[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

July 12




IRAN:

A Prisoner Scheduled to Be Executed Within 3 Days


Mehdi Pakgoftar, from Ilam is scheduled to be executed on drug related charges 
within 3 days. His elderly parents have sit in front of the Head of Judiciary's 
Office since 2 months ago and insist on their son's innocence. They say the 
Supreme Leader's representative has also asked the authorities to pardon him 
but it was rejected and he will be executed on Wednesday.

According to the report of Human Rights Activists News Agency in Iran (HRANA), 
Mehdi Pakgoftar, 34, from Fatemieh village of Ilam city is going to be executed 
on drug related charges in the Central Prison of Ilam on Wednesday.

A close source to his family told HRANA's reporter: "Mehdi has been imprisoned 
since 2010 in Central Prison of Ilam. His family say the Supreme Leader's 
representative has also asked the authorities to pardon him but it was rejected 
and he will be executed on Wednesday."

"He has been charged with smuggling 10 kg of crystal which was discovered from 
a friend of him. The friend has confessed that the drugs belonged to Mehdi. 
Though it was not so." The source said about his charges.

"His parents are 70 and 68 years old. He mother suffers from MS. They have have 
sit in front of the Head of Judiciary's Office since 2 months ago and insist on 
their son's innocence." The source stated in the end.

(source: HRA News Agency)

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

More Than 12 Prisoners Scheduled For Execution The Coming Days


After a short break on the ocassion of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the 
executions have resumed in Iran. At least 12 prisoners are scheduled to be 
executed in 3 different Iranian prisons in the coming days.

According to Iran Human Rights' (IHR) sources 10-13 prisoners of Rajaishahr 
prison (Karaj, west of Tehran) have been transferred to solitary confinement in 
preparation for execution. The prisoners who are all convicted of murder were 
transferred to solitary confinement on Sunday July 10 and are scheduled to be 
executed on Wednesday (12-13 July).

6 of the prisoners are identified as: Saeed Javad, Hassan Ghadimi and Mohammad 
Akbari from Ward 1, Faribors Azizpour, Hassan Mahdilou and Seyed Mohammad 
Taheri from hall 3 of Section 10 of Rajaishahr prison.

According to information received by IHR one prison identified as "Hadi 
Pashaei" has been transferred to solitary confinement in the prison of Maragheh 
(Northwestern Iran) in preparation of execution in the coming days. He is 
allegedly convicted of drug-related charges and was arrested 6 years ago. Four 
other prisoners from the same prison, identified as "Vali Samani" and "Mehdi 
Samani" (brothers), "Mehdi Baziari" and "Masoud Ghasemzadeh" are scheduled to 
be executed in near future. Also these prisoners are convicted of drug-related 
charges.

Website of the "Human Rights Activists News Agency" (HRANA) reported yesterday 
that one prisoner identified as "Mehdi Pak Goftar" is scheduled to be executed 
in the prison of Ilam (western Iran). The prisoner is convicted of drug-related 
charges and the execution is scheduled for this week, said the report.

(source: Iran Human Rights)






NIGERIA:

Death penalty: Group hails Delta govt


A group, the Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants (CURE-Nigeria), 
has praised the decision of the Delta State House of Assembly to abolish death 
penalty for convicted kidnappers in the state.

The group's Executive Director, Sylvester Uhaa, who described CURE-Nigeria as 
"a justice/prison reforms and human rights organisation," called on the Senate 
and House of Representatives to take a cue from the state and drop the proposed 
legislation to impose capital punishment on kidnappers in the country.

Uhaa, in a statement in Abuja, noted that available data and lessons from other 
jurisdiction show that the death penalty does not deter crime.

"The death penalty is only an emotional and violent response to crime, which 
does not really solve crime, but perpetuate more violence and create more 
victims," Uhaa, an advocate for the universal abolishment of the death penalty 
and a Commonwealth Scholar in International Human Rights Law at the University 
of Oxford, United Kingdom, said.

