[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

May 15




UNITED KINGDOM/TRINIDAD:

UK judges to rule on death penalties for 'intellectually disabled'


Case of 2 Trinidadians on death row may set global precedent that could prevent 
the execution of people with extremely low IQs

The fate of 2 Trinidadian prisoners, both of whom have been condemned to death 
despite having extremely low IQs, will be decided by British judges this week.

The 2-day hearing at the judicial committee of the privy council (JCPC) in 
London may set an international precedent that could prevent the execution of 
people on death row who have been diagnosed as "intellectually disabled".

The JCPC, based in Westminster, acts as an ultimate court of appeal for smaller 
Commonwealth countries, including many in the Caribbean that retain capital 
punishment. Justices from the UK's supreme court hear its cases.

Lester Pitman was convicted of a joint enterprise, triple killing of 3 Britons 
carried out in the island's capital, Port of Spain. In December 2001, the 
bodies of a former BBC newsreader, Lynette Lithgow, 51, her mother Maggie Lee, 
83, and brother-in-law John Cropper, 59, were found in a blood-splattered 
bathroom at a 12-room bungalow.

Cropper had moved to Trinidad several years earlier. All 3 were found with 
their hands tied behind their backs and their throats slit. The initial motive 
appeared to have been robbery.

Pitman, who is now 36, was convicted of the killings in 2004 and sentenced to 
hang. The death penalty for murder is mandatory in Trinidad. Because he had 
waited for so many years on death row, however, his sentence was commuted in 
2013 to 40 years in jail.

At the end of the hearing, Trinidad's court of appeal declared that Pitman had 
previously been "properly sentenced to suffer the death penalty".

Pitman's IQ was measured initially at 52 then at 67 - both figures are below 
the World Health Organisation guideline that classifies anyone with an IQ of 
below 70 as being "intellectually disabled". His mother, Cheryl Pitman, told 
the Trinidad Guardian: "People should have mercy for Lester because his IQ is 
very low. He thinks like a child."

Neil Hernandez was convicted of killing a woman, Christine Henry, and her 
6-year-old son, Philip, in the coastal village of Toco on Trinidad in May 2000. 
He was found to have slashed them with the cutlass he used for harvesting 
coconuts. Hernandez claimed he had not intended to kill them and had been 
tricked into signing a confession. In 2004, he was sentenced to hang.

At a hearing in 2014 , the Trinidad appeal court commuted his death sentence to 
25 years on the same principle as Pitman, that he had already spent too long on 
death row. Evidence given showed he had an IQ of 57.

Delivering their decision, the appeal court judges in Port of Spain said: "If 
the members of this society [in Trinidad] hold the view that it is repugnant to 
evolving standards of decency to impose the death sentence on mentally retarded 
persons, then those members are entitled to make their views felt and to lobby 
members of parliament to introduce legislation which reflects those standards."

An earlier Jamaican JCPC case, known as Pratt and Morgan, established in 1993 
that it was "inhuman or degrading punishment" to impose a delay of more than 5 
years after sentencing on anyone facing execution.

Pitman and Hernandez are being represented at the JCPC by Saul Lehrfreund, the 
co-executive director of the Death Penalty Project, which is based at the 
London law firm Simons Muirhead and Burton, and provides free legal assistance 
to prisoners facing the death penalty around the world. He said: "These cases 
raise a novel constitutional point about the imposition of the death penalty on 
people who have intellectual disability.

"It's important for both Commonwealth countries and the wider world where the 
death penalty is still in use. This could establish a principle that it's cruel 
and unusual punishment to impose a sentence of death on someone if they are 
intellectually disabled or suffer from significant mental illness."

In court, the cases will be argued by Edward Fitzgerald QC and Paul Bowen QC. 
Pitman's appeal is against both conviction and sentence, Hernandez's only 
against sentence.

Lehrfreund added: "Neither Pitman nor Hernandez are going to be executed, 
because the court in Trinidad has recognised they have been on death row for 
too long. If we are right, however, they should never have been sentenced to 
the cruelty of the death penalty in the first place.

