[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

January 27




PAKISTAN:

1 given death penalty in triple murder case



The Additional Sessions Judge Fatehjang Saturday given death penalty and 
10-year imprisonment to one Khalid Mehmood in a triple murder case.

The culprit, Khalid Mehmood of Mirza village a year ago had shot dead his wife, 
sister-in-law) and an aunt and injured another relative woman over a domestic 
disputeIt may be added that Khalid Mehmood had killed a woman some years ago in 
his village and was imprisoned.

(source: urdupoint.com)








PHILIPPINES:

Roque says no to death penalty in drug crimes----Former presidential 
spokesperson Harry Roque contradicts the Duterte administration on death 
penalty for drug-related crimes



Former presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said on Sunday, January 27, that 
he opposes the reimposition of death penalty for drug-related crimes, 
contradicting the Duterte administration he once served.

Roque put up the sign "no" when asked about it on Sunday during CNN 
Philippines' 2nd senatorial forum, "The Filipino Votes."

Roque, a former human rights lawyer, fought against the death penalty during 
his time as Kabayan party-list representative. The House of Representatives has 
passed a bill on capital punishment covering drug pushers and drug lords.

Of the 7 participants in Sunday's forum, only former interior secretary Alunan 
said he is in favor of executing drug convicts.

Opposition candidates Neri Colmenares, Samira Gutoc, Florin Hilbay, Harry 
Roque, Mar Roxas, and Erin Tañada all voted no.

The forum's format does not allow the candidates to explain their answer, but a 
succeeding question allowed Alunan to expound.

Saying that reforming the criminal justice system is one way to solve the 
country's drug problems, Alunan said: "Society takes care of its addicts, while 
the government takes care of the syndicates. I would like to impose the death 
penalty for drug-related crimes especially against the syndicates who undermine 
the society, and undermine the government."

In a recent interview on ANC, Alunan said he is hoping that Duterte could 
endorse him to boost his chances.

Duterte has teased his own lineup, but has not mentioned Alunan, even Roque, so 
far.

(source: rappler.com)








IRAN----execution

Iran publicly hangs man on homosexuality charges----Iranian media reported that 
the 31-year-old kidnapped 2 15-year-olds.

The Islamic Republic of Iran publicly hanged a 31-year-old Iranian man after he 
was found guilty of charges related to violations of Iran’s anti-gay laws, 
according to the state-controlled Iranian Students’ News Agency.

The unidentified man was hanged on January 10 in the southwestern city of 
Kazeroon based on criminal violations of “lavat-e be onf” – sexual intercourse 
between two men, as well as kidnapping charges, according to ISNA. Iran’s 
radical sharia law system proscribes the death penalty for gay sex.

“The LGBT community in Iran has lived in terror for the last 40 years,” said 
Alireza Nader, CEO of Washington, DC-based research and advocacy organization 
New Iran. “Next time Foreign Minister Zarif speaks in Washington, the host and 
audience should ask him why his regime is one of the top executioner of gays in 
the world.”

According to a 2008 British WikiLeaks dispatch, Iran’s mullah regime executed 
“between 4,000 and 6,000 gays and lesbians” since the Islamic Revolution in 
1979.

“Iran is not only the most dangerous threat to Israel’s security, it is also a 
champion in the state murder of actual or perceived homosexuals,” said Volker 
Beck, a German Party Green Party politician and a lecturer at the Center for 
Studies in Religious Sciences (CERES) at the Ruhr University in Bochum. “It 
would be desirable for the federal government to make Iran’s human rights 
violations more of an issue.”

Beck played a key role in bringing about marriage equality in Germany for gays 
and lesbians.

Germany is slated to appoint a banker, who would work in France, to administer 
a financial mechanism to bypass US sanctions against Iran’s regime. The EU 
seeks to circumvent US sanctions against Iran to preserve the 2015 nuclear 
deal. The United States withdrew from the deal in 2018 because of its alleged 
deficiencies, including the regime’s destabilizing policies in the Middle East. 
The US government has highlighted the widespread human rights violations in 
Iran.

Kazeroon is the capital of Kazeroon County, where the execution of the 
31-year-old man was carried out, and is located in Fars Province, Iran. The 
city has population of 143,869 as of 2017. The ISNA report said “the citizens 
of Kazeroon expressed satisfaction and thanked the judiciary.” The statement 
about citizens of Kazeroon could not be independently verified.

In 2016, The Jerusalem Post reported Iran’s regime had executed a gay 
adolescent that year – the 1st confirmed execution of someone convicted as a 
juvenile in the Islamic Republic.

Hassan Afshar, 19, was hanged in Arak Prison in Iran’s Markazi Province on July 
18, 2016, after he was convicted of “forced male-to-male anal intercourse” in 
early 2015.

In 2011, Iran’s regime executed 3 Iranian men after being found guilty of 
charges related to homosexuality.