Uhaa urged the Federal Government to expunge capital punishment from it laws in 
line with the call of the Secretary General of the United Nations (UN), Ban 
Ki-moon on all countries to abolish the death penalty.

He called on stakeholders to address the causes of crime, such as unemployment, 
corruption, and exclusion of people as some of the ways to reduce the high rate 
of kidnapping and other crimes in the country.

(source: thenationonlineng.net)






INDONESIA:

The Perversity of Death Penalty


In 1 of the first scenes of Krzysztof Kieslowski's 1987 "A Short Film About 
Killing," a young lawyer paraphrases the words of Karl Marx: "Since the days of 
Cain, no punishment has ameliorated the world nor intimidated it from 
committing crimes."

Several years ago we showed it with friends from the Freedom Institute in 
Jakarta. The screening was a special one to me as it brought my thoughts back 
to Poland, where in the 1980s the reception of this film had generated the 
movement for the abolition of capital punishment. It became almost instantly an 
artistic commentary to the political reality.

In Jakarta, the film was just an excuse to discuss death penalty as such. We 
did not need to relate to politics, as back then Indonesia had de facto 
abolished capital punishment and none of us would expect that the moratorium 
would end in the process of democratisation in the country. This has recently 
been proven wrong.

We are all familiar with a variety of arguments against capital punishment: it 
fails to deter crimes, it sets vengeance as the priority of justice, it puts 
innocent lives at risk, it violates the right to live and much more. To each of 
these a counterargument will be found, the most powerful of which employs the 
word "retribution."

Retribution is the means to restore fairness and balance between burdens and 
benefits, whereby unfair advantage gained by the person who disrupted the 
balance would be taken away. That there is justice in retribution we might have 
to accept with common sense.

But with common sense we would inevitably accept that handing down death 
sentence in retentionist countries for a range of crimes, not just for murder, 
is by no means a retributive measure. Can the same be said about murder then?

It is not, unless serial murderers would, for each of their crimes, be tortured 
till near-death experience before the actual execution. But this is too cruel, 
isn't it? Would we do that? By our own hands? No? By whose hands then?

All of the methods of execution are obviously likely to cause enormous 
suffering. Even if at some point in history several of these methods had been 
considered "humane." And years after that they had proven to be exceptionally 
cruel.

Thus, quite naturally the debates over capital punishment usually turn to the 
application of the death penalty. Most of us, abolitionist or not, stand 
against cruel treatments, not only of people but generally of all sentient 
beings. What we do about it is another thing, yet by principle we are against 
it.

And so was the 18th century physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, who proposed the 
use of a machine later named after him, as a humanitarian way of putting an end 
to lives of people sentenced to death. He believed that the "simple mechanics" 
of guillotine lessened the cruelty of execution and saved the convicts from 
excruciating pain. It was a philanthropic machine aimed to serve the dignity of 
man.

Today the use of this once considered benevolent and progressive instrument is 
generally acknowledged a crime against humanity. Medical examinations upon 
which Albert Camus based his essay "Reflections on the Guillotine" (1957) have 
shown that death by decapitation is a slow process accompanied by unfathomable 
agony that lasts several minutes or even hours. Death is not immediate: 
intestines ripple, heart produces incomplete movements, muscles fibrillate, and 
eyes in the severed head remain clear.

The report that Camus quoted is much longer and, as he said, one cannot read it 
without blanching. Yet, while probably reinforcing our distaste against the 
application of the capital punishment, it does not touch the perversity of the 
death penalty itself. And neither did Camus in his other works, despite the 
acutely insightful abolitionist discourse he upheld since the publication of 
The Stranger (1942).

It took another great Frenchman to approach the death sentence in terms of a 
paradoxical finality. In 1999 to 2000 and 2000 to 2001 Jacques Derrida's 
seminars at Ecole des hautes Etudes en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris were 
devoted to the subject of death penalty. Since last year the 1st part of these 
seminars has been available in English as The Death Penalty, Volume I: The 
Seminars of Jacques Derrida.

