[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

JANUARY 1





SAUDI ARABIA:

Saudi beheadings soar in 2015 under discretionary rulings


Saudi Arabia carried out at least 157 executions in 2015, with beheadings 
reaching their highest level in the kingdom in 2 decades, according to several 
advocacy groups that monitor the death penalty worldwide.

Coinciding with the rise in executions is the number of people executed for 
non-lethal offenses that judges have wide discretion to rule on, particularly 
for drug-related crimes.

Rights group Amnesty International said in November that at least 63 people had 
been executed since the start of the year for drug-related offenses. That 
figure made for at least 40 % of the total number of executions in 2015, 
compared to less than 4 % for drug-related executions in 2010. Amnesty said 
Saudi Arabia had exceeded its highest level of executions since 1995, when 192 
executions were recorded.

But while most crimes, such as premeditated murder, may carry fixed punishments 
under Saudi Arabia's interpretation of the Islamic law, or Shariah, 
drug-related offenses are considered "ta'zir", meaning neither the crime nor 
the punishment is defined in Islam.

Discretionary judgments for "ta'zir" crimes have led to arbitrary rulings with 
contentious outcomes.

In a lengthy report issued in August, Amnesty International noted the case of 
Lafi al-Shammari, a Saudi national with no previous criminal record who was 
executed in mid-2015 for drug trafficking. The person arrested with him and 
charged with the same offenses received a 10-year prison sentence, despite 
having prior arrests related to drug trafficking.

Human Rights Watch found that of the first 100 prisoners executed in 2015, 56 
had been based on judicial discretion and not for crimes for which Islamic law 
mandates a specific death penalty punishment.

Shariah scholars hold vastly different views on the application of the death 
penalty, particularly for cases of "ta'zir."

Delphine Lourtau, research director at Cornell Law School's Death Penalty 
Worldwide, adds that there are Shariah law experts "whose views are that 
procedural safeguards surrounding capital punishment are so stringent that they 
make death penalty almost virtually impossible."

She says in Saudi Arabia, defendants are not provided defense lawyers and in 
numerous cases of South Asians arrested for drug trafficking, they are not 
provided translators in court hearings. She said there are also questions "over 
the degree of influence the executive has on trial outcomes" when it comes to 
cases where Shiite activists are sentenced to death.

Emory Law professor and Shariah scholar Abdullahi An-Naim said because there is 
an "inherent infallibility in court systems," no judicial system can claim to 
enforce an immutable, infallible form of Shariah.

"There is a gap between what Islam is and what Islam is as understood by human 
beings," he said. "Shariah was never intended to be coercively applied by the 
state."

Similar to how the U.S. Constitution is seen as a living document with 
interpretations that have expanded over the years, more so is the Quran, which 
serves as a cornerstone of Shariah, he said. The other half to Shariah is the 
judgments carried out by the Prophet Muhammad. Virtually anything else becomes 
an interpretation of Shariah and not Shariah itself, An-Naim said.

Of Islam's four major schools of thought, the underpinning of Saudi Arabia's 
legal system is based on the most conservative Hanbali branch and an ideology 
widely known as Wahhabism.

A 2005 royal decree issued in Saudi Arabia to combat narcotics further codified 
the right of judges to issue execution sentences "as a discretionary penalty" 
against any person found guilty of smuggling, receiving, or manufacturing 
drugs.

HRW's Middle East researcher Adam Coolge says Saudi Arabia executed 158 people 
in total in 2015 compared to 90 the year before.

Catherine Higham, a caseworker for Reprieve, which works against the death 
penalty worldwide, says her organization documented 157 executions in the 
kingdom. Saudi Arabia does not release annual tallies, though it does announce 
individual executions in state media throughout the year.

Saudi law allows for execution in cases of murder, drug offenses and rape. 
Though seldom carried out, the death penalty also applies to adultery, apostasy 
and witchcraft.

In defense of how Saudi Arabia applies Shariah, the kingdom's representative to 
the U.N. Human Rights Council, Bandar al-Aiban, said in an address in Geneva in 
March that capital punishment applies "only (to) those who commit heinous 
crimes that threaten security."

Because Saudi Arabia carries out most executions through beheading and 
sometimes in public, it has been compared to the extremist Islamic State group, 
which also carries out public beheadings and claims to be implementing Shariah.

Saudi Arabia strongly rejects this. In December, Foreign Minister Adel 
al-Jubeir told reporters in Paris "it's easy to say Wahhabism equals Daesh 
equals terrorism, which is not true." Daesh is the Arabic acronym for the IS 
group.

Unlike the extrajudicial beheadings IS carries out against hostages and others, 
the kingdom says its judiciary process requires at least 13 judges at three 
levels of court to rule in favor of a death sentence before it is carried out. 
Saudi officials also argue executions are aimed at combating crime.