Axel M. Hochrein, a spokesman for the Hirschfeld-Eddy-Stiftung Foundation, 
which fights to advance the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender 
people, told the Post:

“Iran is one of the worst states for the persecution of LGBTI. The state 
publicly and regularly boasts of the execution of gay men. The ability to 
influence the Iranian regime regarding inhuman violations of human rights is 
very limited because of the isolated situation in the country. Therefore, our 
foundation calls for increased efforts by the international community to help 
LGBTI people escape and provide safe asylum.”

(source: Jerusalem Post)








VIETNAM:

HCMC gang trafficking drugs from Cambodia busted----Bui Pham Duy presents the 
drug after he is arrested by police in Ho Chi Minh City in a still image 
captured in a video by police.



The Saigon police have busted a gang smuggling in drugs from Cambodia after 
catching a member red-handed while selling some to a woman.

By Saturday they had seized 38 kilos of narcotics from the gang.

They had been surveilling Bui Pham Duy, 36, of Hoc Mon District for a while, 
and last Tuesday followed him on suspicion he was going for a drop.

Officers caught him meeting Nguyen Thi Xuan Van, 29, near a school in Hoc Mon 
and handing over a package.

They jumped in and caught them in the act.

Inside were 4 kilograms of methamphetamine, half a kilo of ketamine, a 
synthetic drug, and 5,000 ecstasy pills.

They then searched Duy’s home and found 20 kilos of meth, 15,000 ecstasy pills 
and 6 kilos of ketamine.

The gang, run by Duy and Nguyen Hong Chau, 32, another local, has been 
trafficking drugs into the city from Cambodia for years.

Vietnam has some of the world’s toughest drug laws.

Those convicted of possessing or smuggling more than 600 grams of heroin or 
more than 2.5 kilograms of methamphetamines face the death penalty. The 
production or sale of 100 grams of heroin or 300 grams of other illegal 
narcotics is also punishable by death.

While heroin has long been common among users in Vietnam, the use of synthetic 
drugs like meth or ecstasy is on the rise, especially among youth.

7 people died after using drugs at an electronic music festival in September 
last year in Hanoi, sparking off an alarm.

(source: vnexpress.net)








ENGLAND:

Bristol's dark history of executions: Who they were and what they 
did----Capital punishment was abolished in the UK in 1964

While some countries still practice it, the UK stopped punishing people 
convicted of murder with the death penalty almost 50 years ago.

But before that date dozens of people every year would be sent to the gallows 
to receive the ultimate sentence of their crimes, many of which would take 
place take in Bristol.

Initially executions took place at Gallows Acre at the top of St. Michael's 
Hill until 1816. After that they were conducted at New Gaol on Spike Island 
until 1849 before public executions were prohibited and they were done in 
Horfield Prison.

While never used again in the country, the death penalty remained a technical 
option for punishment of those found guilty of treason until it was completely 
abolished in 1998, and further enshrined by the European Convention of Human 
Rights in 2004.

Below is a list of the people hanged by the state for committing murder in 
Bristol, compiled by Capital Punishment UK., in the last 100 years.

It shows many were found guilty of killing either relatives or loved ones with 
all perpetrators between the ages of 21 and 34, bar one.

Name Age Date Victim(s)

Frederick Morse 34 25th July 1933 Doris (Dorothy) Winifred Brewer (niece)

Reginald Hinks 32 3rd May 1934 James Pullen (father in law)

Frederick Austin 28 30th April 1942 Lillian Austin (wife)

Ernest Digby 34 16th March 1944 Dawn Digby (daughter)

Eugeniusz Jurkiewicz 34 30th December 1947 Emily Bowers

Ronald Atwell 24 13th July 1950 Lily Palmer

? Edward Woodfield 49 14th December 1950 Ethel Worth

Thomas Eames 31 15th July 1952 Muriel Bent (girlfriend)

Miles Giffard 27 24th February 1953 Charles & Elizabeth Giffard (parents)

John Greenway 27 20th October 1953 Beatrice Court

Russell Pascoe and Dennis Whitty 24 17th December 1963 William Garfield Rowe

Edward Palmer 23 19th March 1913 Ada Louisa James (girlfriend)

William Bressington 21 31st March 1925 Gilbert Caleb Amos

Edward Palmer 23 19th March 1913 Ada Louisa James (girlfriend)

William Bressington 21 31st March 1925 Gilbert Caleb Amos

The 'Half-Hanged'

There are 2 records of men having suffered half hangings in Bristol, meaning 
they had not actually died from the hanging but in were in fact later found to 
be alive.

While both suffered the painful treatment on the same day in September 1736, 
they would have very different outcomes.

While he seemed to make a full recovery John Vernham, who has broken into a 
house, would die later that night "in great intestinal agony" as the sheriff 
waited to re-arrest him. As reported by Capital Punishment UK it was suspected 
to be a poisoning but a massive blood cut is believed more likely.

