[Deathpenalty] death penalty news---worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

May 9



CHINA:

Chinese court holds off ruling on Canadian's death penalty appeal



A Chinese court adjourned a hearing on a Canadian man's appeal against his 
death sentence for drug smuggling without a decision Thursday in a case that 
has deepened a diplomatic spat between Beijing and Ottawa.

Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, 36, was sentenced to death in January after a court 
deemed his previous 15-year prison sentence too lenient.

His appeal hearing came a day after a top executive of Chinese telecom giant 
Huawei, Meng Wanzhou, appeared in court in Canada to fight a US extradition bid 
that triggered the diplomatic storm.

The Liaoning High People's Court in northeast China said in a statement that 
"all procedural rights of appellant Schellenberg were guaranteed in accordance 
with the law".

The trial has adjourned and the court will "select a day or time to pronounce 
the sentence," it said without specifying.

His lawyer, Zhang Dongshuo, said it was "normal" for a sentence to be announced 
at a different date or time.

Schellenberg's case is seen as potential leverage for Meng, who was arrested on 
a US extradition request related to Iran sanctions violations -- a link that 
Beijing has repeatedly denied.

Following the Huawei executive's arrest in December, China detained former 
Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor, in what 
observers saw as retaliation.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said that China had "chosen to 
arbitrarily" sentence Schellenberg to death. His government has pleaded for 
clemency.

Ottawa said Wednesday it was "extremely concerned that China has chosen to 
apply the death penalty, a cruel and inhumane punishment".

Canadian officials planned to attend Thursday's hearing. The Canadian embassy 
did not reply to a request for comment.

Schellenberg was originally sentenced to 15 years in prison and a 150,000 yuan 
($22,000) forfeiture in November.

But following an appeal, the high court in Liaoning ruled in December that the 
sentence was too lenient given the severity of his crimes.

About a month later, his sentence was changed to capital punishment.

China has executed foreigners for drug-related crimes in the past, including a 
Japanese national in 2014, a Filipina in 2013, and a Briton in 2009.

Last week another Canadian, Fan Wei, was sentenced to death for drug 
trafficking in a separate case in southern China.

Kovrig and Spavor, meanwhile, have been denied access to lawyers and are 
allowed only monthly consular visits.

Days after Canada launched the extradition process against Meng in March, China 
announced it suspected Kovrig of spying and stealing state secrets. It alleged 
fellow Canadian Spavor had provided him with intelligence.

Meanwhile, Huawei's Meng was back in court in Vancouver on Wednesday, with her 
lawyers arguing that the US case was politically motivated.

Her firm says she is innocent.

Huawei is also in the US crosshairs as Washington seeks to convince Western 
nations to shun the telecom firm over security concerns.

The diplomatic row appears to have has spilled over into the economic arena: 
China has banned Canadian canola and pork shipments worth billions of dollars.

Ottawa has pressed Washington -- which is locked in a trade dispute with China 
-- to step up its pressure on behalf of the detained Canadians.

(source: dailymail.co.uk)








TAIWAN:

Taiwan passes laws to make Chinese spying punishable by death



Chinese spies will be subject to Taiwan's newly amended law under which they 
could face the death penalty, local media reported on Wednesday. The 
legislature passed revisions to the penal code on Tuesday to stipulate that 
spies from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao committing acts of espionage 
could be punished by life imprisonment or even death.

Until now, Chinese spies have only been given light sentences.

Those include Zhen Xiaojiang, a retired People's Liberation Army captain who 
was found guilty in September 2015 of setting up a spy ring in Taiwan, but 
received only a four-year prison sentence for violating the National Security 
Act.

The legislature also approved amendments to the Classified National Security 
Information Protection Act on Tuesday to increase the penalty of Taiwanese 
citizens leaking or handing classified national security information to people 
from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao.

China and Taiwan have been governed separately since Nationalist forces led by 
Chiang Kai-shek lost a civil war on the mainland to Communist forces under Mao 
Zedong in 1949. Beijing considers Taiwan as a renegade province awaiting 
reunification, by force if necessary.

(source: mainichi.jp)








MAURITANIA:

Mauritanian blogger escaped the death penalty, but remains behind 
bars----Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mkhaitir was convicted of apostasy in 2014.



Ould Mkhaitir was sentenced to death in 2014 over an opinion piece published 
online.

Despite having his death sentence commuted more than a year ago, Mauritanian 
blogger Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mkhaitir is still in prison.

