[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

December 13



BELARUS:

Prisoner executions in Belarus ‘simply unacceptable’, says UN rights body



The continued use of the death penalty in Belarus has been condemned by an 
authoritative UN rights body after 3 men were reportedly executed there, 
despite its requests for clemency.

The Human Rights Committee, one of 10 UN treaty bodies that meet regularly in 
Geneva, had appealed to Belarus not to carry out sentencing on Aleksei 
Mikhalenya, Semyon Berezhnoi and Igor Gershankov, while it examined their 
cases.

Since 2010, Belarus has executed 13 people whose cases were under examination 
by the UN panel, it said in a joint statement with the Special Rapporteur on 
the situation of human rights in Belarus, and the UN Special Rapporteur on 
extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

“The repetitive failure of Belarus to respect the Committee’s procedures …is 
simply unacceptable,” said Yuval Shany, committee chairperson.

“The fact that such failures occur in the context of capital cases which 
implicate the right to life, and which the Committee considers to be the 
’supreme right’, is particularly unconscionable.”

The prisoners were executed in May and November this year, according to the 
committee.

All 3 had been found guilty of murder, although “all 3 cases contain 
allegations of torture in detention and forced confessions”.

In line with standard practice, relatives of the dead were “ignorant of the 
time and circumstances” of their death, the committee said, while their bodies 
were also not returned to their families – “an additional, useless pain”.

Belarus remains the last country in Europe and Central Asia that applies the 
death penalty, according to the Human Rights Committee.

In its latest report on Belarus published in November 2018, the UN panel 
emphasized that Belarus “should consider establishing a moratorium on 
executions as an initial step towards legal abolition of the death penalty”.

The country should also commit to abolishing the death penalty by ratifying the 
Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political 
Rights, it urged, “commute all pending death sentences to imprisonment and 
increase efforts to change public perception about the necessity of maintaining 
the death penalty”.

(source: un.org)








INDIA:

Man gets death sentence for rape, murder of minor



A special POCSO court on Wednesday awarded death penalty to a man for raping 
and murdering a 14-year-old girl in Dehradun district in January 2016.

The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) judge, Rama Pandey, 
held Azhar Khan guilty and slapped a fine of Rs 90,000.

Khan was convicted under section 376 (rape), 302 (murder) of IPC and relevant 
sections of POCSO Act.

The minor girl’s body, who was studying in class 9, was found hanging from a 
road side tree, about 157 km from Dehradun. It was later found that the girl 
was raped before murder.

During investigation, police found out that the girl was last seen on January 
1, 2016 with Khan, who was a driver by profession, on his motorcycle.

He was later arrested from Sirmaur district of Himachal Pradesh on January 5, 
2016. During interrogation, Khan confessed of committing the crime.

(source: The Times of India)

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

SC rejects plea for immediate execution of 4 death-row convicts in Nirbhaya 
case



The Supreme Court Thursday dismissed a plea seeking directions for immediate 
execution of the 4 death row convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape and murder 
case.

"What kind of prayer you are making?," a bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and 
Deepak Gupta told the petitioner.

"You are making the court a joke," it said.

The 23-year-old paramedic student was raped on the intervening night of 
December 16-17, 2012 inside a running bus in South Delhi by 6 persons and 
severely assaulted before being thrown out on the road. She died on December 
29, 2012 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.

1 of the accused Ram Singh had hanged himself in the jail and another, a 
juvenile, was convicted of rape and murder. He was given the maximum sentence 
of 3 years' imprisonment in a reform facility.

On July 9, the apex court dismissed the pleas of 3 convicts -- Mukesh (31), 
Pawan Gupta (24) and Vinay Sharma (25) -- seeking review of its 2017 judgement 
upholding the capital punishment awarded to them by the Delhi High Court and 
the trial court in the case.

The 4th death row convict, Akshay Kumar Singh (33), has not filed a review plea 
in the apex court.

During the hearing on Thursday, advocate Alakh Alok Srivastava, the petitioner 
in the case, told the bench that though provision of death penalty was there in 
cases of rape-cum-murder, it was not acting as a deterrent due to delays in 
execution of such convicts.

"Is death penalty acting as a deterrent? Please do not file cases like this 
otherwise we will ask the registry not to accept it," the bench said.

"You want us to go around Delhi and execute these people? Dismissed," the bench 
said while rejecting the plea.

