[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

April 17



INDIA:

Lawyer appointed for Yug killer


Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court on Saturday appointed Rajnish Vyas as counsel 
for defending Rajesh Dhanalal Daware (19), prime accused in Yug Chandak murder 
case. The court has kept the final hearing of the sensational murder case from 
April 25.

According to Chandak family's counsel Rajendra Daga, the accused had refused to 
have a lawyer and therefore, the court made arrangement for him through legal 
aid. Daware's accomplice, Arvind Abhilash Singh (23), had already challenged 
death sentence awarded to him while praying for leniency. The court had already 
directed its registry to complete formalities like preparing paperbook of case 
related to the cold-blooded murder of an innocent child, which had sparked off 
outrage and candle light protests in the city.

On February 4, both convicts were awarded a rare double death penalty for 
diabolical murder of 8-year-old Yug on September 1, 2014. This was 2nd such 
verdict after a Yavatmal sessions court sentenced labourer Shatrughan Masram to 
gallows for brutally raping and murdering a 2-year-old girl on August 14 last 
year.

It was 2nd such diabolic killing in the city within 3 years after another 
8-year-old child Kush Katariya was killed by Ayush Naresh Pugalia on October 
11, 2011, for extracting Rs2 crore ransom from his parents. He was awarded a 
rare double lifer by the court, which was enhanced to triple lifer by the 
Nagpur bench.

(source: The Times of India)






SAUDI ARABIA:

3 Alleged Child Offenders Await Execution----Torture Allegations Ignored in 
Unfair Trials


3 Saudi men are awaiting execution for alleged, protest-related crimes 
committed while they were children. Saudi judges based the capital convictions 
primarily on confessions that the 3 defendants retracted in court and said had 
been coerced. The courts did not investigate the allegations that the 
confessions were obtained by torture. Saudi Arabia's announcement on March 11, 
2016 that it will execute another 4 men for terrorism offenses raises fears 
that 1 or all 3 of the sentences could be carried out.

Human Rights Watch has obtained and analyzed the trial judgments that the 
Specialized Criminal Court, Saudi Arabia's terrorism tribunal, handed down in 
2014 against 1 of the men, Ali al-Nimr, and in a separate case, against Dawoud 
al-Marhoun and Abdullah al-Zaher. The judgments reveal flagrant due process 
violations, including denial of access to lawyers promptly after arrest or 
during lengthy pretrial detention, when investigators obtained the confessions.

"Sentencing alleged child offenders to death is an appalling example of the 
Saudi court system's injustice," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director. 
"Not only are these 3 young men sentenced to death for alleged crimes they 
committed as children, but the courts didn't even bother to investigate when 
they said they were coerced to confess."

"Sentencing alleged child offenders to death is an appalling example of the 
Saudi court system's injustice."----Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East Director

The 3 were arrested for their alleged participation in demonstrations by 
members of the Shia minority in 2011 and 2012. Local activists told Human 
Rights Watch that more than 200 people from Shia-majority towns and villages in 
Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province have gone on trial for alleged protest-related 
crimes since 2011.

Mostly Shia residents of Eastern Province towns such as Qatif, Awamiya, and 
Hufuf have repeatedly held protests over discrimination by the government since 
2011. Saudi Arabia's Shia citizens face systematic discrimination in public 
education, government employment, and permission to build houses of worship in 
the majority-Sunni country.

Al-Nimr was tried individually and sentenced in May 2014. The other 2 were 
tried as part of a group and sentenced in October 2014. Al-Nimr and al-Marhoun 
were 17 at the time of their arrests, while al-Zaher was 15.

Local media reported that Saudi Arabia's Supreme Court upheld al-Nimr's death 
sentence in September 2015, and that the Supreme Court informed a relative of 
al-Marhoun that it had upheld death sentences for al-Marhoun and al-Zaher in 
October 2015.

On January 2, 2016, Saudi Arabia carried out a mass execution of 47 men 
convicted on terrorism-related charges, four of whom were Shia, including a 
prominent cleric, Nimr al-Nimr, Ali al-Nimr's uncle. The trial judgement for 
Ali Sa'eed Al Ribh, 1 of the other Shia men executed on January 2, indicates 
that he was under 18 when he allegedly committed some of the protest-related 
crimes for which he was sentenced to death in 2014.

