[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

April 18



AFGHANISTAN:

2 sentenced to death for 2018 killing of Afghan journalist Abdul Manan Arghand



The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on the Afghan government to 
deliver justice through a fair and transparent process after 2 suspects were 
sentenced to death for the killing of Kabul News journalist Abdul Manan 
Arghand.

The verdict was announced on April 16 by the Afghan attorney general's office, 
following the court's decision on April 6, according to local independent 
broadcaster TOLO News and Jamshid Rasooli, a spokesperson for the attorney 
general's office, who spoke to CPJ.

The names of the 2 suspects have not been released, and the trial was not open 
to the public, according to Rasooli.

"We applaud the government's efforts to end impunity in the murder of 
journalists in Afghanistan, which is one of the deadliest places in the world 
to be a journalist," said Robert Mahoney, CPJ's deputy executive director. "But 
justice delivered in darkness is not justice, especially when the state decides 
upon capital punishment. We urge the Afghan authorities to try suspects in open 
court in accordance with international human rights standards."

The primary court's decision will be reviewed by a secondary court and by the 
Afghan supreme court, Rasooli told CPJ.

Arghand, a reporter with the privately owned Kabul News television channel, was 
shot and killed by 2 unknown gunmen on April 25, 2018, while he was driving to 
work, according to CPJ reporting. He had previously received anonymous death 
threats and the Interior Ministry said the Taliban had marked Arghand as a 
target for assassination, CPJ reported.

The 2 men who were sentenced to death were associated with the Taliban, Rasooli 
said.

A court also convicted 3 men for killing Ahmad Shah, a reporter with the BBC's 
Afghan service who was killed in 2018, the BBC reported in January; one man was 
handed a death sentence, and the other 2 were sentenced to 30 years and 6 years 
in prison. The motive for Shah's killing remains unclear, according to the BBC 
and CPJ. CPJ is continuing to investigate the case.

Afghanistan was the deadliest country for journalists last year and ranked 6th 
on CPJ's Impunity Index, which highlights states with the worst records of 
prosecuting the killers of journalists.

(source: cpj.org)








THAILAND:

Couple may face death penalty for 'sea home' off Thai coast



An American bitcoin investor could face the death penalty after Thailand's navy 
accused him of violating the country's sovereignty by building a "seastead" 
home off the coast, which he insisted was simply in pursuit of a vision of 
freedom.

Chad Elwartowski and his Thai girlfriend, Supranee Thepdet, known as Bitcoin 
Girl Thailand, are facing charges of threatening the kingdom's independence 
after the authorities found their ocean-based home about 12 nautical miles from 
shore.

But Elwartowski told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that their home was 13 nautical 
miles out, which he said is just outside Thailand's territorial waters.

An official complaint was filed at a Phuket police station, Police Colonel 
Nikorn Somsuk confirmed yesterday.

Col Nikorn told AFP: "The navy and its team... found a concrete tank floating 
on the sea but there was no one on it. So they filed a charge, citing Criminal 
Code Article 119."

If the couple are officially charged and found guilty, the maximum sentence 
Elwartowski and Supranee could face is the death penalty.

Col Nikorn said the navy would have to meet provincial officials "to consider 
what to do next".

The Royal Thai Navy said on Facebook the couple "did not seek permission from 
Thailand" before constructing their home.

Putting a call out to other interested investors also shows "they do not care 
about Thailand as a sovereign state".

But Elwartowski, who worked as a software engineer for the US military in 
Afghanistan, Germany and South Korea, told AFP that he and Supranee just wanted 
to live somewhere free.

"I like the idea of being able to vote with your home. If you don't like how 
your community is being run, you just float to a new one," he said.

The bitcoin-rich couple are part of Ocean Builders, a community of 
entrepreneurs who aim to build permanent homes in waters outside of government 
territory.

They had recently called for 20 interested investors for new seasteads to be 
built around their maiden platform, which is "just outside of Thailand's 
territorial waters", said Elwartowski.

On April 10, he put out a call for people to invest in an Initial Seastead 
Offering (ISeaO), which would have launched last Monday.

The ISeaO is now postponed, and Elwartowski said he and Supranee, whose English 
name is Nadia, just want to live together in peace.

"We didn't do anything on the seastead that was not legal on land but the 
feeling of being free is just amazing."

Some advocates of seasteading believe in creating "competing governments on the 
high seas", he said.