The public interest litigation (PIL) had said that despite a lapse of more than 
4 1/2 months from the date of dismissal of the review petitions of 3 convicts 
in Nirbhaya case, the death penalty has not yet been executed.

The plea had said that in rape-cum-murder cases, the fate of the accused must 
be decided in a period of 8 months from the lower court to the apex court.

Such delay in execution of death penalty was acting as a bad precedent and had 
resulted in increasing incidents of rapes being reported on daily basis, it had 
said.

The fact that death row convicts in Nirbhaya case have not yet been hanged 
despite over 5 years of their initial conviction "apparently gives an 
impression in the minds of the rapists that they would also be harmless if they 
commit such heinous crimes", the plea had said.

The plea had also sought guidelines to prescribe strict timeline for speedy 
execution of death row convicts in rape-cum-murder cases, so that remedies of 
appeal in high court, appeal, review, curative petition in the apex court and 
mercy petition before the President are exhausted by convicts within a maximum 
period of 8 months.

(source: theweek.in)

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

Uttarakhand: Rape-Murder accused sentenced to the death penalty



A Dehradun court has awarded death sentence to an accused involved in a 2016 
rape and murder case. ADJ 3rd Gurbaksh Singh pronounced the verdict on 
Wednesday.

Azhar, the convict, is a resident of Vikasnagar.

(source: business-standard.com)

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

'Consider Background,' Says Top Court, Sparing 2 The Death Penalty----The 
Supreme Court also questioned the deterrence factor of the death penalty.



The Supreme Court today scaled down the death sentence of 2 convicts to life 
imprisonment, saying that judges should take socio-economic factors into 
account before sending anybody to the gallows.

The individuals under question were a man who killed 6 of a family in Kerala 
and another who raped and murdered a minor in Maharashtra.

A 3-judge bench headed by Justice Madan B Lokur said courts should also 
consider the pendency of death row cases for commuting their sentences, 
especially in the absence of any study that conclusively establishes the 
deterrent impact of capital punishment. "While the socio-economic condition of 
a convict cannot act as a factor for disproving his guilt, it must be taken 
into consideration for awarding an appropriate sentence," it observed.

In the 1st case, a trial court in Kerala had sentenced the convict -- Anthony 
-- to death for murdering 6 members of a family in January 2001. While the 
original sentence was passed in 2005, the Kerala High Court and Supreme Court 
upheld it in the years that followed. Although his review petition was also 
dismissed, it was eventually taken up after a Supreme Court verdict stated that 
such pleas should be heard by a 3-judge bench to ensure the passage of a 
reasonable order.

The 2nd case pertained to Wasnik, who was awarded the death penalty for 
allegedly raping and murdering a 3-year-old girl in Maharashtra.

Commuting the death sentences, the Supreme Court said there was a perception 
that only the poor are awarded the death penalty. "There are a number of cases 
where convicts have been on death row for more than six years, and if a 
standard period was to be adopted, perhaps each and every person of the kind 
should be given the benefit of commutation," said Justice Lokur as he wrote the 
verdict.

While looking at the review petition, Justice Lokur also noted that the phrase 
-- "sentenced to death" -- can have a chilling effect on even the most hardened 
criminal. "Our society demands such a sentence on the grounds of its deterrent 
effect, although there is no conclusive study to prove that. Our society also 
demands death sentence as retribution for a ghastly crime, although again there 
is no conclusive study showing that retribution satisfies society," he said.

The Supreme Court also stated that none of the courts had considered the 
appellants' potential for reformation, rehabilitation and social re-integration 
into society.

(source: ndtv.com)

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

India's death penalty problem: Speed up executions or rethink on judicial 
murder?----Should the death row convicts be sent to the gallows faster? Should 
they rather be allowed to rot in the cells awaiting death? Should we convict 
more criminals to death? Or should India abolish death penalty altogether?

2 back-to-back decisions by the Supreme Court of India this week has put the 
focus back on capital punishment. The latest judgment in the infamous mass 
murder case in Kerala and the dismissal of a plea in Nirbhaya gang rape and 
murder are a case in point.

On Wednesday, a 3-judge supreme court bench headed by Justice Madan B. Lokur 
commuted the death sentence of the man accused of killing 6 members of a 
family. The rarest of the rare decision came after the convict, who was the 
sole accused in the case, had exhausted all legal options, including the mercy 
petitions.