Ould Mkhaitir was sentenced to death in 2014 over an opinion article published 
on the website of the newspaper Aqlame. In the article, entitled “Religion, 
Religiosity and Craftsmen”, Ould Mkhaitir criticised the role of religion in 
Mauritania’s caste system, using stories from the lifetime of prophet Muhammad 
to support his argument. The original article has since been taken down by 
Aqlame, but is still available online.

A court convicted him of “apostasy” and sentenced him to death under Article 
306 of the Mauritanian Penal Code.

In April 2016, a court of appeal upheld his sentence and referred his case to 
the Supreme Court, which then returned it to the appeal court for ”procedural 
irregularities”. In November 2017 his death sentence was commuted and reduced 
to two years in jail and a fine by the court of appeal. However, despite having 
already served more than 2 years in prison, the authorities did not release 
Ould Mkhaitir. Almost 18 months after the appeal court's decision to release 
him, he remains behind bars.

On April 24, 2019 Mauritania's justice minister said that Mkhaitir was in 
“temporary detention” and that “only the Supreme Court can rule on his fate.”

Article 306 of the Penal Code previously provided that if the convicted person 
“repents” before his or her execution, the Mauritanian Supreme Court could 
commute the death sentence to a jail sentence of between 3 months and 2 years, 
and a fine.

But in April 2018, the Mauritanian National Assembly passed a law making the 
death penalty mandatory for anyone convicted of “blasphemous speech” and acts 
deemed “sacrilegious.”

“The timing of the enactment of the law just a few months after the court of 
appeal ordered Mkhaïtir’s release appears to be related to his case,” Human 
Rights Watch said in November 2018.

Critiques of racism and the caste system are taboo in Mauritania, and have 
spurred many political and legal threats against journalists and activists in 
recent years. In 1981, Mauritania became the last country on earth to 
officially abolish slavery, and only criminalized the practice in 2007. But 
since that time, UN officials and human rights workers have documented evidence 
that thousands of people, many of them ethnic Haratines of black African 
origin, are still enslaved, living in situations of forced labour, or otherwise 
facing caste-based discrimination.

The Mauritanian government denies that slavery still exists in the country, and 
many people like Ould Mkhaitir, who speak out against the practice and 
discrimination against Haratines, have been jailed and prosecuted. Last 
September, authorities jailed and charged activist Abdallahi Salem Ould Yali 
with incitement to violence and racial hatred for posting messages in WhatsApp 
group denouncing the plight and the marginalisation of his community.

(source: globalvoices.org)








IRELAND:

On this day: Easter Rising hero Con Colbert executed



May 8, 1916, marks the day 1916 Easter Rising hero Con Colbert was executed. 
Dermot McEvoy looks back at his life story.

Cornelius (Con) Colbert was born in County Limerick in 1888 and educated at the 
Christian Brothers’ School in North Richmond Street, Dublin, the same school 
that produced Seán Heuston and Éamonn Ceannt. Although short in stature, he 
made a big impression as he rose through the ranks, from the Fianna scouts to 
Captain of F Company, Fourth Battalion, Inchicore. His personal life was 
dominated by his Catholicism, his love of the Irish language, and his 
abstinence from alcohol. (When asked why Irish rebellions always failed, 
Colbert would reply: “Drink and want of discipline and loose talk.”)

Working in collaboration with Commandant Ceannt at the South Dublin Union, 
Colbert’s objective on Easter Monday was to take Watkin’s Brewery in Ardee 
Street, in the Cork Street area. His job was to cover Ceannt’s flank. Colbert 
easily took the brewery but discovered that it held no real strategic 
importance. Of this, he informed James Connolly and Connolly directed Colbert 
to take his small unit of fewer than 20 men and join up with Captain Séamus 
Murphy at the William Jameson—not to be confused with John Jameson—Distillery 
on Marrowbone Lane, not far from the Guinness Brewery. There was intense 
fighting with the British with Murphy and Colbert’s men inflicting casualties 
without suffering any themselves. Suddenly on Saturday morning, the British 
withdrew.

The spirits of the Volunteers were high as they believed that the Rising was 
going in their favor. They were shocked when Thomas MacDonagh showed up on 
Sunday to tell them of the surrender. Colbert was heartbroken and broke out in 
tears. Colbert was taken so aback that he declared: “I do not know what to say 
or think, but if what I think comes true, our cause is postponed to a future 
generation…we must have been let down very badly as we have not had the support 
of our people that we had expected.”