As for Joshua “Half-Hanged” Harding who had been found guilty of stealing from 
a shop, he was removed and returned to Newgate Prison (where you will now find 
the entrance to the Galleries Car park) where his sentence was later commuted 
to transportation to the colonies for 14 years after being deemed “defective in 
his intellects”.

One of the last death penalties was carried out in Horfield

One grim December morning in 1963, the last man to die at Bristol Prison took 
the long walk to the gallows.

Russell Pascoe was sentenced to hang by the neck until dead for a murder which 
took place in Cornwall.

The execution of the 24-year-old and his accomplice - staged simultaneously in 
two separate prisons - was the 2nd-last ever to be carried out in Britain.

The night before Pascoe’s death Robert Douglas, a prison officer, took him a 
cream doughnut and they talked over a cup of tea.

“They weighed me today so they know how far I’ll drop,” Pascoe told the officer 
in a grim moment.

Pascoe’s brother arrived at 11pm. He was late because his scooter had broken 
down on the long ride up to Bristol from Cornwall.

The two brothers reportedly had a stilted conversation, neither knowing what to 
say to the other.

At 8am the following morning those in the prison heard the dull thud as the 
trapdoor swing open in the execution chamber.

About 50 people gathered outside to protest against capital punishment, which 
would be suspended 2 years later.

Pascoe’s accomplice, Dennis Whitty, 22, was also hanged on the same day, in 
Winchester Prison, for the same crime.

Both young men were labourers from Kenwyn Hill caravan site in Truro, Cornwall. 
They had murdered William Garfield Rowe, 64, a recluse who lived in an isolated 
farmhouse.

Bristol's most shocking crimes

• Amelia Dyer is thought to be one of Britain's worst serial killers ----The 
Bristol baby killer

•Robert Parrington Jackson murdered in Odeon cinema in 1946. Union Street, 
Bristol ----Shot down at the cinema

•Murdered children June and Royston Sheasby ----Babes in the woods

•Bristol murder victim Philip Green ----The boy bludgeoned

•Christopher Hampton was jailed for murdering Melanie Road ----The man with a 
dark secret

•The murder of Sharon Hoare remains a mystery 25 years on ----A high-class 
prostitute & expensive flat

•Christopher Hewitt was stabbed in front of a crowd of 15 people in June 2001, 
but police have never caught his killer. ----15 witnesses but none talking

•The murder that shamed a city

The killers suspected Mr Rowe had a fortune hidden at his house, near Falmouth.

On August 14, 1963, the pair armed themselves with a starting pistol, a knife 
and an iron bar, and knocked on his door at around 11pm. They claimed they had 
crashed a helicopter and needed to use his phone.

Whitty attacked Mr Rowe with a knife, while Pascoe used an iron bar. Their 
victim was left with wounds to the head, a fractured skull, a broken jaw, a 
severed finger and five chest wounds, including one knife wound to the heart.

After the slaying, the men bragged about what they had done to three women who 
lived at their caravan park, who went to the police.

The last person to be executed for a crime other than murder was Theodore 
Schurch, who was hanged for treachery in 1946.

(source: bristolpost.co.uk)








INDIA:

MP High Court Awards Death Sentence To Child Rapist----The court said that the 
the law should impose a punishment befitting the crime.



The Madhya Pradesh High Court on Friday pronounced death sentence to a 
schoolteacher in a case of raping a four-year-old girl in Satna district.

Confirming the death penalty of the convict, Mahendra Singh Gond, a division 
bench of justices P K Jaiswal and Anjuli Palo said the court should impose a 
punishment befitting the crime.

Gond, a schoolteacher, was convicted and sentenced to death by a trial court in 
Satna district in September last year, government advocate Brahmadatt Singh 
said.

The convict had appealed against the trial court judgment in the high court.

The bench observed, "In the present scenario, where such crimes are 
continuously increasing, reformative ideas are totally ineffective.

"Justice demands that the court should impose a punishment befitting the crime 
so that it reflects the public abhorrence of the crime."

It further said, "It could not be conceived from a person, who is performing 
the pious duty of a teacher, who is expected to nurture the character and 
morality in the children of the nation, to commit such kind of a heinous act 
which is tantamount to moral turpitude."

The trial court had sentenced Gond to death under the recently-introduced 
section 376(a)(b) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

The convict was also found guilty under IPC section 363 (kidnapping), for which 
he was sentenced to seven years of rigorous imprisonment, besides being fined 
Rs 5,000, Singh said.

The incident had occurred on July 1, 2018 in Parasmaniya village when the 
convict had gone to meet the father of the girl, he added.

Finding the girl sleeping alone in the courtyard of her house at night, he had 
taken her to a nearby field and raped her, the government advocate said.

The girl was found in an unconscious state by her parents near the field the 
next morning, the counsel said.

Subsequently, the father of the girl had lodged an FIR with the local police 
and Gond was arrested, he added.

(source: outlookindia.com)