In another similar case on Thursday, the supreme court threw out a petition 
seeking immediate execution of the four men convicted in the dastardly gang 
rape and killing of Nirbhaya in Delhi in 2012.

In the first case, the court leaned on the chances of "reform or 
rehabilitation" of the convict. It also said the social and economic conditions 
of a person has no relevance in the conviction process, but when it comes to 
the severity of the punishment these factors must be considered.

Honestly, both these lines of argument appear to be a little shaky. Experts in 
jurisprudence will probably offer insightful analyses on this vexing line of 
argument.

In the 2nd case, the court was vehement in its outright denial of the plea that 
sought immediate execution of the convicts in Nirbhaya case.

"What kind of prayer you are making? ... You are making the court a joke," the 
bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta reprimanded the petitioner.

Lawyer Alakh Alok Srivastava, who had field the plea, sought the execution of 
convicts Mukesh, Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma and Akshay, citing that the top 
court had rejected their review plea in July this year.

The petitioner said the death verdict wasn't implemented even after the lapse 
of considerable time following the exhaustion of the last legal option.

"Such delay in execution of Death Penalty, in the considered view of the 
Petitioner, is acting as a bad precedent and not able to act as a deterrent to 
the Rapists resulting into increasing incidents of horrific offences of Rapes 
being reported on daily basis in our country," the petitioner said.

As it turned out the court had little interest in the arguments offered.

Irrespective of the merit of the judgements, it's clear that India has a 
problem at hand with death penalties. As of December 2017, India has as many as 
371 prisoners on the death row. Many of these convicts have been awaiting death 
for many years, the longest being 27 years.

Should the death row convicts be sent to the gallows faster? Should they rather 
be allowed to rot in the cells awaiting death? Should we convict more criminals 
to death? Or should India abolish death penalty altogether?

Rotting in cells awaiting death

In the last 13 years, only 4 death row prisoners have been executed in India. 
However, there's no apparent dip in the number of death sentences awarded by 
various courts. Instead, in April this year, the central government passed an 
ordinance making rape of children younger than 12 years punishable by death. 
Legal thinkers have always been divided on the utility of death penalty as a 
deterrent. Won't the spectre of death penalty motivate the rapist to kill his 
young victim, fearing his likely expose by her would send him to the gallows?

The 2 judgment this week don't really mean much in terms of where the country's 
conscience is headed or whether an anti-death penalty sentiment is gaining 
force. However, this can be taken as a straw in the wind.

Surpassingly though, the court did not take into account the long death row 
years a sufficient reason to commute the death penalty in the Kerala case.

"There are a number of cases where convicts have been on death row for more 
than six years and if a standard period was to be adopted, perhaps each and 
every person on death row might have to be given the benefit of commutation of 
death sentence to one of life imprisonment," Justice Lokur said.

There's apparently no plausible explanation to why some convicts end up 
spending decades on the death row. There have been instances in the recent past 
where the government took speedy action to carry out the execution of convicts.

Thursday's comments from the apex court show that the judiciary won't bring 
that ambivalent under its ambit either.

So India can keep thinking over the ponderous questions -- Should the death row 
convicts be sent to the gallows faster? Should they rather be allowed to rot in 
the cells awaiting death? Should we convict more criminals to death? Or should 
India abolish death penalty altogether?

(source: ibtimes.co.in)








INDONESIA:

Indonesia: 5 foreigners face death penalty over drug smuggling



Indonesian police declared that some of the 5 foreigners detained over drug 
trafficking on the tourist island of Bali since the end of November, are facing 
execution if they were found guilty.

Police revealed the citizens of Peru, Britain, China, Malaysia and Germany at a 
press conference on Thursday in Denpasar, the capital of Bali province.

The suspects were nabbed in 5 different raids by customs and police since 
November 30 that confiscated 4 kilograms of cocaine as well as marijuana, 
ecstasy and ketamine.

Indonesia has tightened laws regarding drug -linked cases, as dozens of 
convicted traffickers were handed death penalties.

Its last executions were in July 2016 when an Indonesian and 3 foreigners were 
gunned by firing squad.

(source: menafn.com)








NIGERIA: Woman To Die By Hanging For Killing Traditional Ruler

One Mrs Amina Zubairu, 35, who is the wife of the late Gom Mama of Kwarra 
Chiefdom in Wamba Local Government Area of Nasarawa State, has been sentenced 
to death by hanging for killing her husband.

