[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

April 6



GLOBAL:

Countries that execute on wrong side of history


Aftab Bahadur was 15 years old when a Pakistani court found him guilty of 
killing 3 people and sentenced him to death.

His sentence followed a farcical trial. Bahadur had always maintained his 
innocence and said he was tortured into a "confession." His co-accused Ghulam 
Mustafa, who falsely implicated him during the trial, later retracted his 
statement, admitting that police had beaten him.

On June 10 of last year, after almost 24 agonizing years on death row, Bahadur 
drew his last breath as he was hanged in a jail in Lahore. He had been dragged 
to the gallows a handful of times before and saved at the last minute, but not 
this time.

"We start to count down (to our execution), which itself is painful and 
nerve-racking. In fact, we die many times before our death. In my personal 
experience, nothing is more dreadful than waiting to die," he told media just 
months before his killing.

Bahadur was 1 of 326 people executed in Pakistan last year. The country lifted 
a moratorium on civilian executions in December 2014 after the horrific 
Taliban-led massacre at a school in Peshawar. The move was ostensibly to 
"tackle terrorism," even though there is no evidence that the death penalty is 
more of a deterrent to crime than other forms of punishment.

The sheer number of people executed in Pakistan is staggering: 326 is the 
highest figure Amnesty International has ever recorded in the country in a 
single year since beginning to monitor executions there in 1980. Sadly, as we 
release our annual report on the death penalty worldwide on Wednesday, Pakistan 
is not the only source of troubling developments.

Both Iran and Saudi Arabia also saw huge surges in the number of people put to 
death by the state. In Iran, at least 977 people were executed -- an increase 
of more than 200 on the year before. The vast majority had been convicted of 
drug-related crimes. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, put at least 158 people to death. 
This is an incredible 76% rise on the year before, and the highest number we 
have recorded for the country since the early 1990s.

These 3 countries -- Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia -- were the main culprits 
behind an alarming and staggering rise in global executions last year. In 
total, at least 1,634 people were put to death around the world, the highest 
judicial death toll we have recorded in more than a quarter-century.

This global total, however, does not even include China, where Amnesty 
International believes thousands of people are put to death every year. But 
Chinese authorities treat death penalty statistics as state secrets, meaning 
that the true figure is impossible to determine.

As an organization that for decades has campaigned for an end to the death 
penalty, last year's setbacks were as disturbing as they were dismaying. Apart 
from the number of lives taken, the use of the death penalty is in many 
countries riddled with serious problems: unfair trials, the use of torture to 
extract "confessions," death sentences for juvenile offenders and a lack of 
transparency, to name a few.

But thankfully, 2015 was not all bad news. It was, in fact, in many ways a year 
of extremes, with stark developments on both ends of the spectrum. The 25 
countries around the world that carried out executions belong to an isolated 
minority. In fact, Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia accounted for almost 90% of 
all global executions (excluding China).

Last year, we also saw a record number of countries fully remove the death 
penalty from their legal books. Four states in total -- Fiji, Madagascar, 
Republic of Congo and Suriname -- abolished the death penalty for all crimes in 
2015, and a new penal code in Mongolia means it will also join the abolitionist 
ranks in 2016.

For the 1st time ever, the majority of the world's countries now have legal 
frameworks that make no mention of the death penalty at all. In total, 140 of 
the world's countries have fully abolished capital punishment in law or 
practice.

A historical perspective makes the long-term global trend away from the death 
penalty even starker. Although 25 countries executed last year, two decades 
ago, in 1996, that figure stood at 39. In 1945, when the United Nations was 
established, only eight countries had abolished the death penalty for all 
crimes. Today, this number stands at 102 countries, with more on the cusp of 
doing so.

Countries that still execute need to realize that they are on the wrong side of 
history and immediately impose moratoriums on the death penalty with a view to 
its eventual repeal.

The hundreds of people put to death in Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and 
elsewhere in 2015 will never come back, but authorities in those countries can 
at least ensure that no more lives are lost in the name of "justice."

(source: Opinion; Salil Shetty is secretary general of Amnesty 
International----CNN)






BANGLADESH:

SC upholds JMB man's death penalty


The Appellate Division on Wednesday upheld the death sentence of Masumur Rahman 
alias Masum, a member of the banned militant outfit Jama???atul Mujahideen 
Bangladesh (JMB), in a case over bomb blast at Laxmipur Judge Court.

A 4-member bench of the Appellate Division, led by chief justice SK Sinha, 
passed the order, reports UNB news agency.

Besides, the SC scrapped the High Court judgment that had acquitted condemned 
convict Mohammad Amzad Ali, another JMB man, and ordered Amzad's retrial.

The SC also asked the authorities concerned to shift Amzad Ali to general cell 
from the condemn cell of the jail.

Lawyer Delwar Hossain stood for Masum while deputy attorney general Shashank 
Shekhor Sarkar represented the state.

According to the prosecution, miscreants carried out the bomb attack on 
Laxmipur district Judge Court during working hours on 3 October 2005.

Majibullah, a litigant, was killed and several other people, including Judge MA 
Sufian and bench officer Shafiqullah, were injured in the bomb blast.

Later, a case was filed against JMB member Masumur Rahman alias Masum in this 
connection.

On 15 August 2006, Laxmipur Speedy Trial Tribunal sentenced three JMB 
men-Masum, Ataur Rahman Sunny and Amzad Ali-to death in 2 cases.

Later, the convicts filed an appeal with the High Court against the tribunal 
verdict.

After hearing, an HC bench upheld the death sentence of Masum while acquitted 
Amzad Ali in the case in 2013.