In 2015, only Iran and Pakistan executed people for crimes committed when they 
were under 18, according to Amnesty International. Both countries, as well as 
Bangladesh and Maldives, also sentenced child offenders to death last year, 
while previously convicted child offenders remained on death row in Indonesia, 
Iran, Papua New Guinea, and Saudi Arabia.

Since the beginning of 2016 Saudi Arabia has executed 84 people. Saudi Arabia 
executed 158 people in 2015, most for murder and drug smuggling.

Article 13 of the Arab Charter on Human Rights, which Saudi Arabia ratified in 
2009, guarantees the right to a fair trial. Article 15 of the Convention 
against Torture, to which Saudi Arabia acceded in 1997, obliges Saudi Arabia to 
"ensure that any statement which is established to have been made as a result 
of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings..."

The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to which Saudi Arabia acceded 
in 1996, stipulates a number of important rights for children accused of 
committing crimes. They include the right to prepare an appropriate defense 
with "legal or other appropriate assistance" (article 40.2), the right "to have 
the matter determined without delay by a competent, independent and impartial 
authority or judicial body in a fair hearing according to law, in the presence 
of legal or other appropriate assistance," including the child's parents or 
legal guardian (article 40.3), and the right to "not to be compelled to give 
testimony or to confess guilt" (article 40.4). Article 37(a) prohibits capital 
punishment for children in all cases. Saudi authorities appear to have violated 
these obligations in the cases of al-Nimr, al-Marhoun, and al-Zaher, Human 
Rights Watch said.

"Unfair trials of Shia citizens are simply another way Saudi Arabia has tried 
to silence its citizen???s demands to end long-term discrimination," Whitson 
said. "The authorities should not compound their repression by killing child 
offenders."

Death Sentences for Child Protesters

The charges against the young men relate to their alleged role in the Eastern 
Province protests. Al-Nimr's judgment states he was convicted for crimes that 
included "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 setting up a website on his Blackberry to incite 
demonstrations. He was also convicted of attacking police with Molotov 
cocktails and rocks, concealing men wanted by police, and helping the wanted 
men avoid police raids. Prosecutors gave no details of any injuries to police 
officers.

Al-Zaher and al-Marhoun, arrested in March and May of 2012 respectively, both 
faced numerous charges including "participating in marches and gatherings ... 
and chanting slogans against the state" as well as throwing Molotov cocktails 
at police patrols. Al-Marhoun was also charged with attacking the Awamiya 
police station, burglarizing a pharmacy to steal medical supplies to treat 
wounded protesters, and supporting protesters by "buying water and distributing 
it to them." Al-Zaher was separately charged with concealing men wanted by 
security forces. The court convicted al-Zaher and al-Marhoun on all of these 
charges.

The 3 men were detained without charge for up to 22 months and denied access to 
lawyers before and during their trials. 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. The authorities called him before a judge for the 
1st time in December 2013 without informing his family, allowing him to appoint 
a lawyer, or providing a copy of his charge sheet. The court held 3 more 
sessions before the authorities allowed al-Nimr to appoint a defense lawyer. 
Yet, as the trial judgment records, despite court orders to the contrary, 
officials at Dammam Mabahith Prison did not allow al-Nimr's lawyer to visit him 
in prison to help prepare a defense before or during his trial.

A family member of al-Marhoun told Human Rights Watch that authorities also 
held him without charge from the time of his arrest on May 21, 2012 until late 
2013 before charging him and taking him to court. The family member said 
authorities held him incommunicado at a detention facility for minors for two 
weeks, and then held him incommunicado again for 1 month after transferring him 
to Dammam Mabahith Prison. Defense lawyers for al-Marhoun and al-Zaher told the 
court that neither boy had been permitted to have a parent or lawyer present 
during interrogation.

The court found al-Nimr guilty on the basis of a confession he signed during 
his interrogation despite his statements that one of his interrogators wrote it 
and that he signed it under duress without reading it. The judgment stated that 
although the investigator wrote the confession, it was admissible because 
al-Nimr signed it. Family members said that al-Nimr agreed to sign the 
statement only after interrogators told him that they would then release him.

The court also found al-Marhoun and al-Zaher guilty based on their confessions. 
Defense lawyers for al-Zaher and al-Marhoun said that both boys had been beaten 
and threatened with further beatings if they did not sign confessions written 
by interrogators. One of al-Marhoun's relatives said that interrogators forced 
him to provide an ink fingerprint on a written confession that he did not read 
and that he had trouble speaking and eating because of his beatings.