The accused was reported to have killed her husband, Adamu Zubairu, who until 
his death in 2014, was a first class traditional ruler in the state.

Justice Aisha Bashir of the Nasarawa State High Court 2, sitting in Lafia, 
passed the judgment on Tuesday.

She held that the accused was found guilty of culpable homicide, which carries 
the death penalty.

The judge, who noted that the prosecution had proved its case beyond reasonable 
doubt, subsequently sentenced the convict to death by hanging.

The police had earlier stated that the circumstances leading to the death of 
the traditional ruler were suspicious.

Police investigations led to a search of the compound of the deceased, where a 
syringe containing remnants of a poisonous substance, was found.

It was learnt that the police arrested the convict in connection with the death 
of the monarch on the eve of his marriage to another woman on February 15, 
2015.

Amina, who was one of the wives of the deceased, was called in for questioning 
after she was identified as a prime suspect and she was subsequently charged to 
court for culpable homicide when a case was established against her.

Reacting to the judgment, the prosecution counsel, Jibrin Aboki, commended the 
court’s decision and said the judgment would serve as a deterrent to others 
with such tendencies.

Speaking in a similar vein, the first son of the late monarch, Abdullahi 
Zubairu, expressed satisfaction with the court’s decision.

However, the counsel for the accused, Shekama Sheltu, expressed dissatisfaction 
with the judgment and expressed his client’s decision to appeal.

(source: Naija News)








CHINA:

Man sentenced to death for SUV rampage that killed 15 in Hunan 
province----After plowing his Land Rover into a crowd, the man got out and 
began stabbing survivors with a knife and shovel

On Wednesday, a man was sentenced to death by a court in Hunan province over an 
attack which left 15 people dead.

The vicious attack occurred on September 12th when a 54-year-old man named Yang 
Zanyun drove his SUV into a crowd of people at a public square in Hengdong 
country before exiting his vehicle and going on a stabbing spree with a knife 
and shovel.

A total of 15 people were killed by Yang with dozens more injured. Police said 
that Yang had committed the attack in order to “get revenge on society,” noting 
that he had served 10 years in prison on convictions including robbery, drug 
trafficking, and arson.

Yang becomes the 2nd high-profile criminal to be sentenced to death this week 
in China after a Hunan teen who murdered his high school teacher last year to 
prevent a phone call to his parents about his grades.

Meanwhile, the family of a woman who was allegedly killed by her husband for 30 
million yuan in life insurance money is attempting to get the man extradited to 
China so it is more likely that he will be given the death penalty.

(source: shanghai.ist)








IRAN:

Top government officials distorted the truth about 1988 prison massacres



Following the publication of its damning report on a 3-decade long campaign of 
misinformation by the Iranian authorities about the mass prisoner killings of 
1988, Amnesty International today published a video interview from December 
1988 showing Iran’s then prime minister, Mir Hossein Mousavi, denying and 
distorting the truth about these crimes against humanity.

The video clip has been released in response to a public debate ignited since 
the report’s publication about the extent to which Mir Hossein Mousavi and his 
government were aware of the mass killings while they were taking place between 
late July and early September 1988, and his role in the official campaign to 
conceal the truth about what happened.

In the interview, first broadcast by the Austrian national public service 
broadcaster, ORF, on 13 December 1988, Mir Hossein Mousavi is asked about the 
executions. He responds saying, “We repressed them”, without explaining what he 
is acknowledging, and avoids any explicit reference to the mass killings. 
Instead, he focuses on criticizing the July 1988 armed incursion by the 
People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), an opposition group based in 
Iraq at the time, in an apparent effort to misrepresent the executions as a 
legitimate response to an armed attack.

“Mir Hossein Mousavi’s interview with the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, 
ORF, shows that, in late 1988, he unashamedly propagated the same false 
narrative, used by other Iranian authorities for decades, to hide the truth 
that they had forcibly disappeared and extrajudicially executed at least 5,000 
political dissidents as part of a systematic effort to eliminate political 
opposition,” said Philip Luther, Research and Advocacy Director for the Middle 
East and North Africa at Amnesty International.

For years Iranian officials at all levels have sought to deflect attention away 
from the mass prisoner killings by focusing on the armed incursion of the PMOI 
in July 1988 and defending their actions as a necessary crackdown against those 
involved.