Colbert and Murphy were soon joined by Ceannt and the men from the South Dublin 
Union and together they marched to St. Patrick’s Park to surrender. At Richmond 
Barracks he was sorted by the G-men of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. At a 
trial almost completely absent of evidence, Colbert was found guilty and 
sentenced to death. His death penalty is one of the oddest because he had 
fought a clean fight at Marrowbone Lane and, technically, was not even in 
charge of the siege—Captain Murphy was.

How Colbert got sentenced to death seems just to be an unlucky twist of fate. 
The story is best related by Christopher Byrne, a 2nd Lieutenant under Colbert. 
Byrne in his 1948 Witness Statement said that “Con Colbert and I were intimate 
friends.” He goes on to state that: “I wish to record that Séamus Murphy was in 
charge in Marrowbone Lane and Con was 2nd in command. The commands remained so 
until the surrender.”

Here’s what Byrne had to say about the DMP sorting in Richmond Barracks: 
“Séamus Murphy was in our batch and in full uniform, but he was not picked out. 
The question of Colbert taking Murphy’s place does not arise at all, it was 
just that good luck favored Murphy and he was deported with us to Knutsford. 
Colbert and Murphy did not, and could not, exchange uniforms, as Colbert was a 
very small sized man and Murphy was very tall and well-built. Murphy was a very 
manly fellow and certainly would not shirk facing a court-martial and its 
sentence had he been picked out for it. In my opinion, what saved Murphy’s life 
was the fact that he was not very prominent before the Rising and was not, as 
far as I know, known to the police. Against this, Colbert made himself very 
prominent during the anti-recruiting campaign for the British Army that was 
then in full swing before the Rising. He wore kilts and frequently pulled down 
Union Jacks and recruiting posters and helped to break up meetings. He also 
drilled the Fianna in the open.”

Colbert was more upset about the defeat—and the way the local Dubliners had 
turned against the rebels—than he was about his death sentence. “We are all 
ready to meet our God,” he said. “Now that we are defeated, outside the barrack 
wall, the people whom we have tried to emancipate have demonstrated nothing but 
hatred and contempt for us. We would be better off dead as life would be a 
torture. We thank the mother of God for her kindness in her intercession for us 
that we have had the time to prepare ourselves to meet our Redeemer.”

Unlike some of the other rebels, he did not want to meet with his relatives. He 
wrote his sister Lila that: “I did not call you to this jail…I felt it would 
grieve us both too much.”

He did meet up with Mrs. Séamus Murphy, wife of the man in charge of Marrowbone 
Lane, who was also being detained at Kilmainham. He told her: “I am one of the 
lucky ones…I am proud to die for such a cause. I will be passing away at the 
dawning of the day.” When Mrs. Murphy asked of the fate of Éamonn Ceannt, 
Colbert replied: “He has drawn the lucky lot as well.”

According to Christopher Byrne: “He cut all the buttons off his tunic and gave 
them to Mrs. Murphy, and gave her his watch for me. Father Morrissey was with 
him up to the time he died. Con got a pin from the priest and scratched 
something in Irish on the watch and put the date on it.”

Father Augustine tells a touching story of how Colbert told the soldier 
preparing him for execution that he should pin the white square higher to cover 
his heart, making it easier for the firing squad. The soldier was so moved he 
asked to shake Colbert’s hand, then gently tied his hands behind his back and 
blindfolded him.

Father Augustine said that Colbert’s “lips were moving in prayer” as he marched 
to the Breaker’s Yard. He was executed between 3:45 and 4:05 a.m. on May 8th.

Con Colbert’s biggest crime seems to be that he loved Ireland and was known to 
the G-men of the DMP. It was a fate that would result in his very unlucky 
death.

(source: Dermot McEvoy is the author of the "The 13th Apostle: A Novel of a 
Dublin Family", "Michael Collins, and the Irish Uprising" and "Irish 
Miscellany" (Skyhorse Publishing)----irishcentral.com)








IRAQ:

Iraq to hang ISIS member who raped Ezidi woman, killed Iraqi soldiers



A local Iraqi court on Thursday sentenced a convicted Islamic State member to 
death for killing multiple Iraqi soldiers and for the rape of a Yezidi (Ezidi) 
girl in Nineveh.

