[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 18



ZIMBABWE:

The job crisis in Zimbabwe means dozens of people are keen to take a 
long-vacant hangman job



Zimbabwe has taken strides in recent years to abolish capital punishment and 
there has been fervent debate about the future of the death penalty among 
locals, but there is strong interest in the job of hangman, which has been 
vacant for about 12 years.

The overwhelming interest by Zimbabwean applicants for the executioner post 
could probably be explained by Zimbabwe's high unemployment rate, estimated to 
be over 80% by the World Bank and IMF.

Over the last decade millions of Zimbabweans have left the country in search of 
greener pastures across Africa and beyond as the economy continues to struggle 
amid wilting foreign direct investment and company closures. Most Zimbabweans 
generate income through a busy informal economy and there are few well-paying 
formal jobs.

Zimbabwe's justice ministry said this week that as many as 50 men and women 
have applied for the job of hangman "in the past few months". The last hangman 
Zimbabwe had retired in 2006.

Virginia Mabhiza, secretary in the ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary 
Affairs, said "people are very interested" in the hangman's job. There are 
about 90 people on death row in Zimbabwe but no executions have been carried 
out because the country does not have a hangman.

President Robert Mugabe had to commute the death penalty for 10 inmates on 
death row last year and said his cabinet was divided over abolition of the 
death penalty. For example his deputy Emmerson Mnangagwa only escaped the noose 
for sabotage offenses during Zimbabwe's liberation war because he was under 18 
years.

The country last carried out an execution in 2005. Women, the mentally ill, 
juveniles and those above 70 years of age are exempt from capital punishment in 
"conformity to Zimbabwe's international obligations as a party to the 
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which prohibits 
the execution" of these groups.

Human rights groups such as Amnesty International have campaigned for the 
abolition of death penalty in Zimbabwe.

However it is not clear when the country will appoint a hangman following the 
invitation for applications by Mugabe in August and subsequent overwhelming 
interest in the job.

The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights said the Zimbabwean constitution was 
against the death penalty.

"The death penalty breaches some fundamental human rights including the right 
to life as enshrined in section 48 of the Constitution and freedom from 
torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment," Kumbirai 
Mafunda, spokesperson for ZLHR said by phone.

(source: qz.com)








THAILAND:

Thailand moves towards abolishing death penalty



As many as 447 convicts are now on death row in Thailand, which is reviewing 
the use of the death penalty.

"We have started with the move to allow judges to exercise their judgment to 
decide whether a convict should be sentenced to death or life imprisonment - 
instead of prescribing death sentence as the only penalty for certain 
offences," the Rights and Liberties Protection Department's director-general, 
Pitikan Sithidej, said on Tuesday (Oct 17).

She added that, in the next phase, the country might consider abolishing the 
death penalty for crimes that do not affect the lives of others. Pitikan was 
speaking at an event held to mark the World Day against the Death Penalty, 
which is observed on October 10.

Thai laws now prescribe the death sentence for those convicted in 63 offences, 
including drug offences.

Of the 447 convicts on death row, 157 have already been condemned through final 
court rulings. Of these, 68 were found guilty of drug-related crimes.

A foreign speaker at the same event said there was no international consensus 
that drug offences were crimes against human lives. "It should also be noted 
that there is a difference between serious legal enforcement and the use of 
harsh punishments," he explained.

Both Pitikan and Colin Josef Steinbach, the 1st counsellor (political, press 
and information) of the European Union delegation to Thailand, said at the same 
forum that there was no clear evidence that the death sentence could reduce 
crimes.

"The end of death penalty is not about encouraging crimes; it's about 
cancelling unreasonable types of punishment," Pitikan said.

Of 198 countries, 141 have already abandoned the use of death sentences. 
According to Pitikan, Thailand started implementing the death penalty in 1935. 
>From that year until 2009, 325 convicts were executed.

Initially, death-row convicts faced firing squads, but lethal injections have 
been used in recent times.

However, in line with international trends, Thailand has not carried out any 
execution since August 2009.

The country is expected to eventually abandon the death penalty altogether. One 
foreign speaker at the event believed better technologies and greater budgets 
would be better able to deter crimes than the death penalty or life 
imprisonment.

(source: straitstimes.com)








PAKISTAN:

Al Qaeda man's death penalty commuted



An appellate bench of the Sindh High Court on Tuesday commuted the death 
penalty of an Al Qaeda militant to life imprisonment.

Anwarul Haq was awarded capital punishment on 4 counts in a 2006 suicide attack 
case that killed an American diplomat and 3 others near the US consulate. He 
was charged with masterminding the suicide attack.

