[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 2




PHILIPPINES:

Eileen Sarmenta's mom now for life imprisonment over death penalty



The mother of Eileen Sarmenta on Monday said she now prefers life imprisonment 
over death penalty for heinous criminals.

Maria Clara Sarmenta, in a previous news report, said she supports the revival 
of the capital punishment following the possible release of Antonio Sanchez, 
who was convicted in 1995 of raping and killing her daughter.

"At the spur of the moment I said I agreed to restoring the death penalty. But 
then when I thought it over, being a Christian I would rather have the life 
sentence because in death penalty, it's only one injection, tapos na (then it's 
done)," Sarmenta said during a joint hearing of the Senate justice and Blue 
Ribbon committees.

"In the life sentence, the prisoner would be given the chance to be reformed 
and also the mere fact that he suffers, he should be suffering for the crime he 
did."

Sanchez was sentenced to 7 reclusion perpetua terms (40 years each) for the 
1993 rape-slay of Eileen and the torture-killing of her companion Allan Gomez.

His supposed release due to a new law increasing the good conduct time 
allowance for inmates and a Supreme Court decision applying this law 
retroactively was met with public outrage.

(source: ABS-CBN News)

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

Group backs Manny Pacquiao’s death penalty proposal



An anti-crime and corruption group supported yesterday Sen. Manny Pacquiao’s 
proposal to restore the death penalty.

“The death penalty should be implemented by firing squad as proposed by 
Pacquaio,” said lawyer Jose Malvar Villegas Jr., founder and chairman of the 
Katipunan Kontra Krimen at Korapsyon (KKK), during a forum in Pasig City.

Malvar said large-scale online investment scams and economic sabotage should be 
considered heinous crimes.

Thousands of Filipino investors are being victimized online because of the 
absence of a “tough law that will protect them,” KKK director general Melchor 
Chavez said.

The group has asked Senators Bong Go, Ronald dela Rosa and Pacquiao as well as 
House Pro Tempore Luis Raymond Villafuerte to approve the death penalty bill 
and include other crimes such as plunder, election fraud, vote-buying, 
land-grabbing and planting of evidence.

Meanwhile, the KKK will hold a crime prevention summit in Batangas next month 
to coincide with the celebration of the 154th birth anniversary of Gen. Miguel 
Malvar.

Batangas Gov. Hermilando Mandanas will be the guest of honor and speaker. 
Bernardo Villegas, co-founder of the CRC-University of Asia and the Pacific, 
and Go were invited as resource speakers.

(source: Philippine Star)








SAUDI ARABIA:

He Helped Usher in the Saudi Awakening — Now He's Facing Death



On a hot September night in 1994, hundreds of people gathered in a city in 
northern Saudi Arabia to listen to a 37-year-old cleric. Wearing a traditional 
ankle-length white tunic, he called for reform in the Gulf kingdom, criticizing 
the ruling family for betraying the laws of Islam and refusing to share power. 
When he was done, the crowd followed him into the streets of Buraydah, the 
heartland of Wahhabism. The House of Saud was on notice that Salman al-Awda had 
become a fervent voice of dissent, unafraid to issue a direct challenge.

At the time, authorities preferred to pacify, co-opt or buy off opponents 
rather than persecute them — unless they were jihadis. But such a brazen act of 
defiance resulted in al-Awda’s immediate arrest, along with those of more than 
a thousand of his supporters.

“The Saudi state didn’t practice the kind of heavy-handed, blind repression 
that other countries in the region practiced. It wasn’t used to putting 1,000 
people in jail,” says Stéphane Lacroix, a scholar of politics and religion in 
the Gulf and the author of Awakening Islam.

The crackdown in Buraydah was unprecedented, and an early foreshadowing of how 
the young Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (aka MBS) rules the kingdom today. 
Al-Awda was released after five years, but 23 years later, MBS had the sheikh 
arrested after he tweeted in September 2017 to millions of his followers that 
he hoped Saudi Arabia and Qatar could reconcile their differences. Al-Awda, now 
62, is facing the death penalty while being held in solitary confinement, his 
health deteriorating.

Human rights groups see al-Awda’s recent arrest as part of a larger campaign by 
the crown prince to silence dissent and any perceived rival. But the outspoken 
cleric may have also been targeted for a very specific reason: He serves as the 
face of a rebellious generation known as the Sahwa, or Awakening.