The Iraqi Higher Judicial Council in a statement said that the Nineveh Criminal 
Court issued a “death sentence on a man convicted of belonging to the Da’esh 
[ISIS] terrorist gang, terrorist involvement in the murder of men, and abuses…”

The statement did not specify the identity of the defendant nor the date of his 
arrest.

“The terrorist was wearing an Afghan uniform…and worked as an intelligence 
element within the terrorist organization to inform on citizens,” the statement 
added.

The Iraqi judiciary claimed that the sentenced man “took part in the battles in 
Zummar district [in Nineveh], killed five members of the security forces, and 
raped a woman from the Ezidi sect.”

The judicial authorities said the sentence was handed down to the man “based on 
his clear and frank confession before the court and the statements of 
witnesses” and in accordance with Iraq’s anti-terrorism law.

Since declaring military victory over the Islamic State in late 2017 following 
a devastating three-year war, Iraq has accelerated the pace of prosecutions 
against suspected members of the militant group.

Authorities have yet to disclose the number of terrorism suspects in Iraqi 
prisons and the number of people facing execution or life imprisonment related 
to terrorism charges.

International humanitarian and human rights organizations, including the United 
Nations and Human Rights Watch (HRW), say efforts by Iraqi authorities to speed 
up the implementation of death sentences could lead to the execution of 
innocent people, especially with the nation’s poor standards of criminal 
justice.

The emergence of the Islamic State and its violent assault on Sinjar (Shingal) 
in 2014 led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of members of the 
Ezidi religious minority, whom the extremist group considered heretics. Most of 
them fled to the Kurdistan Region, while others resettled in neighboring 
countries in the region or Western states.

Others were not as lucky and remained stranded in the war zone, where they 
experienced atrocities and mass executions at the hands of the Islamic State 
for years. Militants subjected women and girls to sexual slavery, kidnapped 
children, forced religious conversions, executed scores of men, and abused, 
sold, and trafficked women across areas they controlled in Iraq and Syria.

Before the 2014 attack, there were roughly 550,000 Ezidis in the Kurdistan 
Region and Iraq. As the terrorist group took over large swaths of territory in 
Nineveh, 360,000 Ezidis escaped and found refuge elsewhere, according to the 
Kurdistan Region’s Ezidi Rescue Office.

(source: kurdistan24.net)








IRAN:

Iran Regime Hangs Drug Users, While IRGC Are Drug Pushers



The Iranian Regime secretly hanged 4 prisoners on drug-related charges in the 
Central Prison of Arak late last month.

The four prisoners executed on April 29 were Seyed Hamidreza Hosseinkhani, 37, 
Majid Kazemi, 42, Mohammad Hemmati, 26, and Mohammad Davoudabadi, 26.

This was just 1 day after university student Mohammad Bameri, 24, was executed 
for drug smuggling in the Central Prison of Kerman in order to earn a living.

On April 27, Kamal Shahbakhsh was hanged in the same prison on drug-related 
charges, while 2 Baluch prisoners - Dorhan Heydari and Mirhan Shah Ghasemi – 
were executed in Evin prison on murder and drug-related charges.

Now, while sentencing people to death for non-violent crimes is a violation of 
international law, it is even more disturbing when you realise who is 
responsible for distributing these drugs in Iran.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) is responsible for the 
trafficking of drugs inside and outside of Iran, with the dual purpose of 
raising money for their malign activities and increasing the repressive 
atmosphere inside of the country.

International sources report that the IRGC has made millions of dollars from 
the drug trade alone. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports that 
roughly 40% of the drugs that pass through the IRGC remain in Iran, while the 
remaining 60% is sent abroad to the Middle East and Europe.

In fact, twice in late March, Iranian boats were caught smuggling heroin. On 
March 20, the Indian Coast Guard arrested nine IRGC crewmembers and seized 
about 100 kilograms of heroin, while on March 24 the Sri Lanka Coast Guards 
seized heroin worth “more than 1 billion rupees”.

The IRGC needs this drug trade, especially in the wake of US sanctions, in 
order to gather the money to fund terrorist groups across the Middle East, 
continue its ballistic missile program, and increasing repression of the 
Iranian people.

In light of this, it seems at best hypocritical that the Iranian Regime will 
put people to death on drug charges whilst being the biggest drug pushers in 
the country, while at worst it is a genocide of those most likely to overthrow 
the Regime (i.e. the poor, the young, the repressed).