Even with the kingdom's record level of executions in 2015, Amnesty 
International says China, where information about the death penalty is a "state 
secret," is believed to execute more individuals that the rest of the world's 
figures combined.

Reprieve says that in Iran, more than 1,000 people were executed in 2015. 
Another organization called Iran Human Rights, which is based in Oslo, Norway, 
and closely follows executions, said at least 648 people had been executed in 
the first 6 months of 2015 in the Islamic Republic, with more than 2/3 for drug 
offenses.

Reprieve says Pakistan has executed at least 315 people in 2015, after the 
country lifted a moratorium on executions early last year following a December 
2014 Taliban attack on a school that killed 150 people, most of them children. 
Only a fraction of those executed since then have been people convicted of a 
terrorist attack.

(source: Associated Press)






IRAN:

The Names Of 27 Death Row Sunni Prisoners In Rajai Shahr Prison


The following list is the names of 27 Sunni death row prisoners in Rajae Shahr 
in whose sentences have been confirmed by the Supreme Court.

According to the report of Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), after 
transferring many Sunni prisoners of hall number 10 to other halls, all of the 
remaining prisoners are death row prisoner.

The fact that all of the prisoners of hall number 10 in ward number 4 are death 
row prisoners, has concerned the families of these prisoners.

These Sunni prisoners are sentenced to death on the charges like propaganda 
against the regime, membership in Salafi groups, corruption on the earth and 
belligerent, and details of their cases are not transparent.

Most of these prisoners are arrested by the intelligent service between 2009 
and 2010 in Kurdistan, and have been kept in solitary confinements for months 
before the trial, without having access to lawyer, or having contact with their 
families. There is a concern that they might have been tortured or been under 
pressure during that time.

According to available information, prisoners have rejected the charge of armed 
protest and said that they were prosecuted because of their beliefs and 
attendance in religious sessions or distributing religious materials.

Need to be mentioned, at least 1 prisoner with the name Barzan Nasrollahzade 
was under 18 years old at the time of arrest.

The list below is the names of these prisoners:

1) Kaveh Vaisi

2) Behrooz Shanazari

3) Taleb Maleki

4) Shahram Ahmadi

5) Kaveh Sharifi

6) Arash Sharifi

7) Varia Ghaderi

8) Kayvan Momenifard

9) Barzan Nasrollahzadeh

10) Alem Barmashti

11) Pouria Mohammadi

12) Ahmad Nasiri

13) Idris Nemati

14) Farzad Honarjoo

15) Seyyed Shahoo Ibrahimi

16) Mohammad Yavar Rahimi

17) Bahman Rahimi

18) Mokhtar Rahimi

19) Mohammad Gharibi

20) Farshid Naseri

21) Mohammad Kayvan Karimi

22) Amjad Salehi

23) Omid Payvand

24) Ali Mojahedi

25) Hekmat Sharifi

26) Amr Abdullahi

27) Omid Mahmoudi

(source: HRANA)






PHILIPPINES:

Death penalty and exasperation


If and when he becomes President, Davao City Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte wants 
more criminal courts and the restoration of death penalty.

We may not be so het up about his stand on the death penalty, but we understand 
where he's coming from.

"Rampaging man gayud ang problem sa drugs ug dili jud ma serious (The drug 
problem is rampaging, if it's not contained it can become a) national threat 
and that will give me an excuse to use the military. I will have to convince 
congress to create something like 30 criminal civil courts to try down cases 
only para mabilisan and I will recommend to congress the restoration of death 
penalty by hanging in public," Duterte said.

While we agree that nationwide, the drug problem is on a rampage, our 
hesitation to support such a proposal is also rooted on our lack of confidence 
on the justice system.

Admit it, this is all about exasperation. We have seen how the justice system 
can be corrupted such that the New Bilibid Prison has become the kingdom of the 
crooks.

>From initial discoveries that high-profile convicts have been allowed to go in 
and out of the national penitentiary, this soon became worse as it was later 
discovered that rich prisoners were actually living the good life complete with 
sexual services and the state-of-the-art music studio, a mansion, aside from 
regular supplies of drugs, and a cache or arms.

Now there is even a rooftop swimming pool. Who wouldn't itch to just snuff off 
these low life forms? But, no, we can't do that. It will anger the Church and 
the pro-lifers.

After all, these men can still change for the better. But only if there is 
indeed a justice system that works and not one that allows the rich to just go 
on a guarded vacation that limit the number of guests to their parties.

It is this same justice system that can send to the gallows the innocents, 
especially the poor.

Indeed, a lot has to be done and only a committed citizenry can get it done. 
For as long as the people will let things pass, or maybe express outrage only 
when it's still being shown as a Senate or Congress investigation aired live on 
television and then forget all about it once the live coverage is over, then we 
will have the same justice system that will allow the rich to live their rich 
lives behind bars and the poor to be all stacked up one on top of the other in 
cramp prison cells, and be the first to be led off to the gallows.