The mass enforced disappearance and extrajudicial executions constitute crimes 
against humanity under international law, which no circumstances can ever 
justify. Beyond this, the authorities have never provided any explanation of 
how thousands of prisoners held in Iran’s high-security prisons could possibly 
have communicated with PMOI members outside the country or been involved in the 
armed incursion. Testimonies from survivors at the prison confirm that 
prisoners being interrogated between July and September 1988 were not asked 
about accusations of secret collusion with the PMOI. In addition, the mass 
executions did not only target prisoners with PMOI ties; hundreds affiliated 
with leftist and Kurdish opposition groups were among the victims.

The contribution of Mir Hossein Mousavi’s government to the climate of secrecy 
surrounding the killings goes beyond this one interview. Since September 1988, 
after the news of the mass executions attracted international attention, senior 
government ministers and diplomats from his administration were actively 
involved in denying the mass killings in media interviews and exchanges with 
the UN to shield those responsible from accountability.

The officials involved included the then minister of interior, Abdollah Noori, 
the then minister of foreign affairs, Ali Akbar Velayti, the deputy foreign 
ministers in 1989 and 1990, Mohammad Hossein Lavasani and Manouchehr Mottaki, 
Iran’s then permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, Sirous Nasseri, 
Iran’s then permanent representative to the UN in New York, Mohammad Jafar 
Mahallati, the Iranian chargé d’affaires in London, UK, Mohammad Mehdi 
Akhoundzadeh Basti, and the Iranian chargé d’affaires in Ottawa, Canada, 
Mohammad Ali Mousavi.

Amnesty International’s report details how these officials either flatly denied 
the mass killings, dismissed the reports as “nothing but propaganda” or claimed 
that the killings occurred on the battlefield. They also told the UN that some 
of the recorded victims did not exist, or were abroad, or studying at 
university, or being held as prisoners of war or had died due to “natural 
causes”.

“Direct perpetrators of the prison massacres are not the only people who must 
be subject to criminal investigations. Given the authorities’ ongoing refusal 
to reveal the whereabouts of those killed, all former and current officials who 
have contributed to the climate of secrecy and denial facilitating the 
continued enforced disappearance of thousands of victims must also be held to 
account,” said Philip Luther.

Amnesty International’s report names key officials involved in the mass 
killings, including Iran’s current justice minister, Alireza Avaei, his 
predecessor, Mostafa Pour Mohammadi, and former or current prosecution or 
judicial officials Ebrahim Raisi, Hossein Ali Nayyeri and Morteza Eshraghi, 
among others.

Denying knowledge of the mass killings

Since 2009, when he re-entered politics as a Reformist opposition leader, Mir 
Hossein Mousavi’s response when asked about the 1988 prison massacres has often 
been to avoid commenting or to claim that they took place without the knowledge 
of his government. In this way, he has tried to justify his failure to stop, 
investigate or at least condemn the killings publicly.

However, documents from Amnesty International’s archives show that the 
organization repeatedly raised its concerns about reports of mass prisoner 
executions with senior officials in Mir Hossein Mousavi’s government including 
the minister of justice, Hassan Ebrahim Habibi, and the minister of foreign 
affairs, Ali Akbar Velayati, from as early as 16 August 1988 when the 
organization issued its first Urgent Action appeal – while the killings were 
ongoing. The organization released at least 17 more Urgent Actions appeals 
between 16 August and 22 December 1988, mobilizing activists from around the 
world to send tens of thousands of appeals to the Iranian government and its 
diplomatic representatives abroad. On 13 December 1988 it issued a press 
release accompanied by a briefing.

“Despite being confronted with mounting evidence of these crimes, the 
government of Mir Hossein Mousavi repeatedly failed to condemn the killings and 
order investigations. This, coupled with officials’ grotesque denials of the 
truth, is truly shameful,” said Philip Luther.

Mir Hossein Mousavi himself has borne the brunt of Iran’s cruel criminal 
justice system since 2011, when he was put under house arrest, along with his 
wife Zahra Rahnavard and fellow opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi. Amnesty 
International has repeatedly called for their immediate release.

“All former and current officials who continue to treat the mass killings as 
state secrets effectively stand with those who have blood on their hands. He 
and all other officials who have hidden and distorted the truth must respond to 
the demands of tormented families for truth and justice, and publicly reveal 
any information that they have about the mass prisoner killings and the 
whereabouts of the victims,” said Philip Luther.

(source: Amnesty International)