Of course, the Iranian Regime will never change its ways. It’s the largest 
executioner per capita in the world, with at least 253 people executed in 2018 
and at least 3,500 since 2013, when supposed the moderate Hassan Rouhani became 
President.

Also on April 29, 2 17-year-old boys were executed for rape and robbery after a 
trial that appears to have breached fundamental due process guarantees, while 
another man convicted of murder, Mohammad Irani, was while on hunger strike to 
protest his conviction.

On April 27, 4 prisoners were executed in the Central prison of Shiraz and 2 
men were executed in Evin prison.

(source: ncr-iran.org)

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

Iran Both Denies and Defends Juvenile Executions as Hardline Practices Grow



Iran’s judiciary responded on Tuesday to the widespread outcry regarding the 
latest incidence of the Islamic Republic violating international law with the 
execution of persons who were under the age of 18 at the time of their alleged 
crimes. This practice is conclusively banned by the International Covenant on 
Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, both 
of which Iran has signed. Yet the Islamic Republic remains one of the only 
countries in the world to still carry regularly with such executions.

The latest victims of that practice have been identified as Mehdi Sohrabifar 
and Amin Sedaghat. Both were hanged on April 25, a day after being transferred 
to a new prison without explanation. It appears that neither of the boys was 
informed of his death sentence ahead of time, and both were flogged before 
being sent to the gallows. The pending execution was also reportedly kept 
secret from their families, who were given an opportunity to visit the 
prisoners after the transfer but were still not informed of the death sentence 
until after it had been carried out.

This somewhat unusual level of secrecy may have been intended to compensate for 
the judiciary declining to adhere to its usual practice of deflecting some 
domestic and international backlash by keeping juvenile death row inmates in 
detention until they have surpassed the age of 18. In the case of Sohrabifar 
and Sedaghat, both boys were still 17 when they were executed for crimes they 
are alleged to have committed when only 15. However, the judiciary initially 
sought to conceal this fact by keeping the death sentences secret, and then 
later by simply denying multiple reports regarding the boys’ ages.

According to Iran Human Rights, judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmeili even 
went beyond denying the specific details of this case, in an apparent effort to 
cast doubt upon all reports of Iran’s juvenile executions. “Juveniles cannot 
commit these kinds of crimes,” he declared in a press conference. Accordingly, 
Esmeili also insisted that Sohrabifar and Sedaghat were above the 
internationally recognized age of majority not only when they were hanged last 
month but also when they supposedly committed rape and robbery 2 years earlier.

The judiciary’s claims spurred predictable rebuttals, including those which 
cited the 2 youths’ legal documents in order to demonstrate that they were 
indeed young teenagers at the time of both their arrest and their execution. 
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of Iran Human Rights, also challenged the 
Iranian regime to explain why it refuses to make the practice of juvenile 
execution illegal, “if people below the age of 17 or 18, as Mr Esmeili says, 
cannot commit serious violent crimes.”

Previously, Tehran has acknowledged the juvenile status of persons who were 
condemned to death, but has insisted that they were sufficiently “mature” at 
the time of the crimes to justify capital punishment. Iranian law allows for 
children to be held legally responsible at as young as 13 if they are boys, and 
as young as nine if they are girls.

At various times over the past several years, the implementation of juvenile 
death sentences has been delayed and the cases reviewed, apparently in response 
to pressure from international human rights groups and foreign governments. But 
in almost every case, the sentence has been upheld and ultimately carried out. 
The latest estimates indicate that 100 juvenile offenders have been put to 
death in Iran since 1990, but the aforementioned practices of secrecy and 
denial suggest that the actual number could be significantly higher.

At the same time, the judiciary’s newest talking points insisting upon the 
impossibility of violent crimes among youthful offenders, it seems as if the 
regime may now be committed to the claim that the number is effectively zero. 
But assuming that the judiciary cannot conceal the evidence of such executions 
being carried out, Esmeili’s talking point threatens to lend credence to claims 
about the potential innocence of some of the young defendants.

Those claims have certainly been made in the case of Sohrabifar and Sedaghat, 
on account of their having been beaten in custody and systematically denied due 
process. In condemning the executions last Friday, United Nations High 
Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet stated that they were 
“particularly outrageous because both boys were reportedly subjected to 
ill-treatment and a flawed legal process.” The boys initially denied all 
charges, but were detained for two months during which confessions may have 
been extracted using torture.