But Ocean Builders "never took a political stance" on the homes' purpose. "That 
was for the customers to decide," he said.

The couple is now hiding in "a fairly safe place".

A statement published on Monday on Ocean Builders' website said Elwartowski and 
Supranee were not responsible for the construction of the seastead.

(source: The Striats Times)








INDIA:

Mentally ill convict escapes the noose----SC commutes sentence to life



Severe mental illness in a condemned person post his conviction is a factor for 
commuting the death penalty, the Supreme Court has held.

The court held that mental illness formed post-conviction deprived the death 
row prisoner of his ability “to understand the implications of his actions and 
the consequences.”

“In this situation, the execution of such a person would lower the majesty of 
law... If the accused is not able to understand the impact and purpose of his 
execution because of his disability, the raison d’être for the execution itself 
collapses,” a Bench of Justices N.V. Ramana, Mohan M. Shantanagoudar and Indira 
Banerjee reasoned in their April 12 judgment.

The judgment came in a case of double murder of minor girls, both aged below 
nine, by their neighbour in 1999. The accused, kept anonymous by the court, has 
been awaiting execution in prison for 17 years.

The court issued guidelines for determining post-conviction mental illness. It 
did not want convicts to exploit the relief as a loophole to cheat the hangman. 
The assessment of the disability should be done by a multi-disciplinary team of 
qualified professionals (medical practitioners and criminologists), including 
professionals with expertise in the particular mental illness of an accused, 
the court said.

It would be up to the convict to prove with clear evidence that he suffered 
from severe mental illness. He had to demonstrate active, residual or prodromal 
symptoms. The state could also offer evidence to rebut the claim. In 
appropriate cases, the courts could set up panels of experts, Justice Ramana, 
who authored the verdict, explained. The convict from Maharashtra had raised 
the plea of post-conviction illness. The court commuted his death penalty to 
life without remission, saying he was still a threat to society.

(source: The Hindu)








VIETNAM

Vietnam police seize 900 kg of meth days after similar bust



Police in central Vietnam seized nearly a tonne of methamphetamine found 
abandoned by the side of the road on Wednesday, an officer told AFP, just days 
after another massive drug bust in the same region.

Local residents came across dozens of bags of white powder that had been left 
on the road near a salt field in central Nghe An province and reported them to 
police, an officer told AFP.

The residents thought they might be filled with salt or rubbish, but police 
later confirmed the sacks contained 900 kilograms (1,984 pounds) of meth, the 
largest recorded bust in years.

“We have identified 5 people related to the drugs and arrested three,” the 
police source said, requesting anonymity.

“We are searching for the other 2, who are on the run, including a foreigner,” 
he added.

He said authorities are investigating where the drugs came from, while state 
media said the meth haul was destined to be shipped outside Vietnam.

The bust comes just days after police in the same province found 600 kilograms 
of meth stuffed into stereo boxes in a home occupied by an elderly couple.

Synthetic drug use is on the rise in Vietnam and police have busted several 
homegrown labs in recent years.

But much of the country’s illegal supply floods in from the lawless “Golden 
Triangle” zone that straddles Laos, Thailand and Myanmar.

Though older users in Vietnam have long prefered opium and heroin as their 
narcotic of choice, younger people are increasingly turning to party drugs such 
as meth, ketamine and ecstasy.

Seven people died of suspected overdoses last year at an electronic music show 
in Hanoi, shocking many in the conservative city and prompting the government 
to ban festivals.

The 1-party communist state has some of the toughest drug laws in the world. 
Anyone caught with more than 600 grams (21 ounces) of heroin or more than 2.5 
kilograms of methamphetamine can face the death penalty.

(source: nst.com.my)



UNITED ARAB EMIRATES:

8 men get death penalty for armed robbery in Sharjah



The police found their fingerprints and identified the perpetrators.

The Criminal Court of Sharjah awarded death sentence to 8 men for armed robbery 
at a money exchange center in Sharjah.

The court accused the African nationals of armed robbery, public assault and 
seizing money by force, Emarat Al Youm reported.

Another defendant was also sentenced in the same case with 6 months in prison 
and deportation for possession of stolen money.

The accused denied the charges against him and said that one of the accusers' 
brother asked him to transfer Dh60,000 to his overseas account.

It was reported that some of the accusers confessed to their crime while some 
denied the charges against them.

According to the police's investigation, they checked the surveillance cameras 
and found fingerprints to identify the perpetrators. They were caught and 
admitted to their crime to the police.

