[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide----INDIA, EGY., IRAN

[Rick Halperin]

June 22




INDIA:

Bombay HC stays execution of 2 death row convicts----Both were convicted for 
kidnap, rape, and murder of a BPO worker in Pune in 2007



The Bombay High Court on Friday stayed the execution of 2 men scheduled to hang 
in 3 days for the rape and murder of a BPO employee in Pune in 2007.

A Division Bench of Justices B.P. Dharmadikari and Swapna Joshi was hearing 2 
criminal petitions filed by Pradeep Kokade and Purshottam Borate seeking a stay 
on their execution scheduled for June 24 in Pune. The two were convicted for 
the kidnap, rape and murder of a BPO employee on November 2007, when she was 
leaving for home from work at night. Borate, the cab driver, and his friend 
Kokade, were convicted and sentenced to death in 2012. Soon thereafter HC and 
Supreme Court upheld the death penalty and their mercy petitions were also 
rejected in 2016 by the Maharashtra Governor and the President of India in 
2017.

In their plea both said, “excessive and unexplained delay of over four years 
(1509 days) in execution of the sentence of death causes unnecessary and 
unavoidable pain, suffering and mental torment that constitutes cruel and 
unusual punishment violative of Article 21 (right to life) of the Indian 
Constitution.”

Advocate Yug Chaudhry, appearing for the 2, told the court that there has been 
a delay in issuance of the warrants for execution of the death penalty.

He said the Centre has declined to give them some documents pertaining to the 
recommendations made by officers in the Ministry of Home Affairs on the basis 
of which the mercy petitions were rejected by President in 2017.

After hearing arguments from the petitioners, advocate general and additional 
solicitor general, the court ruled that the execution shall not take place on 
June 24 and directed the Union government to file an affidavit on whether they 
are willing to give those documents. The court held the convicts should be a 
given a chance to fight their case and adjourned the matter to June 25.

(source: The Hindu)








EGYPT:

Rights group demands Egyptian juvenile not be executed



Amnesty International is demanding that Egypt not execute a man arrested at age 
17 ahead of an anticipated death sentence.

The rights group released a statement Friday saying that international human 
rights law prohibits the use of the death penalty against people who were under 
18 at the time of the crime.

In April, an Egyptian court referred the case of Karim Hemada to the Grand 
Mufti, the highest religious authority in Egypt, to seek his opinion on the 
execution verdict, signaling the court's intention to convict him and sentence 
him to death.

Hemada was 17 years old at the time of his arrest in January 2016. He is 
accused of belonging to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group, possessing 
weapons, assaulting policemen and vandalizing properties in 2016. The verdict 
is expected Saturday.

(source: Associated Press)








IRAN:

Continuing a Hardline Trend, Iran Accelerates Imposition of Death Sentences



On Wednesday, the National Council of Resistance of Iran reported that the 
deputy head of the Iranian judiciary, Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, had been 
granted authority by the regime’s supreme leader to impose death sentences and 
orders of qisas, or “retribution in kind.” The move was evidently the result of 
a direct request by the nation’s top legal authority, Ebrahim Raisi, in the 
interest of accelerating the processing of capital cases.

Iran already maintains its status as the nation with the world’s highest rate 
of executions per capita, with approximately 3,600 individuals having been 
hanged since President Hassan Rouhani took office in 2013. Although still 
higher than any other nation except China, the annual number of confirmed 
executions declined last year to 285. But Raisi’s request and Ali Khamenei’s 
response suggest that this downturn may turn out to be short-lived.

The lower annual figure reflects a change in the Islamic Republic’s drug laws, 
permitting lesser sentences in the cases of non-violent drug trafficking 
involving small-to-moderate quantities of banned substances. Yet questions 
quickly emerged as to whether the new sentencing guidelines were being 
consistently applied. And in any event, other groups have continued to be 
subject to the death penalty despite factors that define their executions as 
violations of international law.

According to Iran Human Rights Monitor, at least 10 political prisoners were 
executed in 2018, along with at least 6 individuals who were under the age of 
18 at the time of their alleged crimes. 11 hangings are known to have been 
carried out in public, and the crowds at such events have been known to include 
children.

The above statistics were cited in the context of a report explaining that 5 
more Iranian prisoners had been put to death on Wednesday alone. 2 of these 
killings took place in Rajai Shahr Prison, although there was reportedly 
potential for several more in that same facility. The Iran Human Rights website 
had previously reported that at least 5 and perhaps as many as 10 inmates had 
been transferred to solitary confinement at Rajai Shahr in preparation for 
their executions.

The postponement of some of those hangings reflects a trend of psychological 
torture in the Islamic Republic. Some death row inmates have reported being 
moved into solitary confinement then returned to their normal cells on several 
different occasions, making it effectively impossible to know when a capital 
sentence is actually going to be carried out. But whereas this is no doubt a 
deliberate tactic of torture in some cases, there are other cases in which the 
ambiguity results from the peculiar practice of qisas.

This Islamic legal principle allows the families of victims to forgive alleged 
perpetrators of crimes including murder, generally in exchange for the payment 
of blood money. In one of the recent cases from Rajai Shahr, the inmate’s 
execution was entirely cancelled on the order of the victim’s family. In 
another three cases, the prisoners were reportedly returned to their cells 
after the victims’ families requested that they be granted additional time to 
raise the requested sums.

This goes to show that the rate of execution in the Islamic Republic would 
probably be significantly higher than it already is, if not for the 
intervention of ordinary citizens. In some cases, such intervention may be 
motivated by compassion, but it is also true that the vast majority of the 
population is struggling with poverty and therefore desperately in need of the 
money that might be raised via qisas.

This muddying of the waters on Iran’s capital punishment statistics was evident 
in Iranian state media’s reporting on the newfound authority of the judiciary’s 
deputy head. The ISNA news agency reported that in the two and a half months 
since Mohseni-Ejei was empowered to impose capital punishment, the judiciary 
has “facilitated the conclusion of more than 600 cases of qisas and execution.” 
It is unclear what portion of these 600 cases are expected to actually result 
in the inmate’s hanging, and in any event that figure may differ from the 
number of new capital sentences that are actually carried out.

Whatever the final result, the accelerated processing of capital cases surely 
reflects a turn toward even more hardline practice than had previously been 
normalized by the judiciary. This trend began in earnest with Ebrahim Raisi’s 
appointment to head the judiciary in March. Raisi, who had previously 
challenged President Rouhani during his campaign for reelection in 2017, is 
widely recognized as one of the regime’s worst violators of human rights. His 
background includes a prominent role in the death commissions that ordered the 
death of approximately 30,000 political prisoners in 1988, as part of the 
regime’s effort to stamp out opposition groups including the People’s Mojahedin 
Organization of Iran.

(source: irannewsupdate.org)