Prosecutors presented no material evidence connecting al-Marhoun to his alleged 
crimes other than the confession. For al-Zaher, prosecutors presented only the 
confession and his arrest report, which stated that police "saw people with 
Molotov bombs and chased one of them until they arrested him, and after 
scanning the area they were in they found 33 glasses filled with benzene..."

Judges immediately dismissed the defendants' claims that interrogators coerced 
confessions, without investigating the allegations that the evidence was 
obtained by torture. In dismissing al-Nimr's torture claims, the judge ruled 
that "Religious scholars have ruled that retracting a confession for a 
discretionary crime is not acceptable.... Therefore, what the defendant has 
retracted from what appeared in his legally signed statement is not permitted, 
and what the defendant has argued regarding coercion was not proven to the 
judges."

Lawyers for all 3 men asked the court to summon the people who interrogated the 
defendants to clarify the circumstances of their confessions, but judges 
ignored these requests.

Authorities are holding all 3 men in Dammam Mabahith Prison.

(source: Human Rights watch)






IRAN----executions

Iran regime hangs 3 while EU's Mogherini is in Tehran for trade deals


Iran's fundamentalist regime on Saturday hanged three prisoners in a jail in 
Rasht, northern Iran, as the European Union's foreign policy chief Federica 
Mogherini is in Tehran to build greater trade ties between the EU and the 
regime.

The 3 prisoners were identified by the regime's judiciary in Golestan Province 
only by their initials and ages: E. M., 29; D. A., 51; and F. V., 31.

The mullahs' regime has executed at least 17 people in the past week while 
European officials have been paying visits to Tehran.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) said in a statement on 
Wednesday that the increasing trend of executions "aimed at intensifying the 
climate of terror to rein in expanding protests by various strata of the 
society, especially at a time of visits by high-ranking European officials, 
demonstrates that the claim of moderation is nothing but an illusion for this 
medieval regime."

Ms. Mogherini, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign 
Affairs and Security Policy, arrived in Tehran on Saturday along with seven EU 
commissioners for discussions with the regime's officials on trade and other 
areas of cooperation.

Her trip was strongly criticized by Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of the 
Foreign Affairs Committee of the NCRI who said: "This trip which takes place in 
the midst of mass executions, brutal human rights violations and the regime's 
unbridled warmongering in the region tramples on the values upon which the EU 
has been founded and which Ms. Mogherini should be defending and propagating."

Amnesty International in its April 6 annual Death Penalty report covering the 
2015 period wrote: "Iran put at least 977 people to death in 2015, compared to 
at least 743 the year before."

"Iran alone accounted for 82% of all executions recorded" in the Middle East 
and North Africa, the human rights group said.

There have been more than 2,300 executions during Hassan Rouhani's tenure as 
President. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation 
in Iran in March announced that the number of executions in Iran in 2015 was 
greater than any year in the last 25 years. Rouhani has explicitly endorsed the 
executions as examples of "God's commandments" and "laws of the parliament that 
belong to the people."

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

Prisoners say EU officials' visits to Iran encourage more executions


A group of resilient political prisoners in Iran's notorious Evin and 
Gohardasht prisons have written to the Prime Minister of Italy Matteo Renzi 
pointing out that at least eight prisoners were executed in Iran while he was 
visiting Tehran earlier in the week to reestablish trade ties with the regime. 
They also warned of a serious risk that other prisoners would be executed in 
Iran in the coming days since the silence of European officials on the issue of 
human rights during their visits to Iran only emboldens the regime to step up 
its abuses.

On Saturday, European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini arrived in 
Tehran along with 7 EU commissioners for discussions with the regime's 
officials on trade and other areas of cooperation.

The following is the text of the April 13, 2016 letter by a group of political 
prisoners in Gohardasht (Rajai-Shahr) and Evin prisons to Italian officials 
after the execution of e8 prisoners in Gohardasht Prison, north-west of Tehran:

To the Prime minister of Italy:

We, the most of us, are the inmates that had warned you before about your visit 
to Iran. In fact, the reason of our warning is not for bringing any political 
propaganda and atmosphere but to mention that people like you do not value 
humanity. So your travel to Iran will be the price for our execution. And it is 
us, our families and our youths who must be sacrificed.