In any event, the worldwide illegality of juvenile executions is clear 
regardless of the nature or the veracity of the charges against them. Yet Iran 
shows no sign of compromising on this issue, and may in fact be ramping up the 
practice. Iran Human Rights Monitor notes that there have been unconfirmed 
reports of a third such execution having already taken place this year. By 
comparison, only three juvenile offenders are known to have been executed in 
the entirety of 2018, and all of them had been held in prison until an age of 
majority.

Iran’s reputation for juvenile executions is an outgrowth of its approach to 
the death penalty in general. Only China puts more criminals to death, and when 
researchers control for population Iran consistently secures the title of the 
country with the world’s highest rate of executions. This was true last year 
even though the Iranian judiciary achieved a significant reduction by vacating 
the death penalty for many non-violent drug offenders. But the regime’s 
commitment to this legal reform is coming into doubt at the same time that its 
commitment to juvenile executions seems firm.

IHRM reported on Tuesday that four alleged drug criminals had been executed in 
Arak Central Prison on a single day. If these killings mark the resumption of 
ultra-hardline drug policies, it would not come as a surprise to many people 
who are familiar with the Iranian judiciary. In March, that body came under the 
control of Ebrahim Raisi, a conservative cleric with a long history of human 
rights abuses, including a leading role in the execution of approximately 
30,000 political prisoners in 1988. His appointment by Supreme Leader Ali 
Khamenei was widely condemned, as well as being viewed as a likely precursor to 
even worse crackdowns and abuses across the Islamic Republic.

At the end of April, Raisi in turn appointed Ali Alghasi-Mehr as the general 
prosecutor for Tehran. As the Center for Human Rights in Iran explained on 
Tuesday, “Alghasi-Mehr has taken an extremely hardline approach to criminal 
justice” throughout his career, “including by advocating public executions and 
amputations as a means of punishment.” What’s more, the new general prosecutor 
has defended ignoring not only international human rights documents but also 
Iran’s own established legal practices for the sake of prioritizing executions.

The rate of executions in the Islamic Republic would no doubt be even higher 
th.an it is if not for the Islamic practice of qisas, which allows victims’ 
families to forgive a condemned criminal and vacate his or her death sentence 
in exchange for “blood money.” But last August, Alghasi-Mehr specifically 
called for the death penalty to be carried out on nine men “even though they 
have been pardoned by the victims’ family.”

In June 2015, Alghasi-Mehr also claimed that there is public support for public 
execution, another practice that Iran insists on continuing despite 
condemnation from human rights groups both at home and abroad. Critics of 
public hangings tend to describe them as having intimidation as their primary 
role. And the escalating practice of such intimidation would be in line with 
what is generally expected on the basis of ongoing trends and the recent 
changes in leadership of the Iranian judiciary.

(source: irannewsupdate.com)

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

Quash Death Sentences of Ahwazi Arab Men (Iran: UA 61.19)

Abdullah Karmollah Chab and Ghassem Abdullah, from Iran’s Ahwazi Arab minority, 
are facing the death penalty following a grossly unfair trial. “Confessions” 
they have said were obtained under torture and other ill-treatment, including 
electric shocks and mock executions, were used to convict them. Their cases are 
before the Supreme Court.

Write a letter in your own words or using the sample below as a guide to one or 
both government officials listed. You can also email, fax, call or Tweet them.

Head of the Judiciary Ebrahim Raisi

C/o Permanent Mission of Iran to the UN

Chemin du Petit-Saconnex 28

1209 Geneva, Switzerland

   H.E. Gholamali Khoshroo

Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran

622 Third Avenue, 34th Floor

New York, NY 10017

Phone: 212 687-2020 I Fax: 212 867 7086

Email: iran at un.int

Twitter: @Iran_UN

Salutation: Dear Ambassador

Dear Mr Raisi,

Abdullah Karmollah Chab and Ghassem Abdullah, Sunni Muslims from Iran’s Ahwazi 
Arab minority, are on death row following a grossly unfair trial which relied 
on “confessions” they say were obtained under torture and other ill-treatment. 
They have been convicted of “enmity against God” (moharebeh) in connection with 
an armed attack on a Shi’a religious ceremony in Safiabad, Khuzestan province, 
on 16 October 2015, which left two people dead. They have denied any 
involvement in the attack. Their lawyers have said there is no evidence linking 
them to the attack and have identified inconsistencies between the 
“confessions” that led to their convictions and the accounts of eyewitnesses 
present at the scene of the crime. They have been given extremely limited 
access to their families through irregular telephone calls and only one visit. 
On 9 April 2019, they were transferred to a ministry of intelligence detention 
center in Hamedan, Hamedan province, where they have been denied access to 
their families.