One of the defendants returned part of the stolen money.

(source: Khaleej Times)








EGYPT:

Torture, threats and trumped-up charges: The story of an Egyptian on death row



The first time Nusela Harun saw her son after his arrest, he had cigarette 
burns all down his neck in geometric patterns.

“It was as if they enjoyed drawing on his neck," she told Middle East Eye.

The nerves in his hands were damaged because of how he was hanged from his 
wrists during interrogations - Nusela Harun, mother of Ahmed el-Shal

Harun, a lawyer, has already lost one son. Her eldest, Khaled el-Shal, was 
killed by Egyptian security forces along with nearly 1,000 others during the 
Rabaa massacre in 2013.

Now she’s worried she’s about to lose another son, Ahmed el-Shal, who has been 
condemned to death on the back of an apparently false confession extracted from 
the 30-year-old through torture.

He would join the 15 young men executed in Egypt since the beginning of 2019, 
convicted in trials the United Nations has poured doubts on and in a process 
described by one rights group as a “human rights crisis”.

Alongside Shal, nearly 50 others face imminent execution.

Ahmed disappears

Shal and Harun’s ordeal began on 28 February 2014, when they visited Khaled’s 
grave in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura where the family lives.

Tending Khaled’s grave had become a weekly ritual ever since he was shot dead 
in Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adaweya Square, as security forces cracked down on 
supporters of toppled president Mohamed Morsi following a 2013 military coup.

News from friends and neighbours on returning home, however, would upend that 
routine completely.

Abdullah Metwalli, the bodyguard of a judge who controversially tried Morsi in 
a trial condemned by Human Rights Watch as “badly flawed”, had been shot dead 
earlier that morning.

According to reports, Metwalli had been riding down the Mansoura motorway, when 
a gunman apparently pulled up beside him and shot him in the head.

3 days after the murder, the state security prosecution issued arrest warrants 
to 18 people accusing them of forming a “militant cell” to kill Metwalli.

A week later, on 6 March, Shal disappeared on his way to the nearby university 
where he was studying.

Shal never hid his opposition to the military coup or Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the 
general who led it before becoming president. He and his friends took part in 
regular, peaceful sit-ins to protest Morsi's ousting.

“But he never resorted to violence, even after his brother was killed in 
Rabaa,” Harun told MEE.

Shal, now 30, had just finished medical school and was doing an extra year of 
practice.

“He dreamed of being a paediatrician. He was planning to travel to the US to 
continue his studies,” Harun said.

Hours after Shal’s arrest, security forces raided Harun’s home without a 
warrant. They searched the house and “turned everything upside down”, she said.

“They attempted to extract confessions from me that Ahmed was intending to kill 
police officers in retaliation for the killing of his brother in Rabaa,” Shal’s 
mother recalled.

It seemed like déjà vu. Following Khaled’s killing, authorities had arrested 
and tortured another of her sons, Osama.

Osama managed to flee Egypt, fearing for his life. This time, Shal wouldn’t be 
so lucky.

Televised 'confession'

>From that moment on, Shal’s judicial process has been irregular and highly 
problematic. It has also been violent.

Almost exactly a year after he was arrested, a sober-looking Shal appeared on 
television beside two co-defendants.

As a microphone was passed between them, the youths confessed to Metwalli’s 
murder. Shal, with dark rings around his eyes, said he shot at the judge’s 
bodyguard 6 times from the back of a motorbike.

Interspersed with the confessions is footage of a table covered with arms the 3 
allegedly possessed. Assault rifles, handguns, knives, a shotgun and piles of 
ammunition.

It was the first time Harun had seen her son since he was arrested.

"I was about to lose my mind," she said about watching the footage. "I felt I 
didn't recognise him as my son. When we met later after the video, he told me, 
'I had to do this for your sake' because they threatened they would rape me if 
he didn't confess."

10 days passed until she got word of him again, when a lawyer told Shal’s 
family that he was being held in the notorious maximum security Scorpion Prison 
on the outskirts of Cairo.

They threatened to rape me in front of him. This is when he agreed to recite 
their confession on tape - Nusela Harun, Ahmed el-Shal's mother

Eventually, three months later, Shal and 23 others were referred by the 
prosecution to the criminal court on charges of joining the banned Muslim 
Brotherhood group that Morsi was a prominent member of.