Dear Prime Minister of Italy, have you seen the red carpet of blood that is 
spread for you today? Have you seen the trembling bodies of our fellow inmates 
on the gallows? Have you seen the queue of those families who were waiting 
behind the walls to receive the corpse of their children? Have you heard the 
bitter sound of weeping and wailing of their children and families who were 
waiting for the ambulance filled with the corpse of their loved ones.

Of course...of course you have not seen or heard any of them. Those who have 
kept you in the waiting queue to sign the commercial treaties; they have also 
kept our families waiting for the execution of their children. They use your 
big posters and pictures to cover up the gallows of execution!

It is good for you to know that through your trip to Iran, the stream of new 
executions will resume again even though they had been stopped for a while 
because of international pressures. By traveling to Iran, you are to a large 
extent giving political legitimacy and authority to these criminal and 
murderous executions. At this moment we have just heard about the execution of 
nine people. By coming to Iran, you have definitely given them the political 
legitimacy and authority for further such executions.

We, the inmates of Gohardasht (Rajai Shahr) prison, will file a complaint and 
send it to the people, political parties and all human rights organizations in 
Italy against your travel to Iran, because your travel to Iran is contrary to 
all humanitarian and philanthropic principals.

Finally, for your information, we will write the names of some executed 
prisoners who were sacrificed to give you their welcomes. We will also attach 
the name of other inmates of this prison (Rajai Shahr) who are waiting in the 
queue to be executed, because without any acceptance from the political 
authorities like you, the prisoners cannot easily be executed by them. Please 
excuse us for the bitter criticism and directness because the lives of human 
beings and the forthcoming crimes do not leave us any political consideration.

Here are the names of some of those who have just been executed today: Ebad 
Mohammadi, Hossein Moiinfar, Hamzeh Dowlatabadi,Mehdi Haqshenas...

Also, the following names are of only some of those people who are on the 
waiting list to be executed. The number of names listed below is trivial in 
comparison to the full number of names of this category:

First name, last name. Father's name

Nima Esmaiilian. Karim

Afshin Hashemi. Hossein

Ahmad Qasemi. Gholam-Ali

Mohammad Zarei. Esmaeili

Amir Khalilpour. Mirza

Reza Pourabbasyan. Hossein

Akbar Beyrami. Ali

Hossein Hassani. Hasan

Akbar Dehghan. Ayyaz

Mohammad Azizi. Mosayeb

Fariborz Jalali. Mohyeddin

Mohammad Khedmati. Issa

Issa Ebrahimi. Ebrahim

Bagher Basiri. Koochak

Fethullah Bakhtiari. Ali Akbar

Alireza Gharbali. Hossein

Saeed Eskandari. Jamshid

Esrafil Mohammadi. Qayum

Faramarz Fakhraei. Ali Asghar

Barat-Ali Rahimi. Muhammad Ali

Hossein Moiinifar. Ali Asghar

Azad Ardukhany. Sekhavat

Ali kavandi pour. Moosa

Alireza Afshar. Safar-Ali

Javad. Seifi

Khaled Mohammadian. Saleh

Mahmood. Khan Mohammadi

Hamid Shirkhani. Mansour

Ghorban Ali Heidari. Fathollah

Jabbar Mollah Hashemi. Asadollah

Saadi Babakhanyan. Javanmeer

Morteza Shafeghati. Ali

Mehrdad Saeb-ol-Afshar. Abdullah

Hassan Kandy. Fethullah

Sohrab Sanamy. Rahim

Kazem Khadem-e-Rezaeaian. Rahim

Mohsen Kazemi Abdi

Farma Salehi Abdollah

Hamzeh Dowlatabady

Mahdi Haghshenas

Koorosh Chakery. Zabihollah

Hossein Sadegh Kasmaee

The signatories of this letter:

1. Abol-Qasem Fooladvand 2. Khaled Hardani 3. Farhang Pour-Mansouri 4. Rasool 
Hardani 5. Reza Akbari Monfared 6. Pirooz Mansouri 7. Shahram Pourmansouri 8. 
Shahin Zoghitabar 9. Hassan Sadeghi 10. Saied Masouri 11. Saleh Kohandel 12. 
Ali Moezzi 13. Alireza Golipoor 14. Masood Arabchoobdar 15. Amir Doorbani 
Ghaziani 16. Saeed Shirzad 17. Farid Azmoudeh 18. Behzad Tarahomi 19. Iraj 
Hatami ... etc. and the names of those political prisoners reserved for 
security reasons.