Derrida sees death penalty as the only example of death whose instant is 
calculable by a machine, by all sorts of machines: the law, the penal code, the 
anonymous 3rd party, the calendar, the clock, the gallows, the syringe, the 
guillotine or other apparatus which puts an end to life.

The calculated decision by which life ends, paradoxically, is putting an end to 
finitude that belongs to life by its very nature. My life is finite but I do 
not know, I cannot know and I would rather not want to know when I am going to 
die.

Death penalty, the mechanically calculated moment of death, deprives one of 
life, but also of the experience of finitude, it takes control over time and 
future. Only a finite living being can have a future, be exposed to its 
uncertainty and incalculability.

In one of the last scenes of Kieslowski's Short Film About Killing, a prison 
guard interrupts the last conversation between the convict and his lawyer, 
"Sir, the prosecutor is asking if you are finished now." The lawyer stands up, 
approaches the guard and says, "Please tell the prosecutor that I will never 
say: now."

The perversity lies not in the execution of a death penalty, but in its very 
principle that claims mechanical and, thus, inhuman control over something 
essentially human.

(source: Commmentary; Natalia Laskowska is a PhD candidate from Leiden 
University and Jakarta Globe staff)






TAIWAN:

INTERVIEW: Fighting for the Innocent on Death Row in Taiwan


Edward White is an International Editor with The News Lens International.

Lin Hsin-yi, executive director the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty 
(TAEDP), believes that at least 3 people who are currently on death row in 
Taiwan are innocent.

The organization and the lawyers it works with have reviewed all of the 
judgments in which the death penalty has been handed down over the past 15 
years. In addition to the 3 cases identified so far, Lin says there is reason 
to believe there have been many more miscarriages of justice.

In an interview with The News Lens International at TAEDP's Taipei office, Lin 
discusses the difficulties activists and lawyers have in gaining access to case 
records, why pressure from local activists and international diplomats has 
failed to change government policy, and details TAEDP's new strategy for 
influencing the government.

The News Lens International (TNLI): To start with, how many people in Taiwan 
currently face the death penalty?

Lin Hsin-yi: Right now there are 41 death row inmates, where the death sentence 
was confirmed. If the Minister of Justice signs the execution order, they can 
be executed at any time.

TNLI: What is the process that the Minister of Justice takes, after a final 
Supreme Court decision, before signing an execution order?

L.H-Y: There is no law to say that he or she has to sign the execution order. 
The only rule is if he or she signs the order, the execution must take place 
within 3 days.

There is no law that says once the sentence is finalized then the execution 
must happen. The Minister of Justice, he or she can decide not to sign the 
execution order.

TNLI: I would like to come back to the current Minister of Justice later on, 
but first can you talk about how Taiwan uses the death penalty in comparison to 
other countries in Asia?

L.H-Y: We just went to Oslo for the 6th World Congress Against the Death 
Penalty - the biggest congress for abolitionists. People think that in Taiwan 
the situation is not so bad compared to Southeast Asia or even Japan, because 
the execution number is not increasing - maybe it's decreasing a little - and 
we don't use the death penalty for drugs and terrorism.

TNLI: Just to clarify, that is because under international law, the death 
penalty should only be for the most serious harmful crimes, and drugs aren't 
considered part of that?

L.H-Y: Yes, that is right.

Transparency in Asia is not good - not only in Japan and Taiwan, but also 
Southeast Asian countries. We don't know much about the death row inmates. For 
example, in Taiwan and Japan, the government will not tell the family or the 
lawyer when the execution will happen. In Southeast Asia, it is very difficult 
for them to meet with death row inmates.