Some of the defendants were accused of “premeditated murder” and others faced 
charges of being accomplices.

After a three-year trial, in June 2017, Egypt’s highest appeals court upheld 
the death penalty for 6 defendants: Shal, Basem Mohsen Elkhorieby (also known 
as Bassem Mohsen), Khaled Askar, Mahmoud Mamhouh Wahba, Ibrahim Yahia Azab and 
Abd Elrahman Attia. All but one were students

. Shal is the main defendant in what became known as the Mansoura Guard Murder 
case, accused of shooting Metwalli. The other 5 were convicted of being his 
accomplices.

Slapped, stripped and strung up

According to Harun, however, the conviction was primarily based on false 
confessions drawn out of Shal through “deadly torture”.

After being “electrocuted and raped with a stick”, Shal still refused to tell 
his torturers what they wanted to hear, Harun said.

It was then that they threatened to rape Harun in front of him, she said. "This 
is when he agreed to recite their confession on tape.”

After recording the confession, Shal was transferred to the national security 
agency headquarters blindfolded. An officer threatened to torture him again if 
he ever retracted his confession, his mother said.

Harun said she read her son’s torture testimony six months after it was taken.

When Harun received a copy, the lawyer immediately filed a complaint with the 
attorney-general, but no investigation was ever conducted.

Shal told his mother that he attended a hearing with the attorney-general on 21 
March, without a lawyer, and told him that he was innocent and forced to 
confess. This was also ignored, she said.

Middle East Eye has obtained an official copy of Shal’s testimony during an 
interrogation, noted down by his legal representatives.

In it, Shal describes in detail abuse meted out by security forces.

Ahmed el-Shal's torture testimony

“I deny all the charges, because I was not fully conscious when I said what I 
said before. When I was arrested, I was taken to the Mansoura police 
headquarters, blindfolded, slapped on my face, electrocuted, and hung on a door 
from my underarms.”

“When I was arrested they blindfolded me, and someone started kicking me, but I 
don’t know who he was because I was blindfolded.

"Then someone electrocuted me on my face, then I was taken to the room of an 
officer, who stripped me of my trousers and hung me from my hands and feet on a 
stick; then someone started inserting a stick into my anus repeatedly, and he 
turned it, and another one started electrocuting me on my legs and neck.

"Then they removed the blindfolds and I saw an officer whose name is Sherif Abu 
el-Naga. This was the same officer who asked me to take off my trousers then 
asked me to put them on. Afterwards they hung me on the door from my underarms. 
When they took me down, I felt that my hands were paralysed.

“I don’t know who raped me with a stick, because my head was on the other side.

“I have bruises on my shoulder and neck, and burns because they burnt it with 
cigarette butts.”

He says he was slapped, stripped, strung up and electrocuted. According to 
Shal’s testimony, Egyptian authorities also raped him using a stick.

“Someone started inserting a stick into my anus repeatedly, and he turned it, 
and another one started electrocuting me on my legs and neck,” Shal recounts in 
his testimony.

All the defendants in Shal’s case have recanted their confessions.

'Arbitrary deprivation of life'

The confession that Shal says is false and was forced out of him has not only 
condemned him, but gravely affected his due process as a defendant.

It has been used by the prosecution to justify questioning Shal without the 
presence of legal representation.

Meanwhile, the airing of the defendants’ confessions on national television 
ahead of their trial has been condemned by the Geneva-based rights group 
Committee for Justice, which said it violated the principle of the "presumption 
of innocence".

It said the prosecutors were aware that torture took place in national security 
agency offices, but “failed to uphold impartiality” towards the defendants as 
it “overlooked the torture testimonies”.

There is no accountability where trials are characterised by a myriad of 
irregularities, including torture - Agnes Callamard, UN special rapporteur

In addition to confessions, the prosecution primarily relied on the testimony 
of an Egyptian intelligence officer, Ahmed Khedr Abulmaati, who cited “secret 
sources” as the source of his information.

Meanwhile, much evidence used in the trial was marred by “major 
inconsistencies”, according to a letter to the Egyptian government from 
independent UN experts.

The bullets collected from Metwalli’s body did not match the rifle that was 
said to have been confiscated from Shal and supposedly used to kill the 
bodyguard.

Moreover, the motorbike said to have been used in the murder was a different 
colour to the one described by state security officers at the time.

And a crime scene report indicated that the killer must have been standing near 
the victim at the time of the crime, rather than riding a motorbike.

