[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

April 8




BANGLADESH:

Absconding man gets death penalty for labour leader Aminul murder



1 person has been sentenced to death in connection with the murder of garment 
workers' leader Aminul Islam.

The convict Mustafizur Rahman, 23, from Kadirpara Purbapara in Magura's Sreepur 
upazila, was a garment worker and worked as a police source.

Tangail Special Judge Wahiduzzaman Sikdar gave the verdict in absentia around 
11am on Sunday.

Mustafizur has been missing since the murder.

Aminul Islam, from Gazipur's Kaliakair upazila, was a popular labour rights 
activist based in Ashulia. He was an organizer for Bangladesh Center for 
Workers Solidarity (BCWS) and the president of the Bangladesh Garment and 
Industrial Workers Federation.

After going missing on April 4, 2012, his mutilated body was found 2 days later 
in Ghatail.

The body was initially booked as unidentified and after an autopsy, he was 
buried at Tangail Central Graveyard. Police published ads in the newspaper 
seeking information on the man.

Aminul's brother Rafiqul identified him from the ads and had his body reburied 
in the home village.

Ghatail police filed a murder case against persons unknown, and after an 
investigation, pressed charges against Mustafiz as the only accused.

Aminul had reported several threats before he went missing, according to the 
Human Rights Watch.

Public Prosecutor Multan Uddin of the Tangail Special and Sessions Judge Court 
said this was a sensational murder case.

"The murdered Aminul Islam was an activist for the rights of Ashulia workers. 
He was killed to prevent his activism," he said.

The lawyer said 25 people had deposed as witnesses in this case.

"Justice has been served," he said.

However, state-appointed counsel for Mustafiz, Golam Mostafa Miah, said the 
case had not proved the guilt of the convict.

"The court has convicted him wrongly and I hope that the verdict will be 
overturned in the higher court," he said.

(source: Dhaka Tribune)








IRAQ:

Death sentences raise questions about Iraqi justice----Problems of torture, 
illegal detention and extrajudicial killings have been passed down from one 
administration to another.



The mention of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison brings up searing memories that 
critics say mirror the moral bankruptcy and convulsive violence exercised by 
local governments and interventionists in Iraq. Comparing today's context of 
torture, critics add, to the decrepit and lurid acts that US troops performed 
on Iraqi inmates renders Abu Ghraib a breeze.

4 months following the Iraqi government's victory announcement against the 
Islamic State (ISIS), prison cells and hovels are filling fast with suspected 
ISIS fighters, sympathisers and alleged operatives whose fast-track death 
sentences 1 month ahead of elections are raising eyebrows.

Human rights organisations accuse Iraq of conducting sham trials and accepting 
forced confessions as evidence to demonstrate guilt in Iraqi courts.

Damning evidence reported by the Associated Press in the form of spreadsheets 
that catalogue the names of almost 28,000 terror suspects was used to calculate 
stupefying numbers of inmates held on terror charges. The running total, AP 
concluded, stands at 19,000 - almost 1/2 of whom (8,861) were arrested in 2013. 
Those assigned the death sentence number about 3,000.

The intelligence arm of Iraq's Interior Ministry was mentioned for detaining 
11,000 suspects. The depth of Iran's reach into ministerial ranks, however, 
casts doubt on the ministry's judicial autonomy and its foremost priority - 
hunting down "suspected" elements belonging to the former Saddam regime.

At the highest levels of power, fast-tracked death sentences, enhanced 
interrogation and outright barbarity in the form of torture have been condoned 
as policies necessary to rid Iraq from terrorism.

In 2007, British officers mistakenly stormed the office of an Iraqi government 
intelligence agency, uncovering 30 prisoners that, contrary to tip-offs, were 
not al-Qaeda operatives and whose bodies bore fresh markings of torture.

As a leading pro-death penalty proponent, former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki 
expressed great outrage about the actions of the British government but no 
remorse over the dirty secret Britain's raid revealed.

AP's findings, therefore, force a re-examination of Iraq's legal proceedings 
and court verdicts, among other problems, to smash the wall of silence keeping 
international criticism of Iraq's procedural posture in handling political 
prisoners at bay.

Death sentences act as an expression of power, especially when built around the 
normative judgments of presiding judges, agents or secret informants whose 
identities the government claims to protect.

Among the tallest barriers in the way of reform is the government's 
zero-tolerance strategy of officials who oppose death sentences. Coercive 
strategies by a coalition of cross-party MPs in 2015 forced Iraq's acting 
President Fuad Masum to renege on his refusal to ratify 100 death sentences in 
2015.

Liberation has only amplified the problem. Sweeping arrests have become 
particularly rife in areas freed 3 years since the incursion of the Islamic 
State (ISIS), Amnesty International's Iraq campaigner and researcher Razaw 
Salihy said by phone from Beirut, pointing to a line of actors - Iraqi, Kurdish 
and Popular Mobilisation Forces.

Quarantined prisoners are held anywhere between "15 days to 3 or 5 months" and 
exceedingly high numbers "were taken and never seen again" Salihy said.

"We had people held on death row in Nasiriyah for 12 years and 8 years, totally 
forgotten," she said with reference to the city's infamous prison facility.

The picture that emerges is one of legal indeterminacy over the status and 
identity of those held captive.