CC:

UN Human Rights Council and Special Rapporteur

European Parliament

European Union

Liberal Democrat Party of Italy

The Five-Star Movement

Progressive Party of Italy

Social-Democratic Party of Italy

Radical Party of Italy

Labor party of Italy

Communist Party of Italy

The Center-Right Party

"Hands Off Cain" association

(source for both: NCR-Iran)






GUYANA:

Death penalty should be replaced with humane imprisonment


Dear Editor,

In a well expressed challenge to death penalty abolitionists 'What are the 
alternatives to capital punishment?' (SN 5th April), Yvonne Sam asked about 
alternatives.

Good point. If we are never going to execute murderers what are we going to do 
with them? The answer is simple. Lock them up and keep them locked up until 
they are no longer a danger to society. While they are locked up we should do 
our best to rehabilitate them. We should help murderers to understand that 
killing is wrong. To realise what a terrible thing you have done by taking the 
life of another human being is a form of punishment in itself.

We should help prisoners to learn how to lead constructive lives in society. 
When a murderer is no longer a danger to society he (it is usually a "he") 
should be released. Unfortunately some people will never be rehabilitated and 
they will never come out because they remain a danger to society.

Being locked up is punishment enough. The conditions in prison should not 
further destroy human dignity or damage the human spirit. It is increasingly 
obvious each day as the suffering and brutality continue in the Georgetown 
Prison that we must get rid of that prison and replace it with something more 
humane, not just for the prisoners but for the prison officers also. We could 
learn from Halden (Norway) the most humane prison in the world whose inmates 
include murderers. Halden is focussed on rehabilitation. All prisoners, even 
murderers, go back into society. We don't have Norway's money or the social and 
material equality that underpin Norwegian society. But we should do the best we 
can. The new prison must give prisoners the physical, mental and spiritual 
space to allow them to grasp the horror of what they have done, suffer remorse 
and change from killers to people who value life. Prison officers must have 
proper remuneration, safe working conditions and the right training to enable 
them to focus on rehabilitation.

Ms Sam also mentioned that if we remove the death penalty we need to find 
formidable deterrents to replace the death penalty. Absolutely. However we 
should remember that the death penalty is not a deterrent. There is a lot of 
argument about murder rates and the death penalty, but correlation is not 
proof; the causal link is missing. No one has yet come up with evidence, beyond 
reasonable doubt, that the death penalty works i.e. that someone who was about 
to commit murder changed his mind because of the death penalty. On the 
contrary, most murders are committed by people in the grip of some strong 
emotion - rage, fear, jealousy. Often the murderer's reason and self-control 
have been impaired by drugs or alcohol. The death penalty is irrelevant. It has 
no restraining impact on the man who kills his wife in a jealous rage or the 
affronted drunk wielding a cutlass. The death penalty also has no impact on 
those who kill for money or because they are involved in drug wars or gang 
wars. Killing is part of the job description. Rather than making society safer 
the death penalty may even endanger the police. Would a killer submit to being 
arrested, tried and sentenced to death or might he be tempted to kill the 
police officer and get away if he can?

In December 2015, we foolishly extended the death penalty to terrorists. This 
is the one group of people who really don't care if they die. Death at the 
hands of the state is martyrdom - no deterrent effect there.

For the vast majority of people, taking the life of another human being is 
simply unthinkable and evil. But for the tiny group whose moral framework is 
defective, there needs to be an effective deterrent. That deterrent is the 
certainty that they will be caught and sentenced. In other words the most 
effective deterrent to murder is the knowledge that you won't get away with it. 
We need a well trained, well-equipped and well-remunerated police force staffed 
by individuals who have integrity. That, not the death penalty, is what will 
protect us.

Next month we celebrate our Golden Jubilee of Independence. What a pity we 
still have some colonial baggage.

In 1965 Great Britain abolished the death penalty for murder in the mother 
country but kept it for British Guiana. It was unacceptable for the State to 
kill a British citizen but fine to kill the colonial subjects. Perhaps even 
now, we believe that our lives are less valuable. We have the highest suicide 
rate in the world. We have the fourth highest road death rate. We have a murder 
rate hovering around 18 per 100,000 compared to less than 1 per 100,000 in 
Great Britain.

The Government should send a clear message that Guyanese lives are precious, 
and that each one of us has dignity and a right to life. Announcing that the 
death penalty will be replaced with humane imprisonment would be a good 1st 
step.

Yours faithfully,

Melinda Janki

(source: Letter to the Editor, stabroeknews.com)