"We say there should have been a judicial determination to look into their 
intellectual disability before they were sentenced. If we are successful, it 
will create a precedent that would be persuasive and resonate in other 
countries [including Malaysia and Singapore] which also continue to impose 
mandatory death penalties for murder and other offences."

: Pitman's conviction is also being contested on the grounds that it was on the 
basis of joint enterprise with others - a legal principle that the UK's supreme 
court recently ruled had been wrongly interpreted for more than 30 years.

Arguments over whether an IQ level of below 70 should prevent executions have 
also featured in US courts. 2 years ago, the US supreme court reprieved a 
Florida man who was deemed to have the mental age of a toddler even though his 
IQ was just over 70.

(source: The Guardian)






JAMAICA:

The death penalty and its impediments


There has been much ado about the death penalty in recent days - or at least, 
much has been said. Minister Robert Montague wants hanging to be resumed, while 
Opposition spokespersons Mark Golding and Peter Bunting have voiced their 
reservations.

Various letter writers and cartoonists have also presented their opinions, with 
1 letter advocating, in addition to the return of the hangman's noose, 
reversion to flogging - "6 to 12 lashes on the buttocks" for various offences.

So, where have we reached with our death penalty debate in Jamaica, and what 
does the law have to say on the subject?

MURDER RATE

The main argument for the death penalty in Jamaica turns on the country's high 
murder rate. Pro-death penalty sentiment runs strongest when there are 
high-profile murder cases and where there is a spike in heinous crimes - as is 
currently the case. But, bearing in mind that Jamaica's murder rate is 
invariably at a frightening level, many people argue that the society needs an 
effective deterrent; they see capital punishment as that deterrent, or hope 
that it can be.

There is also a majoritarian argument in support of the death penalty. True, 
there is substantial opposition to the sentence among the intelligentsia, and 
in some church communities, but most Jamaicans still wonder why the sentence is 
not carried out, given the rampant and callous disregard for life that is daily 
in evidence. The majoritarian perspective has no doubt influenced some 
parliamentarians who voted in 2008 to retain capital punishment. In a 
democratic polity which, by definition, attaches some importance to the 
majority will, the parliamentary response is not surprising. If 
parliamentarians openly defy the popular view on the highly charged matter of 
the death penalty, this could have obvious electoral consequences.

POLITICIANS

But this is not to suggest that the politicians are simply looking over their 
shoulders at the majority will, though some may well be. In the 2008 
parliamentary vote in the House of Representatives, 34 members voted for 
retention of capital punishment, while 15 were against it; in the Senate, the 
division was 10 to 7, with the majority in favour. In 1979, when an earlier 
conscience vote was taken, 24 members opted to retain hanging, as against 19 
who opposed it.

This breakdown suggests that, as far as the ultimate sanction is concerned, not 
all parliamentarians regard the popular will as decisive. Nor should it be; the 
majority will may be a factor in the decision, but it cannot be the only 
consideration. Our parliamentarians have a duty to consider all the arguments 
before reaching their conclusion.

REVULSION

In this context, there are at least 2 additional arguments that are appealing 
to some Jamaicans. One is that the death penalty serves to register the 
society's sense of revulsion to murder. Within this perspective, punishment 
must reflect not only deterrence and the prospect of rehabilitation, it must 
also emphasise that society rejects murder, and is determined to fight it with 
decisive measures. This view - sometimes associated with Lord Denning, among 
others - is offered partly in response to abolitionists who maintain that the 
death penalty is not a deterrent.

THE BIBLE

Secondly, it is fair to suggest that many Jamaicans continue to support the 
death penalty by reference to biblical assertions. Specifically, reference is 
often made to Mosaic principles relating to "a life for a life"; and in this 
context, the lex talionis, as set out in Leviticus 24 (verse 17), is 
occasionally called in aid: "Whoever kills any man shall surely be put to 
death..."

The approach based on the lex talionis is not convincing. In the first place, 
Old Testament strictures relating to a life for a life are themselves linked to 
disfigurement as a form of punishment. The relevant passage in Leviticus 24 on 
a life for a life also states that: "If a man causes disfigurement of his 
neighbour... so shall it be done to him - fracture for fracture, eye for eye, 
tooth for tooth."

