[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

June 17




SAUDI ARABIA:

Saudi Arabia May Execute Teenager for His Protests — Including When He Was 10



In 2011, as Arab Spring protests swept across the Middle East, demonstrations 
also kicked off in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province. Members of the 
kingdom’s repressed Shiite minority took to the streets, calling for equal 
rights and a fairer distribution of oil revenues. The protesters included a 
group of around 30 kids on bicycles. As a video released last week by CNN 
shows, those children were led by a smiling 10-year-old in flip-flops named 
Murtaja Qureiris.

“The people demand human rights!” the young boy can be seen shouting through a 
megaphone.

Here’s the problem: Demanding human rights in Saudi Arabia lands you in prison. 
Even if you’re a kid.

Three years later, in September 2014, 13-year-old Murtaja was arrested while on 
his way to neighboring Bahrain with his family.

“At the time,” reports CNN, “he was considered by lawyers and activists to be 
the youngest known political prisoner in Saudi Arabia.

Over the past four years, say human rights groups, this teenager has been 
subjected to torture and intimidation, as well as a spell in solitary 
confinement. He has been denied access to a lawyer while interrogators try to 
get him to confess to the trumped-up charges against him. These include 
“participating in anti-government protests, attending the funeral of his 
brother Ali Qureiris who was killed in a protest in 2011, joining a ‘terrorist 
organization,’ throwing Molotov cocktails at a police station, and firing at 
security forces,” according to Amnesty International.

Last week, we learned that Saudi prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for 
18-year-old Murtaja, who is being tried in an anti-terror court. CNN reports 
that the prosecutors want to “impose the harshest form of the death penalty, 
which may include crucifixion or dismemberment after execution.”

Got that? The unelected government of a close ally of the United States is 
planning on brutally executing an 18-year-old member of a minority group, for 
crimes allegedly committed when he was 10 years old.

Let me repeat: 10. Years. Old.

We shouldn’t forget the person who is primarily responsible for this outrage: 
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS. Since his father installed him in 
power, the violent crushing of political dissent has escalated. According to 
the CIA, MBS ordered the horrific murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal 
Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. He is also behind the 
targeting of three Arab activists in Norway, Canada, and the United States.

Much has (rightly) been made of the crown prince’s shocking record on 
extrajudicial killings. But what of the growing number of judicially sanctioned 
killings inside of Saudi Arabia on his watch? The planned execution of Murtaja 
Qureiris may be the most horrendous act yet.

“There should be no doubt that the Saudi Arabian authorities are ready to go to 
any length to crack down on dissent against their own citizens, including by 
resorting to the death penalty for men who were merely boys at the time of 
their arrest,” says Lynn Maalouf, Middle East research director at Amnesty 
International.

The Gulf kingdom is one of the world’s top executioners and, according to 
Maalouf, Saudi authorities have “a chilling track record of using the death 
penalty as a weapon to crush political dissent and punish anti-government 
protesters — including children — from the country’s persecuted Shi’a 
minority.”

The majority of the country, and the ruling family, are from a strict school of 
Sunni Islam called Salafism. In April, 37 people were executed in a single day 
— the biggest mass execution in the kingdom since 2016 — and the vast majority 
of them were believed to be Shiites. Three of them, according to human rights 
group Reprieve, were “minors at the time of their alleged offences.” Such 
executions, as both Reprieve and Amnesty International have noted, are a brazen 
violation of international human rights law.

Another 3 Saudi Shiites — Ali al-Nimr, Dawood al-Marhoon, and Abdullah al-Zaher 
— who were also below the age of 18 at the time of their alleged crimes, are 
still on death row and could be executed at anytime.

It isn’t just Shiites, either. MBS has also targeted Sunni clerics who have 
failed to fall into line. There have been reports that the belligerent and 
thin-skinned crown prince plans on executing three high-profile Saudi religious 
scholars — Salman al-Odah, Awad al-Qarni, and Ali al-Omari — all of whom have 
been held on multiple charges of “terrorism.” 62-year-old Odah is famous in the 
Arab world for his relatively progressive views on Islam and homosexuality and 
his 2007 denunciation of Osama bin Laden. His actual “crime”? Tweeting a prayer 
for reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and its Gulf rival, the Emirate of 
Qatar. (Full disclosure: I host 2 TV shows for Qatar-funded Al Jazeera 
English.)