Sahwa was inspired by the tenets of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose members took 
refuge in Saudi Arabia in the 1950s and ’60s after fleeing persecution in Egypt 
and Syria. Hundreds of these exiles were hired by government ministries and 
given prominent posts in universities. Over time, they cultivated a generation 
of politically conscious Saudis pushing for greater rights and demanding that 
Islam play a larger role in the ultraconservative kingdom.

The House of Saud was unaware of the growing internal threat — until Iraq 
invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990. King Fahd feared that Iraqi dictator Saddam 
Hussein would come after his oil next, so he called on his ally the United 
States, which sent hundreds of thousands of troops to defend the kingdom.

The decision enraged young Saudis — including al-Awda.

Madawi al-Rasheed, a Saudi expert on politics and religion in the Arab world 
and a visiting scholar at the London School of Economics, says the mass 
opposition to American troops was rooted in questions of sovereignty. Having 
financed so many foreign wars — the mujahedeen in Afghanistan and Saddam 
Hussein against Iran — Saudis were skeptical that their country couldn’t defend 
itself. “There were U.S. troops all over the place and even American women 
driving in the kingdom. It was very overwhelming,” says al-Rasheed.

Al-Awda, an Islamist and nationalist, emerged as a popular voice to articulate 
the collective grievances. He delivered fiery sermons in homes and mosques 
criticizing the presence of American troops as un-Islamic. His lectures were 
recorded on cassettes and distributed to tens of thousands of people throughout 
the kingdom. Sa’ad al-Faqih, a political exile who knew al-Awda, remembers 
listening to his speeches. “His sermons spoke to the ordinary man without using 
overblown political language,” al-Faqih tells me from his home in London. “He 
knew not to give the regime ammunition.”

Al-Awda wasn’t like anybody in the state-backed clergy. He had street 
credibility.

In the winter of 1992, al-Awda signed his name to a 46-page document titled 
“The Memorandum of Advice,” which in turn was signed by 109 religious figures, 
including members of the state-backed clergy. It was the first time religious 
scholars attempted to undo the founding pact of Saudi Arabia — established in 
1744 — which gave the father of Wahhabism, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, control 
over social norms and religion as long as the House of Saud ruled Arabia 
unchallenged.

But al-Awda was issuing calls for the House of Saud to share power, even after 
King Fahd removed him from his university post and ordered him to stop speaking 
in public. “Al-Awda wasn’t like anybody in the state-backed clergy,” says Ali 
al-Ahmed, a Saudi journalist living in the U.S. “He had street credibility.”

Then came the September night in 1994, followed by al-Awda’s arrest and 
imprisonment. He was treated relatively well during his five-year incarceration 
and released after agreeing to help the House of Saud combat the growing threat 
of extremism. That was then. Today he awaits a trial that is set to begin in 
December, his persecution a warning of the deadly consequences of awakening in 
the Saudi kingdom.

(source: OZY)








MOROCCO:

Appeal opens in case of hikers slain in Morocco



The appeal opened on Wednesday in the case of 24 men convicted over the 
beheadings of 2 young Scandinavian women on a hiking trip in Morocco's High 
Atlas mountains last December.

The appeal at the court in Sale, near Rabat, comes six weeks after three Daesh 
supporters were sentenced to death over the murders which have shocked the 
North African country.

The other defendants, including the only non-Moroccan, Spanish-Swiss Muslim 
convert Kevin Zoller Guervos, were handed jail terms ranging from 5 years to 
life.

The accused were transported to court in high security for the appeal, which 
was adjourned until September 11 after a brief hearing during which procedural 
issues were discussed.

While those convicted are seeking lighter punishments, the family of 
24-year-old Danish student Louisa Vesterager Jespersen are urging the court to 
uphold the July 18 sentences, lawyers said.

Jespersen and her hiking companion, 28-year-old Norwegian Maren Ueland, nature 
lovers who were training to be guides, were on a Christmas holiday hiking trip 
when they were killed.

Their lives were cut short in the foothills of Toubkal, the highest summit in 
north Africa, some 80 kilometres from the city of Marrakesh, a tourist magnet.

Prosecutors and social media users had called for the death penalty for all 3 
main suspects, despite Morocco having a de facto freeze on executions since 
1993.

Alleged ringleader Abdessamad Ejjoud had appealed to God to "forgive" him 
during his trial.

The 25-year-old street vendor and underground imam has confessed to 
orchestrating the attack with 2 other radicalised Moroccans.

Younes Ouaziyad, a 27-year-old carpenter who admitted to beheading one of the 
tourists, also asked for "God's forgiveness".

