[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

March 26




MALAYSIA:

Waytha questions why the rush to execute 3 last Friday


Hindraf Makkal Sakthi, an ad hoc apolitical human rights movement, has urged 
the government to put in place a moratorium for all pending executions until it 
introduces a Bill in Parliament to abolish capital punishment in totality. 
"This has been assured by the de facto Law Minister and the Attorney-General."

Hindraf Chairman P. Waythamoorthy was expressing shock over the execution of 3 
individuals by the authorities on Friday morning and condemned it. "The 
hastiness in the execution of these 3 individuals raises many questions."

"It was arbitrary. It was an uninformed method of execution by the Prisons 
Department."

Waytha, a human rights advocate and senior lawyer in private practice, could 
not understand why there was a rush to execute the 3 individuals. "They were 
only sentenced in 2011 and their Federal Court appeal was dismissed in 2014, 
not so long ago."

The Hindraf Chief pointed out that there are currently over 1,022 persons on 
death row and the Prisons Department had stated, according to the Death Penalty 
Worldwide Report, that no execution had been carried out since 2013. "More than 
50 % of these estimated 1,022 persons facing the gallows have been waiting for 
their execution for more than 5 years."

Hence, he said, Hindraf was perplexed why the three individuals were 
"specifically targeted" for execution. "We can question the criteria used by 
the authorities to select who should be hanged."

Again, he argued, the decision by the authorities was wrong and conflicts with 
the statements and indications given out to the public by the government , more 
recently by the de facto Law Minister and the Attorney-General.

He reiterated that it was therefore shocking the government apparatus was going 
against its intentions by executing the 3 individuals hastily, more so when 
they have only recently exhausted their final appeal.

He has been left wondering what the real intentions were in executing the trio 
"hastily". "There could be other motives behind this."

Waytha referred to several statements from the government on capital 
punishment.

The Minister in the Prime Minister's Department and de facto Law Minister, 
Nancy Shukri, was reported by The Star Online on 17 November 2015 as saying 
that the government intends to abolish the mandatory death sentence, in 
particular for drug related offences, and said that punishment should be left 
to the discretion of the Judge. The amendments to the law was supposed to be 
tabled at the next sitting in March 2016.

In the same statement, the de facto Law Minister also said she does not believe 
that death sentences are effective in curbing crime. She added that "we need to 
find other ways like education, motivation or something else".

Earlier, on 13 November 2015, Attorney-General Mohd Apandi Ali said he would 
propose to the Cabinet that the mandatory death penalty be scrapped. He said 
mandatory death sentences were a "paradox" as it robbed judges of their 
discretion to impose sentences on convicted criminals.

These statements show that there's intention on the part of the government to 
abolish the death penalty, said Waytha who was briefly in the Federal Cabinet 
not so long ago and in the Senate.

(source: freemalaysiatoday.com)






IRAN:

Amnesty fears teenage offender to be executed in Iran soon


A young Iranian man, Himan Uraminejad, on death row in Iran for an offence 
carried out when he was a child, has been told that he will be executed soon 
after 1 April, Amnesty International has warned.

"Himan Uraminejad was sentenced to death in August 2012 after he was convicted 
of murder over the fatal stabbing of a boy during a fight, when he was 17," the 
international human rights group said in an Urgent Action alerting its members 
on Thursday, March 24.

Himan is now aged 21, and on death row in Sanandaj's Prison, western Kurdistan 
Province, where he has been told he will be executed after the Iranian New Year 
holiday period ends on 1 April, Amnesty said.

He was retried by Branch 9 of the Provincial Criminal Court in Kurdistan 
Province in June 2015, and sentenced to death again.

"In its ruling, the court ignored the absolute prohibition, in international 
law, on using the death penalty against people who were under 18 at the time of 
the crime, and the fundamental principles of juvenile justice that require all 
those under 18 years old be treated as children," Amnesty said.

His sentence was confirmed by the regime???s Supreme Court in November 2015.

"The judicial proceedings that led to Himan Uraminejad's conviction were 
unfair. He admitted stabbing the victim during the interrogations, which were 
conducted without a lawyer present. He is believed to have been tortured while 
he was held in a police detention centre (agahi): this included severe beatings 
that apparently left scars and bruises all over his face and body. His trial 
was held before an adult court, without special juvenile justice protections. 
No investigation is known to have been carried out into his allegations of 
torture and other ill-treatment," the group's Urgent Action added.

"As a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Iran is 
legally obliged to treat everyone under the age of 18 as a child. This is 
different from the minimum age of criminal responsibility, which is the age 
below which children are deemed not to have the capacity to break the law. This 
age varies between countries, but it must be no lower than 12 years, according 
to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child."

"The minimum age of criminal responsibility in Iran has been set at nine lunar 
years for girls and 15 lunar years for boys. From this age, a child who is 
convicted of crimes that fall in the category of hodud (offences against God 
carrying inalterable punishments prescribed by Shari'a law) or qesas 
(retribution-in-kind connected with a criminal act), is generally convicted and 
sentenced in the same way as an adult."

"Amnesty International has recorded at least 73 executions of juvenile 
offenders between 2005 and 2015. According to the UN at least 160 juvenile 
offenders are now on death row. Amnesty International has been able to identify 
the names of 49 of these juvenile offenders, some of whom have been on death 
row for over a decade," the Urgent Action added.

(source: NCR-Iran)