No humane, liberal justice system could today justify principles of punishment 
based on pure brutality in return for brutality. And accordingly, we should not 
expect the Old Testament pronouncements on a life for a life to present literal 
guidance in sentencing policy for modern Jamaica.

Moreover, if we accept the premise that the laws of Jamaica should follow 
biblical precepts, the life for a life approach encounters difficulties with 
the New Testament which, to put the matter at its minimum, does not support the 
brutal retaliation - turning the other cheek is conceptually different from the 
lex talionis.

Generally, therefore, the Biblical argument is not decisive. But, there is 
force in the fact that the society wants its leaders to take tough decisions to 
fight murder; the death penalty also derives support as the remedy that 
reflects the will of the majority, and as an approach that expresses our 
revulsion for some of the horrendous murders that confront us on a daily basis.

IRREVERSIBLE ERROR

In light of these realities, opponents of the death penalty face - admittedly - 
an uphill struggle in Jamaican society. One argument they present is based on 
the possibility of mistake. The justice system, it is sometimes argued, cannot 
provide the assurance that it will always present the correct person at the 
gallows.

This must be true. Even in the most efficient systems, there are instances of 
error. And, when the error is made, then, obviously, it is irreversible and 
shocking. In some cases in the United States of America, DNA evidence has been 
used to demonstrate the innocence of several persons on death row, and in other 
instances, one wonders if the execution of persons is driven more by the desire 
for catharsis than by certainty as to the identification of the murderer.

In the case of Jamaica, some politicians - when faced with the argument based 
on mistake - take solace in the putative safe harbour of the Privy Council. 
They say that the Privy Council is unbiased and, if anything, opposed to the 
death penalty; so, if the Privy Council allows the death penalty to proceed in 
a particular case, we can be sure that this is a decision devoid of error.

This line of reasoning is open to question. The Privy Council, to be sure, is a 
court of the highest impartiality and authority, but it does not follow from 
this that the court is beyond error. Also, in deciding murder cases from 
Jamaica, the Privy Council will normally accept the jury???s assessment of the 
facts of a given case. Thus, if the error is made by the jury, there will be 
instances in which the Privy Council???s conclusions will also be incorrect. In 
my view, therefore, the death penalty is cogently challenged by the possibility 
of error.

MORALITY

Some opponents of the death penalty also condemn the sentence on moral grounds. 
The death penalty, they submit, is unquestionably wrong, and it is wrong in all 
circumstances. It is barbaric, pointless and must be opposed by all lawful 
means.

This view, consistently presented over many years by Amnesty International, has 
recently received strong support from United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki 
Moon. Declaring that the death penalty is "simply wrong", the Secretary General 
emphasised that: "I will never stop calling for an end to the death penalty" 
(United Nations, November 4, 2015).

Ban Ki Moon's position is also held by the European Union. The European Union 
Policy on the Death Penalty asserts that executions are "cruel and inhuman", 
and affirms that abolition is a prerequisite for entry into the Union. Building 
on its position based on morality, the European Union also calls on states 
which still have the death penalty to take steps to remove it progressively, 
starting with a moratorium.

OAS VIEWPOINT

Within the Organization of American States, there is also some support for the 
view that the death penalty is morally wrong. As Roger Hood and Carolyn Hoyle 
of Oxford University remind us, the death penalty has long been abolished in 
certain Latin American States. According to Hood and Hoyle, Venezuela abolished 
it in 1863, Ecuador in 1906, and Uruguay in 1907 (Hood and Hoyle, "Abolishing 
the Death Penalty Worldwide: The Impact of a 'New Dynamic'" Crime and Justice, 
Volume 38, Number 1 (2009), p 1 at p 5).

In this context, too, in January 2014, on the invitation of Mexico, the 
Permanent Council of the Organization of American States discussed the question 
of the death penalty, with strong support for abolition coming from the Latin 
American countries which took part in the debate. Some of the speakers in that 
debate relied heavily on various resolutions of the United Nations General 
Assembly which have called for a moratorium on the death penalty throughout the 
world, and on publications by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights 
(for summary, see OAS Press Release E-012/14).

