[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

June 19


SUDAN:

Sudanese human rights defenders face death sentence


Sudan's authorities are under pressure to release prominent human rights 
defenders facing the death penalty or life imprisonment for allegedly inciting 
an uprising against the state.

Ibrahim Adam Mudawi and his colleague Idris Eldoma Hafiz face 6 charges such as 
"undermining the constitutional system' and "waging war against the state". 
Rights groups have denounced the allegations as trumped up and linked to their 
human rights advocacy.

The trial is underway in the capital Khartoum.

"Human rights work is not a crime, so Dr Mudawi and Hafiz must be immediately 
and unconditionally released," said Muthoni Wanyeki, Amnesty International's 
regional director.

"Their arrest and continued incarceration is a miscarriage of justice, plain 
and simple."

Mudawi has continuously been harassed for his human rights work in Darfur and 
across Sudan for more than a decade.

"Unfortunately, this latest round sees the harassment take a more sinister turn 
as both he and his colleague Hafiz potentially face the death penalty," said 
Wanyeki.

Intelligence agents arrested engineering professor Mudawi in December 2016. He 
is the former director of the Sudan Social Development Organisation (SUDO) and 
won several human rights awards.

Hafiz, a refugee from Darfur, was arrested in November at Mudawi's house.

(source: African News Agency)






KUWAIT:

Kuwait commutes death sentence of -pro-Iran cell leader'----Hasan Abdulhadi 
Ali, convicted of being the mastermind behind a Shiite terror cell, given life 
behind bars instead


Kuwait's supreme court on Sunday reduced the death sentence of a Shiite citizen 
convicted of forming a pro-Iranian cell and of plotting attacks, changing it to 
life in prison.

Hasan Abdulhadi Ali was sentenced to death by the lower and appeals courts last 
year after he was convicted of being "the mastermind of a cell" of 26 Shiites 
accused of link to Iran and of plotting attacks in the Sunni-ruled emirate.

Members of the cell had been charged with spying for Iran and hiding large 
quantities of arms, explosives and ammunition in underground warehouses.

Ali was also found guilty of having been an operative of Lebanon's Shiite 
Hezbollah movement since 1996 and of smuggling significant amounts of arms and 
explosives from Iran into Kuwait.

The supreme court judges, whose rulings are final, sentenced 20 other members 
of the cell to between 5 and 15 years in jail and acquitted 2.

The cases of the remaining three members were not taken up by the supreme court 
because they remain fugitives.

They include the only Iranian member of the cell, Abdulredha Haider, who was 
handed the death penalty in absentia by the lower court in January last year.

The court had accused Haider of ties to Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard and of 
recruiting the Kuwaiti Shiites and facilitating their travel to Lebanon, where 
they received military training from Iran-backed Hezbollah.

The 23 defendants present at the trial have denied the charges and said that 
their confessions were extracted under torture.

Iran has denied any links to the group.

(source: timesofisrael.com)