Both men have said they were subjected to months of torture in detention 
including by being beaten and given electric shocks. Abdullah Karmollah Chab 
has said his interrogators hung him upside down for 11 days and subjected him 
to mock executions, saying they would execute and bury him in an unmarked 
grave. For 3 mornings in a row, according to him, they woke him, put a sack 
over his head and a noose around his neck, and told him that if he “confessed” 
he would not be executed. He refused, saying he was innocent. On the third day, 
he said he heard one of the interrogators say: “Just let him go. If he had 
anything to confess he would have done so by now.” Iran’s Supreme Court later 
quashed the conviction and sentence due to lack of evidence and flawed 
investigations and ordered a retrial. On 6 July 2017, they were sentenced to 
death again. The case is now again before the Supreme Court for appeal.

I urge you to quash Abdullah Karmollah Chab and Ghassem Abdullah’s convictions 
and death sentences; and release them unless there is sufficient evidence, not 
obtained through torture or other ill-treatment, to charge them with a 
recognizable criminal offense. In addition, I urge you to grant them a fair 
trial, without recourse to the death penalty. I urge you to provide them with 
ongoing access to their families and lawyers. I also urge you to ensure that 
they are protected from torture and other ill-treatment, and to order an 
independent and impartial investigation into their torture allegations, 
bringing to justice anyone responsible.

Yours sincerely,

(source: Amnesty International)








PAKISTAN:

Government of Pakistan must repeal its blasphemy laws



Responding to the reports that Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman freed 
from death row in 2018, has left Pakistan and arrived in Canada, Amnesty 
International’s Deputy South Asia Director Omar Waraich said:

“If the news is true, it’s a great relief that Asia Bibi and her family are 
safe. She should never have been imprisoned in the first place, let alone faced 
the death penalty. That she then had to endure the repeated threats to her 
life, even after being acquitted, only compounds the injustice. This case 
illustrates the dangers of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws and the urgent need to 
repeal them.”

Background

Asia Bibi is a Christian farm worker, who was sentenced to death for blasphemy 
in 2010. After an eight year ordeal, Pakistan’s Supreme Court acquitted her of 
all charges and released her in October 2018. Following which Pakistan’s 
government insisted the Supreme Court to hear a “review petition” in her case. 
On 29 January 2019, the Supreme Court dismissed the review petition and upheld 
its acquittal. Asia Bibi received repeated death threats from religious 
extremists in Pakistan, following the Supreme Courts orders.

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are broad, vague and coercive. They have 
disproportionately targeted religious minorities, including in false cases 
brought forward to pursue personal vendettas.

(source: Amnesty International)








INDIA:

Patna: 20-year-old to hang for minor's rape, murder



A special Pocso court in Siwan on Wednesday sentenced to death a 20-year-old 
Mohammad Ziauddin alias Dhannu, for raping and murdering a four-year-old girl 
in 2018.

The girl's partially burned body was found buried in a maize field with her 
underwear stuffed in her mouth. The crime took place at Idmali village under 
Barhariya police station in Siwan district.

Special public prosecutor Naresh Kumar Singh said capital punishment was 
pronounced by ADJ-I Vinod Kumar Shukla, after a speedy trial in the case under 
Section 376AB of IPC under which there is provision for death penalty for 
raping a girl under 12 years of age.

Siwan SP Naveen Chandra Jha said the convict had strangulated her after raping 
her on night of August 25, 2018. He said the girl had gone to attend a marriage 
next to her home.

"One of her eyes was also gouged out by the convict while committing the crime. 
Ziauddin was a daily wager who was working to erect a tent for the marriage. He 
had carried the girl to a secluded place and raped her taking advantage of the 
dark," Jha said. "Chargesheet was filed in the case by police on September 30 
and trial begun in the 1st week of November," he added.

Jha said forensic evidence played key role in the conviction. "Blood stains on 
Ziauddin's trousers matched with the girl while semen samples collected from 
her clothes also matched with his. Two of his fellow workers stood strongly by 
their statement about spotting the girl with Ziauddin before her 
disappearance," he said.

Ziauddin was arrested within hours of the crime.

(source: The Times of India)