In short, the moral case against the death penalty continues to be built at the 
international level. Opposition spokesman Mark Golding is on firm ground when 
he points out that the reintroduction of the death penalty in Jamaica will have 
consequences for the country on the international plane. Many of our 
international friends - the United Kingdom, France, the rest of the European 
Union, Canada, and some Latin American countries - would regard reintroduction 
as a retrograde step.

Non-legal impediments

Minister Montague has publicly asked Minister of State Pearnel Charles Jr for a 
report on the impediments which Jamaica would face in seeking to reintroduce 
the death penalty. On the basis of the foregoing, I suggest that there will be 
one set of impediments based on the moral and practical arguments against the 
death penalty. International opinion against the sentence will also need to be 
taken into account.

I rather doubt, however, that these are the types of impediments Minister 
Montague has in mind. These are, after all, not legal impediments: they stand 
in the way of the imposition of the death penalty in a general sense, but they 
do not rule out the possibility of a return to capital punishment by Jamaica.

INTERNATIONAL LAW

What, then, are the legal impediments that Minister Charles may uncover? It may 
be best to answer this question by reference to International Law and domestic 
law, respectively. As to the former, Jamaica has traditionally maintained that 
International Law does not prohibit capital punishment. Thus, notwithstanding 
the various United Nations Resolutions calling for moratoria in this area, 
Jamaica has argued that the relevant international instruments allow each State 
to carry out executions in appropriate circumstances.

The Jamaican position was perhaps most clearly articulated in its Statement on 
the subject to the Third Committee of the 62nd Session of the General Assembly 
on December 12, 2007. In that statement, Jamaica maintained that:

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 does not expressly or 
implicitly prohibit the death penalty.

Several States which supported the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 
accepted that everyone has the right to life, but this has not prevented these 
States from retaining the death penalty.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (the ICCPR) (1966), 
which is binding on Jamaica, does not expressly or implicitly prohibit the 
death penalty.

The ICCPR expressly states that countries which have not abolished the death 
penalty should adhere to certain preconditions before carrying out executions. 
As long as these preconditions are satisfied, the penalty is allowed in 
International Law.

There is a treaty which is open to all states that wish to abolish the death 
penalty. This is the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR. As long as a State 
does not ratify this treaty, the State will not be legally required to 
terminate executions. Jamaica has not ratified this treaty.

The death penalty is an internal matter for each State. Jamaica, in keeping 
with its sovereignty and self-determination, reserves the right to carry out 
the death sentence. This is true for several countries in the world.

THE ICCPR

As a matter of International Law, the Jamaican position suggests that the 
country has reserved the right to conduct executions. International Law will 
not be an impediment to Minister Montague, as long as Jamaica carries out 
capital punishment in accordance with the strictures in the ICCPR.

In summary form, the ICCPR indicates that the death penalty may be carried out 
only for the most serious crimes, can only be imposed for matters which are 
subject to execution at the time of the commission of the crime, and may be 
carried out only following the final judgment of a competent court. Persons 
under the age of 18 may not be executed, nor may pregnant women. These 
provisions are set out in Article 6 of the ICCPR.

Another provision of the ICCPR, Article 7, is also relevant. It provides that 
no one shall be subject to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment 
or punishment.

CRITICISMS

Although the Jamaican position may withstand legal scrutiny, it is vulnerable 
to at least two criticisms. First, Jamaica's strict reliance on the language of 
the ICCPR commits the country to a rigid adherence to the text of the treaty; 
this approach ignores the context of the ICCPR and developments that have taken 
place since the ICCPR entered into force.

For Jamaica, the original meaning of the ICCPR remains in place even though the 
treaty may have evolved as a "living instrument." In this regard, Jamaica's 
Statement is reminiscent of the approach to the reading of legal texts most 
famously associated with the late Judge Scalia of the United States Supreme 
Court.

Secondly, Jamaica's position - to the effect that the death penalty is a matter 
of internal law only - is difficult to reconcile with the evolution of human 
rights in the post-World War II era. The United Nations Charter, in Article 2, 
paragraph 7, indicates that the United Nations should not interfere with 
matters within the reserved domain of each State. But, that reserved domain is 
not a static concept. With the development of human rights, external agencies 
and States have become increasingly concerned with developments within 
individual countries.