For us, we have had a moratorium for 4 years. You can see that from 2000 - when 
power switched for the 1st time from KMT to DPP - the president, Chen 
Shui-bian, first announced Taiwan is going to abolish the death penalty 
gradually. The moratorium started in 2006. In 2008, Ma Ying jeou said that 
Taiwan would follow the international human rights standards. In 2009, we 
passed the 2 [international] covenants, so that it become our domestic law. 
>From that trend, Taiwan was going towards abolishing the death penalty.

According to the [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights], if a 
country ratifies the ICCPR it means that you are going towards abolishing the 
death penalty. Currently, in Taiwan, the politicians will say 'the ICCPR says 
we can only use the death penalty for the most serious crimes, but it did not 
say we could not execute people.'

It is very ironic. We have already had a moratorium and signed the ICCPR. The 
government had given a commitment. But then, after that, the executions 
reopened in 2010.

TLNI: Obviously, the public sentiment over crime was a factor when the 
executions restarted. What is your view on why the majority of Taiwanese 
support capital punishment?

L.H-Y: Actually, we did a public opinion survey in 2014. You can see that there 
is a problem with the surveys; mostly, they make a phone call and ask one or 2 
questions about whether you support the death penalty. Usually, this kind of 
survey takes place after some serious crime. Of course, most people will say 'I 
support the death penalty.'

We decided to survey with [Academia Sinica]. We interviewed more than 2,000 
people, with a very long questionnaire. The major finding is: if people have 
more information about the death penalty, they will be more against it.

My view on: 'Why does the public want the death penalty so badly?' It is 
because the government did not provide more information. The government says, 
'We cannot abolish the death penalty because of public opinion.' But from my 
view, the public opinion is not 'we want the death penalty.' If you analyze the 
survey very carefully, you will understand that public opinion is more 
complicated. The government should do the research and give an alternative to 
the public. They haven't tried to have a strategy, a policy, a real 
alternative.

TNLI: Following the release of your survey results, has there been growth in 
support for the death penalty abolition movement in Taiwan?

L.H-Y: We released the survey at an international conference, and we plan to 
release more analysis on it, but it is not published yet. We did provide the 
information to the Minister of Justice, but the impact was not big.

Our plan for next year is to have more grassroots, local discussions about 
this. For the people around Taiwan, most people they don't really think about 
this question. We will have 30 or 40 events all over Taiwan. We will go to 
places where maybe they haven't had this kind of discussion before. We will not 
just discuss "should we have the death penalty or not," we will discuss the 
alternatives - like life sentence without parole, or life sentence with the 
chance of parole after 25 years. From the survey, we know that if people have 
an alternative, they will choose that.

Right now, we are discussing how to make the survey easier to understand. We 
don't want to publish an academic book. It is a pity that the release of that 
report didn't have much impact on the government or the public, but we will use 
the survey to do more.

TNLI: We have gone from the KMT to the DPP-led government, they have only been 
in charge for a short time, but what are the early signals from the DPP on this 
issue?

L.H-Y: The Minister of Justice, Chiu Tai-san, has not said anything clearly [on 
this issue]. He seems more focused on prison reform and the national judicial 
reform.

Of course the President and the Minister of Justice are important, because they 
have power, but we also have a new congress. I think the new lawmakers are much 
more willing to deal with these questions - maybe not [the question of] 
abolishing the death penalty right now, but they will consider prison reform 
and the alternatives [to the death penalty].

TNLI: You mentioned judicial reform. In terms of how this applies to the death 
penalty, have there been miscarriages of justice in Taiwan, and if so what are 
the problems in the system that causes these results?

L.H-Y: Last year we reviewed all the [Supreme Court] death penalty judgments 
from 2000, 75 cases and 68 judgments - in some cases there were 2 death row 
inmates.

Right now we are working on three cases - within the 41 current death row 
inmates - and we believe they are innocent.