Supporters of MBS often try and argue that these executions are the product of 
decisions made in court, not in the royal palace. This is a laughable defense. 
The kingdom of Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy. There is no independent 
judiciary. As CNN reports, “The death penalty can only be enforced by order of 
King Salman or his authorized representative. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman 
is frequently characterized as the King’s deputy.”

Forget MBS the reformer; meet MBS the executioner. The fact that he has been 
embraced closely by everyone from Donald Trump to Emmanuel Macron to Theresa 
May should be a source of shame for those of us living in the West. To quote 
former Obama-era National Security Council spokesperson Tommy Vietor, MBS is 
“Kim Jong Un with oil money.”

(source: Mehdi Hasan, theintercept.com)








SUDAN:

Sudanese general promises executions over deadly protest crackdown



A top Sudanese general said yesterday that he would execute anyone found 
responsible for killing protesters after June 3, when security forces moved to 
break up a sit-in outside the headquarters of the armed forces in Khartoum.

“We are working hard to take those who did this to the gallows,” said Lt Gen 
Mohamed Dagalo, deputy chairman of the Transitional Military Council that took 
charge after the military toppled president Omar Al Bashir.

He pledged that whoever committed any wrongdoing would be held accountable.

Mr Al Bashir, 75, Sudan’s authoritarian ruler of 29 years, made his 1st public 
appearance since he was ousted from power and detained shortly after.

He was shown by Al Arabiya television in a traditional white robe and turban as 
he was led to a prosecutor’s office for questioning on charges of money 
laundering and illegal possession of ­foreign currency.

l Gen Dagalo also deepened the rift between the military council and protest 
leaders.

He suggested in a televised address that an agreement reached by the 2 sides on 
a transitional legislature no longer stood, including on the composition of the 
chamber.

The two sides had agreed before their negotiations collapsed after the break-up 
of the sit-in that the umbrella group of political parties and trade unions 
representing protesters – the Forces of Freedom and Change – would take 2/3 of 
the chamber’s 300 seats.

It was to be an acknowledgment of the group’s pivotal role in 4 months of 
street protests against Mr Al Bashir.

Gen Dagalo has been the most among the generals in his stance towards the 
protest leaders, questioning the extent of their representation and calling 
them foreign agents.

He has been keen to counter the weight of the mostly liberal and secular 
leaders. In a televised address on Saturday, he spoke of plots hatched against 
Sudan, attempts to sow sedition in the country and foreign envoys in Sudan to 
destroy it.

The Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary force whose origins are in a tribal 
militia in the western Darfur region, are widely blamed by activists and 
witnesses for the killing of scores of protesters in the raid on the camp and 
in the crackdown that followed.

A doctors’ group associated with the protest movement said more than 100 people 
were killed, including 40 whose bodies were thrown into the Nile before members 
of the forces retrieved them and took them to an unknown destination.

Authorities say only 61 were killed and the Transitional Military Council 
ordered an investigation into the violence.

The generals said an unspecified number of arrests were made, but gave no 
detail.

A spokesman for the military council said yesterday that it did not order the 
dispersal of the sit-in and that the intention was to purge an outlying part of 
the sit-in area called Colombia.

But they said the deaths occurred as a result of field commanders not sticking 
to the plan.

Brig Abderrahim Badreddine, spokesman for the investigative committee, said 
initial findings showed “officers and soldiers of different ranks from regular 
forces entered the sit-in without any orders from their superiors”.

“They were not part of the troops who were ordered to clean Colombia,” Brig 
Badreddine told state television.

The US assistant secretary of state for Africa said survivors of the violence 
told him stories about the raid on the encampment.

He spoke of “murder, rape and pillaging” during the crackdown and called for an 
independent and credible investigation.

Gen Dagalo’s assertion yesterday that capital punishment awaited anyone found 
responsible for the violence appeared to be a response to growing calls for an 
international investigation, something that the generals have already rejected.

The Rapid Support Forces fought rebels in Darfur in the 2000s on behalf of Mr 
Al Bashir’s government. Its members have been blamed for a range of war crimes 
as it suppressed the rebellion.

Mr Al Bashir has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes 
against humanity and genocide during the Darfur conflict.

Before the June 3 violence, negotiations between the protest leaders and the 
military council foundered over the composition and leadership of a proposed 
council to operate as a collective head of state.

Both wanted leadership and majority of the interim council.

(source: thenational.ae)