Agnes Callamard, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary 
executions, and one of the UN experts tasked with investigating the case, told 
MEE that the Egyptian government insisted in responses to her letters that the 
sentences were imposed in the context of Egypt’s war against terrorism.

She condemned the death sentences imposed in the case, criticising the 
international community for its “deafening silence” towards the growing number 
of executions in the country.

“Those responsible for attacks and killings must be held accountable for their 
crimes. But there is no accountability where trials are characterised by a 
myriad of irregularities, including torture,” she said.

“Death sentences in such cases amount to arbitrary deprivation of life.”

'Barely surviving'

Shal is not well. Harun said her son had two brain surgeries to remove tumours, 
affecting his balance.

“Though he dreamed of riding horses, he was never able to,” Harun said.

“He couldn’t ride motorbikes for that reason either,” she added pointedly.

Shal’s lawyers said during the trial that his condition would prevent him from 
firing accurately at any target, let alone a moving one from the back of a 
motorbike.

“It’s impossible,” Harun added.

Now Shal is being held in Wadi Natroun prison, in a tiny cell only just long 
enough for him to stretch out to sleep, Harun says. He is allowed to leave his 
cell for 1 hour a day.

“They have no toilet. They use bags and buckets to relieve themselves,” Harun 
said.

Things are tough at home too, as Harun and her family are caught in limbo, 
fearing the worst.

“Life is very difficult after the death of Khaled and the arrest of Ahmed. We 
are barely surviving.”

(source: middleeaseeye.net)








BRUNEI:

If Brunei’s New Stoning Law is Enforced, Sanction the Sultan



This month, the Sultanate of Brunei confirmed plans to impose a new penal code 
with brutal punishments. These include whipping or death by stoning for 
extramarital sex and anal sex, among other things, and amputations of limbs for 
theft. Abortion is also criminalized, and lesbian sex is punished by 40 lashes.

Many of these new “crimes” were already prohibited under the country’s Syariah 
Penal Code Order, published in October 2013, but had not been enforced.

Criminalizing extramarital or homosexual sexual activity is contrary to 
international human rights norms, and the code’s punishments amount to grave 
human rights violations under international treaties prohibiting torture and 
other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. Not surprisingly, the new 
Shariah (Islamic law) code has been condemned by several governments, the 
United Nations, and human rights groups.

Condemnations from activist celebrities such as George Clooney and others have 
included calls for boycotts of businesses owned by the Sultan of Brunei, such 
as the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles and the Dorchester Hotel in London. 
Investment companies are now publicly weighing the reputational risk of doing 
business with Brunei or businesses funded or supported by the country’s 
sovereign wealth fund.

However, there is another, more targeted way to put pressure on Brunei to 
abandon these provisions: impose sanctions on the sultan. Governments that 
really want to send a tough message should be informing Brunei that any of its 
government officials implicated in the execution of the country’s new law and 
punishments, including the sultan, could face travel bans and financial 
sanctions, including seizure of their assets.

In recent years, the United States and several other countries have adopted 
Global Magnitsky laws that can be used to impose financial sanctions, seize 
property and bank accounts, and impose travel restrictions on government 
officials implicated in the commission of gross human rights abuses. These laws 
are named after a Russian whistleblower, Sergei Magnitsky, who was killed in 
2009 while in Russian custody, in retaliation for exposing corruption.

Global Magnitsky laws differ slightly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and 
are being adopted differently in the European Union, but they have a common 
basis. They allow governments to seize assets, freeze bank accounts, and bar 
travel by government officials implicated in torture, extrajudicial killings, 
enforced disappearances, and other serious human rights violations.

Those responsible for imposing stoning, amputating, or whipping of criminal 
suspects would meet these laws’ criteria, and the sultan himself could be 
sanctioned for imposing the new code and ordering its execution.

Foreign government officials should be putting Brunei on notice that they 
intend to use these laws if Brunei carries out the country’s horrific legal 
provisions. Concerned governments should be warning the sultan that they can 
seize his extensive properties – the luxury hotels, a polo park, and several 
major estates and homes around Kensington and Ascot in London – while cutting 
him off from banking systems and preventing him from traveling through their 
territory.

This approach would potentially impose less harm on the workers of the many 
establishments owned by the sultan or the government, because if handled 
responsibly in escrow, even after seizure in many cases the businesses could 
continue to operate.