Chiou Ho-shun, he was in detention for 23 years then his death penalty was 
confirmed in 2011. He is now 56, which means 1/2 his life he has been in 
prison, for a crime we believe he didn't commit. The Control Yuan, [Taiwan's 
ombudsman], says that the police tortured him. There are records of the torture 
- no one can believe it, but it happened, it is very serious.

Another case is Cheng Hsing-tse. He was charged with [the 2002] killing a 
policeman in KTV [karaoke bar]. We found evidence he too was tortured. This 
year his lawyers asked for a retrial, and that was successful. It is now in the 
retrial process, so the case is basically reopened. This time the prosecutors 
are on our side, they believe he is innocent too.

TNLI: If the prosecutors now think he is innocent, who is making the case 
against him, how is there a retrial?

L.H-Y: It is something new for us, too. This is a very strange situation, the 
prosecutors and [defense] lawyer are on the same side. But the victims' 
families have lawyers.

TNLI: And the victims' families still want to prosecute?

L.H-Y: Yes. For them, if was not Cheng Hsing-tse, then who? They have believed 
for 14 years that he murdered the policeman. We hope that from the court 
hearing and the evidence we provide, maybe they will understand.

TNLI: And the 3rd case?

L.H-Y: The 3rd is Hsieh Chih-hung. There were 2 offenders, and they were both 
sentenced to death. We don't think there is enough evidence to show they 
committed the crime together, but he was at the crime scene, he was there.

This case is weaker than the other 2. The first 2 have very clear evidence of 
torture, but the 3rd one the torture is not so clear. We have found out some 
things, but it is a more difficult case.

TNLI: So you have suspicions he was tortured during the interrogation?

L.H-Y: Yes, but in the 1st case we have the [audio] record, the 2nd we have the 
photos and the doctor's records, the 3rd one is not so clear.

TNLI: These are 3 cases out of 41, and you mentioned earlier the difficulty in 
accessing people on death row. Looking around this office, you have 3 full-time 
employees and some interns. You obviously don't have endless resources to look 
at all the cases. Do you think that if you could look closely at other cases 
you find more issues as well?

L.H-Y: Yes. Let me explain a little of our background. We were formed in 2003, 
there were only volunteers. Since 2006, we have co-operated with the Legal Aid 
Foundation, and since then we have had more information about the cases. We 
know their names, we know where they are and we started to communicate with the 
death row inmates.

In 2007, we had our 1st fulltime staff, me. The way we work is, when we have a 
case we find a lawyer and money is paid by the Legal Aid Foundation - not very 
much, but it helps.

If we can start to help them from the beginning, then maybe the decision of the 
trial will not be so bad. But because of our resources, we can only help the 
urgent ones when they are facing execution, and the lawyers can help them with 
a constitutional review, or a retrial or an ordinary appeal.

Recently, we have done more lawyer training. In Taiwan, the lawyers do not do a 
lot of training in international law.

And now we try to work on the cases from the start of the process. If we see a 
murder in the news, we try to connect with the Legal Aid Foundation to see if 
[the accused] has a lawyer. If he doesn't have a lawyer, we try to arrange a 
team of 3 lawyers to work on the case.

We hope that if we work from the beginning then we will not have a death 
sentence.

TNLI: So you are able to offer better support to the more recent cases?

L.H-Y: Yes. But still we right now, for every confirmed [death penalty] case, 
we have a lawyer to review the older files.

But some cases are very old, we try to get files from the Ministry of Justice 
but [the files] are not good enough. Some lawyers want more records and 
information about investigations - [audio] records of interrogations. The 
papers may say everything is good, but if you listen to the sound recording it 
is different.

TNLI: The lawyers are finding differences between the written records and what 
was actually said? And the Ministry of Justice won't provide all the original 
recordings?

L.H-Y: Some [requests for recordings] were successful, some were not. For the 
lawyers who are dealing with the old cases, it is not that easy to find enough 
information to prove a case was wrong.

I believe there are a few cases that have a chance [the accused] was innocent, 
but we don't have enough information.