The establishment of the International Criminal Court, the work of the United 
Nations Human Rights Council and the Human Rights Committee, exemplify this 
development. As an increasing number of states ban the death penalty, and 
maintain that they have done so because of developments in International Law, 
Jamaica will be hard-pressed to maintain that the death penalty is a purely 
internal affair.

Besides, Jamaica has accepted the ICCPR and the American Convention on Human 
Rights, which both address aspects of the death penalty as an international 
matter. This implies an opening of the door to international treatment of 
Jamaica's internal death penalty debate.

DOMESTIC DELAY

Finally, what are the domestic impediments to the death penalty in Jamaican 
law? In the not too distant past, law students would immediately cite the Privy 
Council's approach to delay in carrying out death sentences as a significant 
impediment.

In Pratt and Morgan v The Attorney General of Jamaica (1993), the Privy Council 
held that where the period between sentencing and execution exceeded 5 years, 
it was to be presumed that execution would be inhuman or degrading punishment 
or treatment.

And in Neville Lewis v The Attorney General (2000), the Privy Council appeared 
to have treated this presumption as an automatic rule, so that as soon as 5 
years elapsed, the death sentence would have to be commuted to life 
imprisonment.

Arguably, then, the treatment of cases of delay was an "impediment." If so, 
this impediment was removed when the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms 
in the Jamaican Constitution entered into force in 2011; for the Charter (in 
Section 13(8)(a)) expressly overturned the Pratt and Morgan and Neville Lewis 
approaches. The "death row phenomenon" is no longer incompatible with our law - 
even if delay in execution is of the order of 14 years, this will be 
acceptable.

Section 13(8)(b) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms also removed 
another possible "impediment" to execution. This provision specifies that the 
circumstances in which a person on death row is detained shall not provide the 
basis for commutation of sentence from death to life. In a sense, this 
amendment to our constitutional rights was a pre-emptive strike: the Privy 
Council had grown increasingly concerned about mistreatment of death row 
prisoners. We have concluded that it is possible to mistreat prisoners and then 
execute them.

MANDATORY DEATH

In Lambert Watson v R, the Privy Council held that the mandatory death penalty 
was unconstitutional; our final court reached this conclusion on the assumption 
that the mandatory death sentence was inhuman or degrading punishment or 
treatment (see, eg, Vasciannie, "The Decision of the Judicial Committee of the 
Privy Council in the Lambert Watson Case from Jamaica and the Question of 
Fragmentation," New York University Journal of International Law and Politics, 
Volume 41, p 836).

Following that decision, Jamaica amended its Offences against the Person Act in 
order to specify that, for capital murder cases, the presiding judge must have 
an alternative to execution among the sentencing options. Thus, for capital 
crimes, the judge may now choose between a death sentence and a life sentence.

CRITERIA FOR EXECUTION

This has prompted the need for the courts to develop criteria for determining 
which capital murders are deserving of the ultimate sanction. The Privy 
Council, in Daniel Dick Trimmingham v The State (2009), a case from St Vincent 
and the Grenadines, has held that the death penalty must be reserved for 
murders which in the facts of the murder amount to the "worst of the worst" and 
the "rarest of the rare." The Privy Council also held that capital punishment 
may take place only when there is no prospect of reform of the murderer.

Although the facts in Trimmingham were quite horrific, the Privy Council found 
that they did not amount to the worst of the worst. The standard of depravity 
required is therefore extraordinarily high. In Peter Dougal v R (2011), the 
Jamaican Privy Council applied the standard, and commuted the death sentence to 
life imprisonment for the murder of 2 persons - LG Brown and Sandra Campbell - 
while they slept. This was not the worse of the worst, using the Privy 
Council's marker.

CAPITAL MURDER

Generally, therefore, I expect that the report on impediments to Minister 
Montague will point out that Jamaica still retains the death penalty for some 
murders. These murders are categorised as capital murders in the Offences 
against the Person Act.

Capital murder includes murder for hire, murder in the course of certain 
felonies (burglary, robbery, arson, sexual offences), murder of a member of a 
specified class of persons acting in the course of their duties (security 
forces, correctional officer, judicial officer, a person carrying out 
constabulary functions, witness, juror, or Justice of the Peace), and multiple 
murders.