The issue of disappeared persons, Salihy said, was a problem that came up in 
almost every camp across the 9 governorates in which Amnesty International 
conducted field research. The missing are "usually of fighting age," she said, 
"as young as 13 in Nineveh and some as young as 9 from Anbar."

Salihy recalled accounts in which families saw their men separated, "marched 
away and fired at."

It seems that what can be gleaned from the AP's report is an impartial picture; 
obscured by the thousands of men unaccounted for. True figures are expected to 
rival those AP uncovered.

While the death penalty offers a temporary fix from the government's 
perspective, it does not ease the problem of ballooning prison populations that 
the government is wrestling with.

"Access," another problem Salihy highlights, "is not granted [by the federalist 
government] for terrorism-related offences" on the basis that it "affects the 
integrity of the investigation."

Overcrowding, as Fadhel Gharwari, a member of Iraq's parliament-appointed human 
rights commission, told AP, could be resolved through the appointment of more 
investigators. Lack of resources, as Salihy has noted "is no excuse."

As numbers swell, the trickier control of large prison populations becomes, as 
the tale of Camp Bucca that spawned the earliest ISIS recruits lives to tell. 
Inmate-led recruitment in that facility, which housed upward of 20,000 
detainees, was an outcome that was detectable from the onset of their 
incarceration. Many fear that conditions that allow for a repeat of those 
mistakes are being nurtured by incompetence and an over-reliance on death 
penalties.

US Coast Guard Lieutenant-Commander Vasilios Tasikas wrote in 2009 that 
"100,000 detainees have passed through American-run detention centres in Iraq 
since the inception of the war" but lessons are waiting to be learned.

In 2009, 14,000 detainees languished in US-managed prisons, having fallen from 
26,000 in 2007, at the height of Iraq's sectarian conflict.

Like an infectious disease, numbers rise. Pressure from bodies such as Amnesty 
International has shown promising results in which prisoners who have not faced 
trial were released.

Problems of torture, illegal detention and extrajudicial killings have been 
passed down from one administration to another and Prime Minister Haider 
al-Abadi has demonstrated neither the will nor ability to bring each to an end.

Reform, when promised but unrealised, can be read as a cruel joke to those who 
suffer directly beneath it, when pro-death advocates remain undisputed wielders 
of power.

Many say they are not asking for leniency but are calling for justice to be 
non-negotiable.

(source: thearabweekly.com)








GHANA:

Confessions of some condemned prisoners



Even after spending several years in the condemned cells of the Nsawam Medium 
Security Prisons, inmates on death row - following convictions for murder and 
armed robbery are still pleading their innocence and want to be granted 
amnesty.

Death penalty has been in Ghana's legal system since the application of the 
English common law in 1874 but no execution has been recorded since July 1993 
after then-President Jerry John Rawlings ordered the killing of some 12 
convicts via a firing squad.

Currently, the condemned cells of the Nsawam Prison hold over 150 and unlike 
other blocks of the prison, there are strict restrictions imposed on inmates on 
death row.

The psychological trauma, emotional torture, and health challenges the convicts 
go through each day, amidst these restrictions seem to be weighing down on them 
as they spend days, months and years in the condemned cells.

A latest documentary by Ambassador Extraordinaire of Prisons, Ibrahim Oppong 
Kwarteng, exposes the fear and horrifying conditions of many of these "death 
row prisoners" at the Nsawam Medium Security Prisons.

Most of the prisoners are undergoing emotional torture and the older ones are 
struggling with various diseases as a result of the condition of the facility.

Some of the inmates who spoke to Mr. Kwarteng confessed to committing murder 
but claimed they did that unwillingly.

Among these distressed prisoners is a man who has already served 13 years of 
his sentence.

He was jailed at a teenage of 19 and he is currently 32 years old.

Claiming his innocence and pleading for amnesty on behalf of his colleagues, he 
says, "I was accused of killing my own grandmother. I didn't do it and that's 
the truth. President Akufo-Addo, we really know that you came for all 
Ghanaians. We're humbly pleading to you. Look at the young boys here who have 
been sentenced to death..."

A feeble looking man who has been battling diabetes since 2013 says he killed 
someone in self-defence.

"I fought with someone and he used a stick to hit me. I also got infuriated and 
used a stick and a machete to attack him. The machete caused severe damage to 
his head. He died 3 months later. The family insisted it is a murder case and I 
was brought here..."

However, his continuous confinement at the condemned cells has reduced him to 
nothing but a hub of diseases.

In tears, the diabetic oldman tells the Executive Director of Crime Check 
Foundation (CCF) he is barely alive.

"Anytime I eat I have to go to toilet. My tummy hurts anytime I eat and even 
the little porridge I took this morning, I've excreted all," he tearfully tells 
Mr. Kwarteng.

Many others gave accounts of their crimes and also showed remorse, begging for 
pardon from President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Though many of the prisoners denied committing murder knowingly, one oldman 
wholeheartedly confirmed he deliberately did so.

The 72-year-old man reveals he killed his own wife over infidelity.

He narrates, "I was with my wife and domestic problems started and I was very 
much a drunkard, so I couldn't stand the peace. I had a gun and shot her!"

(source: ghanaweb.com)