[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

May 12



IRAN:

Teenager tortured into confessing is days away from execution in Iran


The Iranian authorities must urgently halt the scheduled execution this Sunday 
of a teenager who was just 15 years old at the time of his arrest, said Amnesty 
International.

Alireza Tajiki, now 19 years old, was sentenced to death in April 2013 after a 
criminal court in Fars Province, southern Iran, convicted him of murder and 
rape primarily on the basis of "confessions" extracted through torture which he 
repeatedly retracted in court. His execution is due to take place on Sunday, 
May 15 in Shiraz's Adel Abad Prison in Fars Province.

"Imposing the death penalty on someone who was a child at the time of the crime 
flies in the face of international human rights law, which absolutely prohibits 
the use of the death penalty for crimes committed under the age of 18. It is 
particularly horrendous that the Iranian authorities are adamant to proceed 
with the execution when this case was marked by serious fair trial concerns and 
primarily relied on torture-tainted evidence," said James Lynch, deputy 
director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Amnesty International.

"Iran's bloodstained record of sending juvenile offenders to the gallows, 
routinely after grossly unfair trials, makes an absolute mockery of juvenile 
justice and shamelessly betrays the commitments Iran has made to children's 
rights.The Iranian authorities must immediately halt this execution and grant 
Alireza Tajiki a fair retrial where the death penalty and coerced 'confessions' 
play no part."

Amnesty International has repeatedly called on the Iranian authorities to 
establish a moratorium on all executions with a view to abolishing the death 
penalty.

Tajiki was arrested along with several other young men in May 2012 on suspicion 
of murdering and raping his friend who was stabbed to death. He was denied 
access to lawyer throughout the entire investigation process. He was placed in 
solitary confinement for 15 days, without access to his family. During this 
period he was subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, he said, including 
severe beatings, floggings, and suspension by arms and feet, to make him 
"confess" to the crime. He later retracted the "confessions" both before the 
prosecution authorities and during his trial, and has since maintained his 
innocence consistently. However, despite this, his "confession" was admitted as 
evidence during proceedings against him.

In April 2014, a year after Tajiki was first convicted his verdict was quashed 
by a branch of the Supreme Court which found the investigation incomplete due 
to a lack of forensic evidence linking him to the sexual assault. It ordered 
the Provincial Criminal Court in Fars Province to carry out further 
investigations and to examine his "mental growth and maturity" at the time of 
the crime in light of new juvenile sentencing guidelines in Iran's 2013 Islamic 
Penal Code.

The Code allows judges to replace the death penalty with an alternative 
sentence if they determine that there are doubts about the juvenile offender's 
"mental growth and maturity" at the time of the crime.

In November 2014, the criminal court resentenced him to death, referring to an 
official medical opinion that found he had attained "mental maturity." However, 
the court's decision made no reference to concerns the Supreme Court had raised 
about the lack of forensic evidence, suggesting the investigation that had been 
ordered was not carried out. The court also relied once again on Tajiki's 
forced "confessions" as proof of his guilt, without conducting any 
investigation into his allegations of torture and other ill-treatment.

Despite these flaws, the Supreme Court upheld the sentence in a paragraph-long 
February 2015 ruling that relied on the principle of "knowledge of the judge," 
which grants a judge discretionary powers to determine guilt in the absence of 
conclusive evidence.

More than 970 people were put to death across Iran last year. In January 2016 
Amnesty International published a report which found that despite piecemeal 
reforms introduced by the Iranian authorities in 2013 to deflect criticism of 
their appalling record on executions of juvenile offenders, they have continued 
to condemn dozens of young people to death for crimes committed when they were 
below 18, in violation of their international human rights obligations.

(source: Amnesty International USA)

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

The List of the Names of 56 Death Row Prisoners in Uremia Prison


At least 100 prisoners with charge of murder are kept in wards number 4 and 5 
in Uremia prison. HRANA is trying to gain public attention in order to save 
them from execution by publicizing their identities. For this reason the 
identities of 56 death row prisoners is being published in this report.

After the authorities called more than 100 death row prisoners in this prison 
and said that they were trying to "decide their faiths" in next 3 months the 
identities of 56 prisoners who are mainly charged with homicide and are kept in 
wards 4 and 5 of the prison, are being published by HRANA. Need to be mentioned 
that three prisoners on this list has been kept in prison for the past 27 
years.

The list of 56 death row prisoners of Uremia prison is as following including 
respectively the Name and Family Name, serving time, and city that prisoner is 
from:

Saeid Tanha, 13 years, Mahabad

Abdullah Banayi, 8 years, Sardasht

Khalil Agushi, 5 years, Maku

Ramazan Sabzi, 5 years, Maku

Naser Kakazadeh, 3 years, Mahabad

Faisal Abdi, 6 years, Uremia

Taimoor Asoobar,3 years, Uremia

Salim Khazri, 5 years, Mahabad

Kamal Soltani, 2 years, Boukan

Kamal Molla Vaisi, 3 years, Mahabad

Salah Javanmard, 3 years, Mahabad

Abat Javanmard, 3 years, Mahabad

Kamal Khakzad, 5 years, Oshnaviyeh

Hossain Rahimi, 7 years, Boukan

Osman Sahraei, 27 years, Uremia

Saeid Armad, 27 years, Uremia

Jafar Esmaeili, 27 years, Uremia

Rahim Barin, 7 years, Mahabad

Afshin Khorshidi, 7 years, Uremia

Ghader Mohammad Hasan, 3 years, Mahabad

Tayeb Shaikhnejad Mokri, 3 years, Piranshahr

Ibrahim Taghe, 5 years, Naghadeh

Daryush Darvishzadeh, 3 years, Uremia

Rahman Darvishzadeh, 3 years, Uremia

Danesh Darishzadeh, 3 years, Uremia

Osman Gholtafi, 8 years, Boukan

Hasan Bahrami, 2 years, Boukan

Naji Omarzadeh, 7 years, Uremia

Saji Omarzadeh, 7 years, Uremia

Hamdollah Hamd Mohammadzadeh, 4 years, Uremia

Mohammad Taimoori, 5 years, Naghadeh

Mojtaba Kahrizi, 5 years, Uremia

Akbar Choopani, 3 years, Naghadeh

Khalil Salehi, 6 years, Uremia

Idris jabarzadeh, 7 years, Mahabad

Rasoul Kavani, 3 years,, Oshnaviyeh

Himan Bonavand, 2 years, Piranshahr

Mohammadreza Mohammadnejad, 16 years, Uremia

Hamid Parvizi, 3 years, Uremia

Gholamreza Amiri, 7 years, Uremia

Fardin Byrami, 3 years, Miyandoab

Sayad Khanian, 3 years, Miyandoab

Mahdi Hajizadeh, 7 years, Miyandoab

Behnam Hasanzadeh, 7 years, Uremia

Ali Amoozadeh, 4 years, Uremia

Ramazan Shaikhloo, 14 years, Uremia

Ramazan Ahmadipoor,4 years, Sardasht

Aram Rasouli, 3 years, Oshnaviyeh

Daryush Farahzad, 2 Daryush Uremia

Jafar Ardashiri, 14 years, Uremia

Reza Farmanbordar, 5 years, Uremia

Jahandar Shokrollahi, 4 years, Uremia

Ali Abdi, 3 years, Kermanshah

Alireza Alinejad, 14 years, Mahabad

Afshin Shoukati, 4 years, Uremia

(source: HRA News Agency)






BANGLADESH:

Man gets death for murdering wife in Bagerhat


A court in the southern district of Bagerhat has awarded the death penalty to a 
man for murdering his wife.

21-year-old Sharifa Akter Putul was killed by her husband Shikder Mahmudul Alam 
in 2013 over a conjugal feud.

The court of Bagerhat's District and Sessions Judge delivered the verdict on 
Wednesday in absence of the convict.

Prosecutor Sheikh Mohammad Ali said that on the night of May 13, 3 days after a 
reception for the couple's marriage, Alam slit his wife's throat following an 
argument between them.

The victim's family filed a case against the husband the next day and charges 
were pressed against him in November the same year.

Alam has been absconding since the murder.

(source: benews24.com)






INDIA:

Only downtrodden get hanged


The findings of an investigation done on the death row prisoners in the country 
by the National Law University, Delhi, reveal how badly they are treated and 
how poor their conditions are. The report is based on interviews with 373 of 
the 385 prisoners who are in condemned cells waiting for their execution. The 
majority of them are from the economically and socially depressed strata of 
society and have little education. Most have not completed secondary education. 
This may be an indication of the biases that go into criminal investigation and 
prosecution, and perhaps into the working of the entire system. It is a damning 
thought that the failures and prejudices of the system lead to the ultimate 
punishment for many people. No society can claim to be fair and humane if the 
weak stand a greater chance of ill treatment and punishment than the strong. 
But that is the case in the country.

While state legal aid is mandatory for those who cannot afford it, 169 
prisoners who were interviewed for the study did not have a lawyer. Even among 
those who had legal aid, most had not spoken to their lawyers at the high court 
level and many did not know the lawyer's name. Legal aid is very important in 
defence. The inadequacy of the legal aid system shows that many of those on the 
death row might not have been awarded the death penalty, or any penalty, if 
they had sound legal defence. It is also revealing that the majority of the 
people on the death row were first time offenders and many were juveniles when 
they committed the offence. The "rarest of rare" norm for death penalty is 
vague, and judges understand it differently and use different standards for 
rarity. Only 5% of the death sentences pronounced by the lower courts are 
confirmed on appeal. That shows that the lower judiciary is given to making too 
liberal a use of the death sentence.

The report says that those on the death row are regularly subjected to torture 
and ill treatment. This goes against the generally held notion that those 
waiting for their death are shown some compassion and consideration. Death 
penalty is a crude and vengeful form of punishment. It is no deterrent against 
crimes. A person who has been hanged but is later proved innocent cannot be 
brought back to life. Most countries have abolished capital punishment and many 
have suspended it. The report adds some more to these reasons, which should 
push India also towards putting an end to this cruel and inhuman form of 
punishment.

(source: Deccan Herald)