Murders within the capital category may bring about the death sentence, but 
they will do so only if they are so gruesome - and the murderer so awful - that 
they satisfy the Trimmingham criteria. All other murders are non-capital, and 
cannot give rise to the death sentence.

WHAT IS THE POINT?

In effect, then, it is open to Jamaica to carry out the death sentence. And the 
only impediments are those which follow from the proper operation of the law - 
as set out in the Jamaican Constitution, the Offences against the Person Act 
and decisions of the courts. This is as it should be.

It may not be a good thing for us to grab at the death penalty whenever there 
is a spike in murders. We should acknowledge that Jamaica has not carried out 
the death penalty since 1988, and give serious thought to whether there is any 
point in keeping it.

(source: Stephen Vasciannie, CD, is Professor of International Law, University 
of the West Indies, Mona, and a former Jamaica Ambassador to the USA and the 
Organization of American States----Jamaica Observer)






IRAN----executions

4 more prisoners hanged in Iran


Iran's fundamentalist regime is continuing its heightening execution spree, 
hanging at least 4 more prisoners in the past 3 days.

Earlier on Saturday 3 prisoners were hanged in the Central Prison of Rasht, 
northern Iran, according to the regime's judiciary in Gilan Province. The 
victims were identified only by their initials and ages: A. A., 22; E. Sh., 26; 
and H. P., 31.

On Thursday, Behnam Mohammadi, 35, was hanged in Maragheh Prison, north-west 
Iran, after serving 5 years behind bars. He was accused of a drugs-related 
charge.

The latest hangings bring to at least 76 the number of people executed in Iran 
since April 10. 3 of those executed were women and 1 is believed to have been a 
juvenile offender.

Iran's fundamentalist regime on Monday amputated the fingers of a man in his 
thirties in the city of Mashhad, north-east Iran, the latest in a line of 
draconian punishments handed down and carried out in recent weeks.

The state-run Khorasan newspaper identified the victim by his initials M. T., 
adding that he was 39 years old. The prisoner was accused of theft and is also 
serving a 3-year jail sentence.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) said in a statement on April 
13 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."

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."

(source: NCR-Iran)






PAKISTAN:

The anatomy of extremism


5 'hardcore terrorists' are to be hanged for their involvement in the Safoora 
Goth massacre and the murder of human rights activist Sabeen Mehmood in Karachi 
last year. The 5 are all said to be active members of al Qaeda. Whilst we 
continue to have deep reservations over the death penalty, we also have a 
serious concern about the path these individuals took that ends at a death 
sentence, and the implications for society as a whole.

The report of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) reveals that at least 1 of the 
killers was highly educated, a graduate of the Institute of Business 
Administration and not a man, according to his friends and associates, likely 
to be the cold-blooded killer that by his own admission he is. All of those 
convicted were affiliated however tangentially with al Qaeda and were 
sympathisers with and inspired by the Islamic State. This did not happen 
overnight nor in isolation. These men had common purpose, they worked and 
planned together, reconnoitered their targets and killed casually, without 
remorse, believing their crimes not to be crimes at all but the will of a 
higher power.

A picture emerges of educated, articulate men being drawn to radicalism and 
then extremism, who had no difficulty in getting training, who blended with the 
background and hid in plain sight. They selected targets on a sectarian basis 
or simply because, in the case of Sabeen Mahmud, did not like what she said and 
what she represented as a secular liberal. The truly alarming aspect of the JIT 
report is how commonplace, how ordinary, how unexceptional these killers were. 
How easily they had access to weapons and how well they were trained. They came 
from educated middle class backgrounds and had been to the best schools. They 
worked in - indeed were recruited from within - multinational companies that 
thousands of aspiring young people would seek to work for. It cannot - must not 
- be assumed that these 5 men are unique because they are not; more they are 
symptomatic of the profound malaise that afflicts the nation, a malaise for 
which no cure is currently being sought.

(source: Editorial, Daily Express)






MALAYSIA:

Filipino charged with murder of another Filipino


A 36-year-old Filipino was charged in the Magistrate's Court on Friday with the 
murder of another Filipino at Manggatal early this month.