A government that criminalizes private sexual activity and then imposes brutal 
execution and torture as the punishment should not be tolerated anywhere in the 
world. Criticism and condemnation are not enough. It’s time for Brunei and its 
ruler to face consequences.

(source: Human Rights Watch)








IRAQ:

Iraqi court sentences IS member to death for involvement in sniper attacks



An Iraqi court has sentenced an Islamic State militant to death by hanging over 
his involvement in several sniper attacks in the country.

The Central Criminal Court in Baghdad handed the Islamic State militant the 
death penalty for shooting dead several security forces and members of the 
Popular Mobilization Forces in sniper attacks in Nineveh province, Baghdad 
Today website quoted the Supreme Judicial Council media center as saying in a 
press statement on Thursday.

The Islamic State “terrorist admitted belonging to the Islamic State group and 
standing behind the killing of several security personnel,” said the statement.

Iraqi courts have sentenced many of Islamic State members, including a big 
number of female members, to death over joining the militant group.

The exact number of detained militants is still unknown, however, it’s 
estimated to be at thousands. It’s also unclear how many members are likely to 
face death sentences.

Iraqi authorities regularly announce the capture of Islamic State extremists in 
different parts in the country since the collapse of the group’s territorial 
influence in the country in December 2017.

(source: iraqinews.com)




BANGLADESH:

Kushtia man gets death for murder, another sentenced to life for rape



A man in Kushtia has been handed the death penalty for the murder of a fruit 
trader 2 years ago while another has been sentenced to life imprisonment in a 
9-year-old case of child rape.

The verdicts were passed by the Kushtia District and Sessions Judge Arup Kumar 
Goswami and Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal Judge Munshi Md 
Moshiar Rahman, respectively, on Wednesday.

While Nur Alam, the death penalty recipient, was in court when the verdict was 
announced, Jamal Uddin, who was given a life sentence, is still at large.

According to the case dossier, police found the body of fruit trader Rabiul 
Islam stuffed in a plastic drum at Kushtia city's Chourhash intersection on Jun 
20, 2017.

Following the incident, Rabiul's wife Borna Akhtar as plaintiff initiated a 
murder case against Nur Alam with Kushtia Model Police.

The trial began after the police submitted charge sheets against Nur and Tipu 
Mondol on Dec 5, 2017. Tipu was subsequently acquitted as the charges against 
him could not be proved.

On the other hand, Jamal was accused of luring a neighbour's child to his home 
in Kushtia city's Kalishankarpur and raping her on Oct 9, 2010.

The charge sheet against Jamal was submitted to court on Dec 1, 2010 after a 
case was initiated with the Kushtia Model Police by the child's mother.

(source: bdnews24.com)








PAKISTAN:

PTI govt to waive death penalty for extradited suspects



The federal cabinet on Tuesday approved to amend a law to waive death penalty 
for the accused persons to be extradited from the European Union (EU) and also 
gave provincial counter terrorism departments the powers to investigate money 
laundering cases.

The provincial departments have been given the power to probe case of money 
laundering in a bid to fulfill conditions of the Financial Action Task Force 
(FATF) that would hold second review of the implementation of its 27-point 
action plan next month.

The Asia Pacific Group (APG) – a FATF-style regional body – had declared lack 
of power to probe money laundering cases as a critical deficiency in Pakistani 
laws.

“In order to remove a hurdle in the way of extradition of politically 
influential people from the EU, the federal cabinet approved to amend the 
section 302 of Pakistan Penal Code of 1860,” said Information Minister Fawad 
Chaudhry while briefing the media about the meeting.

The minister said the decision to waive death penalty would help in extradition 
of the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) former chief Altaf Hussain, former 
finance minister Ishaq Dar and Hussain Nawaz and Hasan Nawaz – sons of former 
prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

H said the EU laws bar extradition of people to the countries that have capital 
punishment. “Many people could not be extradited from the EU due to death 
penalty in Pakistan,” he added.

The section 302 of the PPC says whoever commits qatl-e-amd [premeditated 
murder] shall be punished with death as qisas [retaliation in kind]; punished 
with death or imprisonment for life as ta’zir [penalty] having regard to the 
facts and circumstances of the case.

The minister did not clarify whether the government would promulgate a 
presidential ordinance or present a bill in parliament to amend the PPC of 
1860. In case it takes the parliament’s route, it will take months before the 
amendment is passed.

(source: The Express Tribune)