Rachid Afatti, 33, had admitted to filming the grisly murders on his mobile 
phone.

All but 3 of those on trial had said they were supporters of the Daesh group, 
according to the prosecution, although Daesh itself has never claimed 
responsibility for the murders.

Khaled El Fataoui, lawyer for Jespersen's family, aims to prove the state's 
moral responsibility for the killings and to seek financial compensation.

The court, for its part, has ordered the three main accused to pay 2 million 
dirhams ($200,000) in compensation to Ueland's parents, although El Fataoui has 
said they did not have the means.

The defence team of those convicted has argued there were "mitigating 
circumstances on account of their precarious social conditions and 
psychological disequilibrium".

Coming from modest backgrounds, with a "very low" level of education, the 
defendants mostly lived in low-income areas of Marrakesh.

Guervos, the Spanish-Swiss defendant, was accused of having taught the main 
suspects how to use an encrypted messaging service and to use weapons. He was 
sentenced last month to 20 years in prison for joining a "terrorist group".

(source: menafn.com)








THAILAND:

Death Sentence for Thai ‘Death Island’ Defendants a Mockery



The Thai Supreme Court’s August 28 decision upholding the death sentence for 2 
Myanmar migrants for the 2014 murders of British tourists Hannah Witheridge and 
David Miller on the island of Kho Tao is regarded by critics as a travesty of 
justice to protect the clan that controls the island, which has long been 
considered little more than a criminal gang.

The two defendants, Htun Zaw Lin and Wai Phyo, were found guilty of killing the 
2 backpackers and raping Witheridge in December of 2014. The 2 were beaten to 
death with garden tools.

While the island has been called a paradise for skin-divers and backpacker 
tourists, it has a dark side. At least nine European tourists have died or 
disappeared on Kho Tao since the deaths of the 2 backpackers, beginning with a 
32-year-old British IT consultant who died in 2012. In June of 2018, a 
19-year-old British tourist allegedly became the latest victim of violence 
charging that she had been raped. Police denied the rape had occurred. After 
pressure was brought by the British press and authorities, police opened an 
investigation and interviewed the victim in the UK, but said they had found no 
evidence to support her claim of rape and closed the case.

That, critics say, is evidence of the clout of the clan, which is believed have 
links to Thai Mafiosi connected to powerful southern Thailand politicians 
Prawit Wongsuwan, the former minister of defense and army commander-in-chief, 
who is now deputy prime minister, and Suthep Thaugsuban, a former deputy prime 
minister and former secretary-general of the Democrat Party.

The 2015 verdict against the Myanmar migrants drew widespread criticism from 
human rights groups given a long list of flaws in the case. After being given 
access to human rights organizations, the two immediately recanted their 
confessions, describing in graphic detail how the admissions were beaten out of 
them and that they had been scalded, tortured and threatened with 
electrocution.

“With their shoddy handling of cases like the Koh Tao murder case and the 
Bangkok bombing, the Thai police are rapidly becoming laughingstocks in 
international justice circles,” a representative for a western NGO told Asia 
Sentinel at the time of the original sentencing. “At this rate, is it a wonder 
that tourists from around the world are asking a new question – ‘is it really 
safe to go to Thailand?’ When are the powers that be in Bangkok going to figure 
out that jailing scapegoats while real culprits go free is not a persuasive 
answer to that question?”

The police and courts reportedly ignored testimony by Pornthip Rojanasunand, 
chief of the Central Institute of Forensic Science, that her agency’s 
inspection of the weapon used to kill the backpackers actually contained traces 
of DNA from unknown individuals, and that the agency didn’t find any from the 2 
accused. There were neither fingerprints nor other evidence that tied the two 
to the murders. Nonetheless, the prosecution came up with DNA samples that did 
match.

“Police investigators are solely relying on their claim that the DNA in the 
sperm found on Hanna Witheridge is that of the 2 Burmese defendants but they 
have not produced any independent corroborative evidence linking them to the 
murder,” said the NGO representative.

Thai police, he said, “had no proper and adequate chain of custody documents 
for the court; no photos of any of the DNA analysis processes, no case notes, 
no written description of testing processes,” the source said. “Originally they 
just had charts of DNA profiles. No DNA information was presented at all on the 
cigarette butts (found near the bodies), just a piece of paper saying they 
matched. The defense further highlighted the fact that the DNA sperm data was 
written, crossed out, and revised and dates and times were clearly wrong.”