Ismail Rasad, a Bajau holding an IMM13 document, is accused of committing the 
offence on one Mohd Adzmar Alex, 19, also a Bajau with an IMM13 document, at 
11.30pm on May 1 at Kampung Rampayan. M

However, no plea was recorded from Ismail who was brought before Magistrate 
Jessica Ombou Kakayun.

The offence under Section 302 of the Penal Code carries the death penalty on 
conviction.

Prosecuting officer Inspector Azaman Hamat applied for another mention date 
while waiting for the chemist's, DNA and post mortem reports.

The court set June 3 for mention and ordered Ismail remanded further as the 
charge against him has no provision of bail.

Counsel Timothy Daut informed the court that he was standing in for counsel Ram 
Singh who is representing Ismail.

In another case, a 19-year-old jobless Dusun man claimed trial to molesting a 
9-year-old girl.

Wayatomajukasari Daim allegedly committed the crime at 7.30pm on May 5 in the 
toilet of a community centre in Kg Pulutan, Manggatal.

Jessica fixed June 3 for pre-trial case management and released 
Wayatomajukasari on a bail of RM2,500 in 2 sureties with the condition that he 
report to the police station every month and to keep a distance of 500 metres 
from the alleged victim.

Earlier, Azaman, proposed a bail of RM5,000 and also applied for the accused 
not to approach the girl as they were staying in the same village.

However, counsel Timothy Daut, who represented the accused, requested for the 
bail to be reduced and told the court both the accused and the alleged victim 
were living far away although in the same village and were not related.

Wayatomajukasari was charged under Section 354 of the Penal Code, which carries 
a jail term of up to 10 years or fine or whipping or any 2 of such punishments 
on conviction.

(source: Daily Express)



INDONESIA:

No pardon for drug traffickers in Indonesia-Ambassador


The Indonesian Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr Harry Purwanto, on Saturday ruled out 
any clemency for anyone caught carrying narcotic drugs in his country.

He said that his home government would not grant pardon to anyone involved in 
drug trafficking in Indonesia.

Purwanto disclosed this in Lagos while reacting to a report that 2 Nigerians 
were on death row in Indonesia for drug-related offences.

The envoy said that capital punishment would be meted to Nigerians who engaged 
in narcotic crimes, as well as to other foreigners and Indonesians engaging in 
the criminal acts.

???Let me say that Indonesia, currently, has very strict punishment measures 
for anyone engaged or that is planning to engage in drug trafficking.

???Let me also say that between 72 and 75 young Indonesians that were involved 
in narcotic crimes are currently in detention.

???My president, President Joko Widodo, is really committed to fighting drug 
trafficking, and has continued to maintain a firm stance against anyone 
arrested for involving in narcotic crime.

"So, there will be no clemency for anyone, be they Indonesians or other 
foreigners, arrested for drug-related offences," he said.

According to him, Indonesia will always resort to capital punishment after it 
has thoroughly investigated and exhausted the necessary legal processes.

Harry, however, said that his government would, sometime, only give 
consideration to arrested pregnant women, teenagers and mentally-deranged 
offenders.

The ambassador appealed to Nigerians to desist from visiting Indonesia for drug 
related-offences or allowed themselves to be used for drug trafficking.

Harry said that the existing cordial relationship between Nigeria and Indonesia 
would be stronger, if people of both countries obey the laws of their host 
countries.

(source: pmnewsnigeria.com)

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Islands focus: Father killed while sleeping


A 60-year-old man was stabbed to death in his sleep on Sunday night in what 
police believe to be a crime motivated by his alleged refusal to let his 
17-year-old daughter have a boyfriend 3 years older than herself.

Gorontalo Police have named 2 suspects in the case, charging both the girl and 
her 20-year-old boyfriend, identified only as OH, for the premeditated murder 
of Nasir Mahmud, as according to Article 340 of the Criminal Code (KUHP).

The head of the Gorontalo Police Criminal Investigation Unit, Adj. Comr. Indra 
Feri Dalimunthe, said if she is convicted the girl could face 10 years 
imprisonment since she was underage, but OH, if he is also found guilty, could 
be punished with life imprisonment or get the death penalty.

(source: Jakarta Post)