Of course, there are other cases where they are not innocent, but still the 
death sentence is not the sentence for them. So we can still find a lot of 
problems in the old cases.

TNLI: You have these 41 cases, and at any time, essentially, the Minister of 
Justice could sign the execution warrants. Under the previous Minister of 
Justice, who was pushing these death warrants and why?

L.H-Y: You must know Cheng Chieh, the MRT case, and the execution.

When a final death sentence is confirmed, normally there will be time for the 
lawyers to appeal. For the MRT case, when the Supreme Court gave the final 
decision of the death sentence it issued a press release [leading to the death 
warrant signed and the execution quickly carried out]. Usually, it takes more 
than 10 days or one month, and then, when the lawyer gets the final judgment, 
they can do something.

I don't think there is really public pressure. Of course someone will say, 'He 
should be executed immediately.'

TNLI: This is the victims' families, their lawyers?

L.H-Y: No, just people. This was the 1st time this kind of case happened in 
Taiwan, so people are worried about it. For other cases - murder over money, 
arguments, love - we know the reason. For the MRT case, we don't know the 
reason.

TNLI: These are the so-called random killings?

L.H-Y: Yes, people are worried about that. So people say the trial must be 
quick and he must be sentenced to death and executed.

At this time though, we knew there was a new Minister of Justice coming in one 
month. [Then-minister] Luo Ying-shay ] did not have to do this.

TNLI: The criticism at the time was Luo was trying to gain popular support, so 
the final decision in these cases has become politicized?

L.H-Y: Yes. It was not necessary for her; she has no chance to be appointed to 
any [future] position from the government.

In the other executions, when a case is finalized there is a prosecutor in the 
Ministry of Justice who will give the suggestion to the Minister of Justice 
that one should be executed.

You can see from 2010 to 2015, every year we have 1 execution [round] where 4 
of 5 people are executed. There is always a political reason. It is always 
following a political issue - Ma Ying-jeou wanting to save his public support.

TNLI: Do you think, given public support for executions, this will make it 
difficult for the new minister of justice?

L.H-Y: In Europe, they abolished the death penalty because of political will. 
At that time, the public opinion supported the death penalty, but the 
politicians led. In Taiwan, this is impossible, because the politicians will 
not go against public opinion, because they are so afraid of losing votes.

This is why we really want to talk to the public. We know that only public 
opinion can help us to impact the politicians. But right now, about 80% of 
people support the death penalty. But as I say, if they have an alternative 
they may change their opinion. That is why we are trying to discuss with the 
public to change their ideas.

TNLI: Every time there is an execution the European Union representatives in 
Taiwan and others in the international community write papers and try to lobby 
the government. What impact does that have?

L.H-Y: I think it helps. Take the 2010 executions. At that time, the Minister 
of Justice, Tseng Yung-fu, executed 4 people and said he was going to execute 
44. Then the E.U. lobbied and used all the diplomatic tools, and then it was 
stopped at four, not 44. I think it really helped.

Maybe after that, each time the affect is not so strong because the government 
gets used to it. Still, if the E.U. said nothing about this, I think the [Ma] 
government would have executed more people.

They are not only critical of the government, but they try to help. They have 
judicial exchange programmes with our judges, which I think is very good. 
Judges won't listen to lawyers or NGOs, but they will listen to other judges.

TNLI: Finally, after the most recent of the so-called "random" killings, some 
commentators pointed to issues surrounding how mental health is treated in the 
judicial system. Do you think this is also important in discussions about the 
death penalty in Taiwan?

L.H-Y: Yes. We do training to help the lawyers to argue this issue in the 
court. But right now judgments on mental issues are not very consistent; there 
are 2 opposite opinions on this from the court.

Another problem is the testing of mental problems. So we are trying to talk to 
the doctors and to the lawyers and try to discuss what the best way is to 
approach this issue.

(source: thenewslens.com)