Later, the state filed an appeal with the Supreme Court against the verdict and 
the convicts filed petitions seeking acquittal.

(source: Prothom Alo)






AFRICA:

No more death penalty? Reforms in Africa fuel drop in world execution laws.


For the 1st time, the death penalty became illegal in more than 1/2 the world 
in 2015. That shift comes in large part due to changes in sub-Saharan Africa. 
There was little global fanfare last year when 2 small African states - 
Madagascar and Congo Brazzaville - announced that they had outlawed the death 
penalty.

On the surface, the legal change in both countries appeared little more than 
cosmetic - neither had carried out an execution in more than 30 years, a far 
cry from from places like China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan that execute 
hundreds of criminals every year. But beneath the global radar, Madagascar and 
Congo had helped put a thumb on the scales of history.

In 2015, for the first time ever, the death penalty was illegal in more than 
1/2 the world's countries, according to a report released today by Amnesty 
International. In addition to the 2 African countries, the states that tipped 
the balance were Fiji, Suriname, and Mongolia. They are all part of a dramatic 
global shift away from capital punishment over the last 2 decades, which has 
seen the number of states where the practice is entirely illegal nearly double, 
from 60 to 102.

And perhaps in no region has this transformation been more significant than 
sub-Saharan Africa, where abolishing the death penalty has been part of a 
broader movement in many countries to close the door on colonial-era laws - 
including those criminalizing everything from homelessness to homosexuality - 
developed for a world order that no longer exists.

"The death penalty in Africa is overwhelmingly a product of colonialism," says 
Andrew Novak, an adjunct professor of criminology, law, and society at George 
Mason University in Virginia and author of a forthcoming book on the death 
penalty in Africa. "Colonial powers used executions to showcase state power and 
put the fear of god in their subjects. It was a tool to make people comply with 
the law by terrifying them."

Brutality of colonial history

That dark history has warped the continent's contemporary views on capital 
punishment, Mr. Novak says, though not always in straightforward ways.

In some countries, like South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Kenya, the 
brutality of colonial executions - particularly those carried out against the 
countries' freedom fighters - led to a dramatic reduction or outright abolition 
of the practice after independence. South Africa, which in the waning days of 
apartheid executed more people annually than any other country, abolished the 
practice formally in a unanimous court decision in 1995, echoing back to the 
country's apartheid-era justice system when it argued that "retribution cannot 
be accorded the same weight under our Constitution as the right to life and 
dignity."

Other countries, however, learned a more sinister lesson from their colonial 
experience: capital punishment works as a tool to intimidate your population 
into submission. In the past year, four countries in Africa - Somalia, Chad, 
South Sudan, and Sudan - carried out at least 43 executions according to 
Amnesty, though the organization believes the true figure in some of those 
countries may be considerably higher.

"What the African countries who executed people in 2015 all have in common is a 
history of systematic violation of human rights" more broadly, says Netsanet 
Belay, Amnesty International's Africa director for research and advocacy. "They 
are all places known for grossly unfair trials and the suppression of basic 
rights."

Across the continent, 443 new death sentences were imposed in 2015, down from 
909 in 2014. But most of those criminals will likely never be executed, says 
Novak, since many have paradoxically been sentenced to death in countries that 
never or almost never carry out the practice.

Kenya, for instance, has one of the largest death rows in the world, owing to 
laws that make a sentence of death mandatory for both murder and armed robbery. 
But the country's last execution - for coup-plotting - was carried out nearly 
30 years ago.

And while both Zimbabwe and Swaziland technically allow the death penalty, each 
has struggled in recent years with an unusual staffing problem - they can't 
find a qualified hangman.

A broken system

Still, "one shouldn't overlook the people trapped in a broken system," says 
Thomas Probert, a senior research with the unlawful killings unit at the 
University of Pretoria's Centre for Human Rights. "There are likely thousands 
of people on death row across the continent for whom the fact that their 
government hasn't executed anyone for 10 years is only a small consolation."

Even in African countries where the death penalty is rare or de facto 
prohibited, activists say it can continue to haunt the legal system, draining 
disproportionate resources from already over-burdened courts and prisons.

But in countries saddled with a wide spectrum of human rights concerns - 
including, in many cases, extrajudicial killings by police, militaries, and 
armed groups - formally abolishing the death penalty is often low on national 
priority lists. Just 18 of Africa's 54 countries have outlawed the practice 
completely, although Amnesty considers another 16 to have "de facto" done away 
with capital punishment.

But advocates for full abolition say these de facto moratoriums on execution 
can be fragile, particularly when regimes change or wars are waged. Chad, for 
instance, had not carried out an execution in more than a decade when it 
executed 10 suspected members of the terror cell Boko Haram last year for 
carrying out an attack that killed 38 people in the city of N'Djamena in June.

Still, Africa is doing considerably better than its northerly neighbors. In 
2015, nearly 90 % of all executions recorded by Amnesty (which crucially leaves 
out China, where execution figures are a state secret) occurred in just 3 
countries - Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. Globally, the organization notes, 
executions were up 54 % in 2015 over the previous year, from 1,061 people 
globally to 1,634.

But focusing on those figures obscure the march of progress seen in Africa and 
elsewhere, Mr. Probert says.

"Advocacy around the death penalty for very obvious reasons tends to focus on 
the really intransigent, retentionist states ... that execute scores if not 
hundreds of people per year," he says. "But behind those headlines is a 
less-often-told story about the remarkable decline of the practice of the death 
penalty in the rest of the world over the last 50 years. Those states that 
still have the death penalty on their books - in Africa and elsewhere - are 
behind the curve of history."

(source: Christian Science Monitor)