The prosecution said the suspected suicide bomber, identified as Mohammad 
Tahir, had smashed a car packed with explosives into the vehicle carrying the 
US diplomat. Commuting the death penalty, the bench said there were 
contradictions in the case of the prosecution.

(source: dawn.com)

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

Death penalty for woman who burned husband to death with acid



An anti-terrorism court in Multan on Tuesday sentenced a woman to death on 2 
counts after finding her guilty of murdering her husband.

Judge Malik Khalid Mehmood, in his verdict, said that Yasmeen has been found 
guilty of "the brutal and gruesome murder of her husband," Muhammad Imran 
Ashraf. He also handed her a life imprisonment sentence.

"The convict sprinkled acid on Muhammad Irfan Ashraf, entailing his death," the 
verdict noted.

Yasmeen was sentenced to death under the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997 and the 
Pakistan Penal Code. She has also been made liable to pay a fine of Rs20,000.

She was booked on June 23 by Multan's Ludden Vehari Police.

(source: dailypakistan.com.pk)








IRAN:

Iranian authorities urged to halt execution of 17-year-old boy later this 
week----Amirhossein Pourjafar, still only 17 years old, is facing execution 
this week

--If execution of Amirhossein Pourjafar goes ahead it will be the 5th of a 
juvenile offender this year alone

--Pourjafar is 1 of more than 90 people on death row for crimes committed as 
children

'The authorities' rush to send a child to the gallows in order to placate 
public anger is short-sighted and misguided' - Magdalena Mughrabi



The Iranian authorities must stop the execution of a 17-year-old boy who is 
scheduled to be executed later this week.

Amirhossein Pourjafar is scheduled to be executed in a Tehran prison on 
Thursday after being convicted of the murder and rape of a 7-year-old girl, 
Setayesh Ghoreyshi, from Iran???s Afghan community. Amnesty is calling for the 
death sentence to be commuted to imprisonment.

The execution was scheduled 2 months after the head of Iran's judiciary, 
Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, repeated Iran's untruthful claims that it does not 
execute minors. In reality, Amnesty has recorded the execution of 85 juvenile 
offenders in Iran during 2005-17, including 4 in 2015, 2 in 2016, and 4 so far 
this year. Amnesty has also identified 92 individuals who are currently on 
death row for crimes committed when they were children.

Pourjafar was sentenced to death in September 2016 after a Tehran court said he 
had already reached "mental maturity" at the time of the crime, and understood 
the nature and consequences of his actions. In reaching its conclusion, the 
court cited opinions from Iran's state forensic institute attesting to 
Pourjafar's "mental sanity" as well as evidence they say pointed to his efforts 
to conceal the crime. The court claimed its reasoning was in line with the UN 
Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Iran is a state party. However, 
the convention has an absolute prohibition on the use of the death penalty for 
crimes committed by people younger than 18. It is a well-established principle 
of juvenile justice that under-18s are categorically less mature and culpable, 
and should not face the same penalties as adults.

In September 2016, a court in Tehran handed Pourjafar 2 death sentences, 1 for 
murder in accordance with the Islamic principle of "retribution-in-kind" and 
another for rape. He was also sentenced to 74 lashes for mutilating the corpse. 
The Supreme Court upheld both death sentences in January. In its final verdict 
the court said the death sentence against Pourjafar was issued after taking 
into account "societal expectations and public opinion".

Magdalena Mughrabi, at Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa 
Deputy Director, said: "There is no question that this was a horrific crime and 
the perpetrator should be held accountable.

"Amnesty International supports the demands for justice voiced by Setayesh's 
bereaved family and the wider Afghan community in Iran, but executing a 
17-year-old boy is not justice.

"The use of the death penalty against people convicted of crimes committed 
while they were under 18 is absolutely prohibited by international human rights 
law. If Iran goes ahead with the execution this week it will be another 
appalling breach of its international obligations.

"The authorities' rush to send a child to the gallows in order to placate 
public anger is short-sighted and misguided. The death penalty is a cruel, 
inhuman and irreversible punishment and there is no evidence that it has a 
greater deterrent effect than imprisonment. Using it as a means to exact 
revenge only compounds its brutal effects on society. "Instead of resorting to 
case-by-case 'maturity' assessments, which are by their very nature flawed and 
arbitrary, the Iranian authorities must comply with their international 
obligations toward children and end the use of the death penalty against all 
juvenile offenders immediately."

(source: amnesty.org.uk)