The way the moneyed are getting away with their crimes can be exasperating, but 
the root cause that we should attack is the impunity by which those in power 
are allowing these to happen.

Let's focus on that.

(source: Editorial Sun Star)






JAMAICA:

Human rights body closes doors to public - To continue giving legal advice via 
phone


The Independent Jamaica Council of Human Rights (IJCHR) has all but closed its 
doors to the public.

The council, which is the oldest non-governmental human-rights organisation in 
the Caribbean, no longer has an office that is open to the public but now only 
accepts calls to give legal advice.

In its heyday, the IJCHR was very active in taking on cases pro bono, which 
dealt with human-rights and constitutional issues.

One of its most famous cases was a 2005 Privy Council appeal which challenged 
the constitutionality of a bill which sought to establish the Caribbean Court 
of Justice as Jamaica's final appellate court.

As the chief advocate against the death penalty in Jamaica, IJCHR was heavily 
funded by the European Union (EU). The EU, which had launched a global campaign 
for the abolition of the death penalty, provided funding to organisations which 
advanced this cause.

Since that time, the death penalty issue has reached as far as it can go with 
litigation. The likelihood of anyone being hanged in Jamaica has been reduced 
to zilch, and the two men who remain on death row are proceeding with what are 
expected to be successful appeals.

Success lead to funding cuts

In what can perhaps be considered an ironic twist of events, this successful 
advocacy of the council against the death penalty has led to a crippling 
reduction in its funding particularly from the EU.

"We did other things; we did educational things; we did represent people in 
other matters - lots of court matters (and) lots of advocacy. We have not been 
able to get necessary funding for that ... so we don't have an office for 
people to go to," council member Nancy Anderson explained to The Gleaner.

Although the council still meets on a regular basis, the operational functions 
once carried out by its administrative office have ceased.

When it was fully operational, the IJCHR formed part of a legal ecosystem which 
advised citizens on their human rights, provided support to the legal-aid 
sector and made referrals to other lawyers in civil matters. The office was a 
place where people could go with complaints and get solid legal advice. 
However, that no longer obtains. According to Nancy Anderson, the scale-down in 
operations has left a gap in human-rights advocacy, particularly as it regards 
legal matters.

Anderson agreed that the lack of funding continues to be a threat to 
human-rights organisations.

"I have not done any study of it, but I think there is a gap. Some other 
organisations have taken up giving legal advice but we still get referrals from 
the individual attorneys from those organisations ..., but I really think there 
is a gap," she said.

(source: Jamaica Gleaner)






PAKISTAN:

Army courts in Pakistan sentence 9 militants to death


Pakistan military courts have sentenced 9 men to death for terrorism-related 
offences or attacks on minority Shiites, the army said on Friday.

Pakistan has hanged more than 300 people since lifting a moratorium on the 
death penalty in December 2014, many of them convicted in closed military 
courts which critics say fail to meet fair trial standards.

"Today, (the) Chief of Army Staff confirmed death sentences (were) awarded to 
another 9 hardcore terrorists, who were involved in committing heinous offences 
relating to terrorism," an army statement said.

They include Muhammad Ghauri, a Pakistani Taliban member linked to an attack on 
a garrison mosque in Rawalpindi which killed 38 people and injured 57 in 
December 2009.

Also sentenced were Harkatul Jehad-e-Islam activist Abdul Qayyum, who was 
linked to a car bomb suicide attack on the Inter Services Intelligence 
headquarters in the central city of Multan which killed 7 people and wounded 72 
in December 2009.

2 others were linked to attacks on soldiers, while 5 were said to be members of 
the Sunni sectarian outfit Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan who had killed 5 Shiites in 
the eastern city of Lahore.

Their trials took place behind closed doors, with no information on where or 
when they were held, how proceedings unfolded and scant details about their 
crimes.

Pakistan has been battling a homegrown Islamist insurgency for over a decade 
following its decision to side with the US-led coalition against the Taliban in 
Afghanistan.

Its troops have been engaged in a full-scale offensive against Taliban and 
other militants in North Waziristan and Khyber tribal districts since June 
2014.

The fight gained renewed impetus following a massacre at a Peshawar school in 
December 2014 in which 134 children were killed, leading to widespread outrage 
and a series of measures aimed at combating terror.

After the school attack the government ended a 6-year moratorium on executions 
-- initially only for people convicted of terrorism but later for all capital 
offences.

Pakistan also amended its constitution to allow military courts to try terror 
suspects for a 2-year period.

Supporters of the courts say cases previously dragged on for years and many 
suspects escaped punishment due to legal loopholes or intimidation of 
witnesses.

(source: Hindustan Times)