of Jordan and its king, the erasing of 
international boundaries and the destruction of the modern states of the Middle 
East. Then, with black flags raised above Muslim capitals from the Levant to 
the Persian Gulf, they could begin the great apocalyptic showdown with the 
West.

(source: Washington Post)






PAKISTAN:

Plan to Execute Paralyzed Prisoner Called 'A New Low' for Pakistan


The government of Pakistan is coming under fire over its plans to execute 2 
inmates next week. One of the inmates is disabled, the other claims he was a 
teenager at the time he was arrested. Critics say both sentences violate 
Pakistan's constitution.

The 1st man, 43-year-old Abdul Basit, was paralyzed from the waist down 5 years 
ago after contracting tuberculous meningitis in prison. According to a report 
conducted by a government-appointed medical board and obtained by Basit's 
lawyers at Justice Project Pakistan, he remains "bed bound with urinary and 
fecal incontinence."

There is, the board adds, "almost no chance of recovery."

Basit, whose execution is now set for Tuesday, was originally scheduled to be 
hanged on July 28. The Lahore High Court stayed his execution after Basit's 
lawyers argued that his sentence would would constitute "cruel and unusual 
punishment" and violate the "fundamental right to human dignity" protected by 
the country's constitution.

"Hanging a man who is unable even to stand would be a new low for Pakistan's 
death penalty system, and a clear violation of the country's constitution," 
Maya Foa, director of the death penalty team at the international human rights 
organization Reprieve, said in a statement.

Lawyers for the 2nd inmate, Ansar Iqbal, argue he was 15 when he and a friend 
were arrested on charges that they murdered their neighbor 16 years ago.

The execution of juveniles is illegal in Pakistan. Iqbal's lawyers have 
produced school records and birth certificate that indicate he was either 14 or 
15 years old at the time of the murder, but judges have refused to examine the 
evidence, saying that it was submitted too late. Instead, the courts are 
relying on the arresting officer's estimate that Iqbal was in his early 20s at 
the time.

Iqbal and Basit are just 2 of more than 8,000 inmates presently sitting on 
death row in Pakistan. The country reinstituted the death penalty in December 
of last year in an effort to crack down on violent militants. It has executed 
240 people in the months since.

(source: vice.com)

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

Pakistan to hang man who claims he was 15 at time of crime----Ansar Iqbal 
arrested 16 years ago for murder of a neighbour but denies involvement


Pakistani authorities are set to hang a man who says he was 15 when he was 
arrested for a murder he claims he did not commit, lawyers said on Saturday.

Ansar Iqbal says he was 15 when he and a friend were arrested 16 years ago for 
the murder of a neighbour, which the victim's family said was over an argument 
at a cricket match. Iqbal says police framed him because he was poor by 
planting 2 guns at his house.

Pakistani law forbids the execution of juveniles, but the country's courts have 
refused to examine Iqbal's school records and birth certificate because they 
say they were submitted too late, said Maya Foa of British legal aid group 
Reprieve. His old school record and a new birth certificate issued this year 
give his age as 14 and 15 respectively. Record keeping in Pakistan is poor and 
records are easily forged.

Instead, the court concluded he was in his early 20s based on a policeman's 
estimate at the time of his arrest, Foa said. Iqbal's friend was tried as a 
juvenile.

"The onus has to be on the government and prosecution to prove that the 
individual facing the gallows is not a juvenile if all the available evidence 
points otherwise," she said.

"Otherwise it puts the defendant in an impossible position."

Iqbal's lawyer, Munir Basit, confirmed his client had been tried as an adult 
and had been notified he was to hang at Sargodha jail next week.

"He has received his black warrant in the concerned jail."

Court and prosecution officials were not available for comment.

Pakistan brought back hanging in December as a way to crack down on militancy 
after Taliban gunmen massacred more than 130 pupils at an army-run school.

But very few of the 240 people hanged have any links to militancy. Most, like 
Iqbal, were convicted of murder. Many of their families say they were falsely 
accused and too poor to get good lawyers. Few, if any, wealthy convicts have 
been hanged.

Pakistan's criminal justice system is widely considered corrupt. Police 
frequently ask for bribes and few are trained in preserving a crime scene or 
collecting evidence. Instead, they rely on easily manipulated oral statements. 
Accusations of torture are common.

Unskilled, poorly paid court-appointed lawyers often fail to examine witnesses 
or do not turn up for hearings, and tales of judges who ask for bribes are 
common.

(source: The Irish Times)