Police Under Pressure to find Scapegoats

Htun Zaw Lin and Wai Phyo were collected up by Thailand’s notoriously corrupt 
and inept police two weeks after the murders were committed. Critics have said 
the suspects were arrested because the police, under enormous international 
pressure to solve a heinous crime, had to find killers and picked out the two 
youths, who had migrated from Rakhine state in Myanmar to work in the tourist 
trade.

The police investigation was a mess, with media and onlookers allowed to 
trample the murder scene and with a wide range of suspects targeted before the 
police settled on the Myanmese. The two were forced to reenact the murders at 
the crime scene while being filmed by television cameras.

It has long been Thai police practice to collect up luckless suspects, usually 
foreigners, and charge 1 or 2, especially if a politically powerful figure or 
his relatives had actually committed the crime instead. Police initiated 
blanket DNA testing of the migrant community living on Koh Tao, leading to 
well-justified fears that migrants would be arrested.

There were procedural problems connected to police incompetence. Dozens of 
people wandered through the crime scene. Collection of DNA evidence was badly 
handled. When the two defendants’ confessions fell apart because they said they 
were tortured, the police and the prosecutors showed no interest in 
investigating their claims.

Lawyers for the 2 said they would request a royal pardon, which is allowed 
under Thai law. The country retains the death penalty but rarely employs it.

(source: asiasentinenl.com)








CHINA:

Man who killed high school friend sentenced to death



Zhou Kaixuan, a postgraduate at the Chinese Academy of Sciences who stabbed his 
high school classmate, was tried at the Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's 
Court, Aug 30, 2019. [Photo/Official Sina Weibo account of chinacourt.org]

A man who stabbed to death his high school classmate, who was a postgraduate at 
the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing about a year ago was sentenced to 
death on Friday.

The Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court pronounced the capital punishment 
sentence to Zhou Kaixuan for the crime of intentional homicide after it heard 
the case on May 24.

According to the ruling, Zhou and the victim, Xie Diao, were classmates in a 
Chongqing high school. They quarreled when attending a class reunion party in 
their hometown in January 2016.

Due to the grudge, Zhou killed Xie in Beijing in June last year by stabbing Xie 
in the back and chest with a knife he'd been carrying. "Although the defendant 
turned himself over to police, we didn't decide to leniently penalize him for 
his extremely cruel behaviors," the court added in the ruling.

Wang Zhiyuan, Zhou's lawyer, said he will ask his client whether to appeal to a 
higher court, as Zhou did not show any emotion after the judgment was 
announced.

Standing behind Zhou in the courtroom's public gallery, Xie's mother began 
crying when she heard the sentence. Xie's father, Xie Zhonghua, told China 
Daily that he and his wife were satisfied with the ruling, even though their 
son will never come back.

"The judgment was made in line with the law, and Zhou deserved such a penalty," 
Xie Zhonghua said. Last year he took to the streets and publicized the case to 
get justice in the city. "So far, Zhou has not apologized to our child, let 
alone our family," he said.

If Zhou does not appeal to a higher court, his death penalty sentence will be 
submitted to the Supreme People's Court for a review under the Chinese Criminal 
Procedure Law.

Chinese media reported Xie and Zhou had known each other for many years and 
shared the same dormitory when they were in high school in Chongqing. Unlike 
Xie, who studied hard since graduation, Zhou failed in his studies due to his 
addiction to online games. While Zhou felt frustrated in study and life, Xie 
became a postgraduate at the academy. The reports also said Zhou argued with 
Xie during a role-playing game, Werewolf, at their class reunion party at the 
beginning of 2016. Zhou told police that Xie insulted him, but that was not 
verified by those who also attended the party.

During the trial in May, Zhou's lawyer said his client did kill Xie but he 
suffered from mental issues triggered by Xie's insults. But after a mental 
health examination, it was determined that Zhou has a neurosis but that did not 
affect his ability to know the difference between right or wrong.

(source: ecns.com)








PAKISTAN:

Pak will grant India consular access to Kulbhushan Jadhav today----Last month, 
the International Court of Justice had ruled that Pakistan had violated 
Jadhav’s rights under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and sought a 
review of his death sentence.



Pakistan on Sunday announced that it will grant consular access to Kulbhushan 
Jadhav on September 2.

Jadhav, 49, will be provided consular access “in line with the Vienna 
Convention on consular relations, the ICJ judgement and the laws of Pakistan,” 
Foreign Office spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said, news agency PTI reported.

The retired Indian Navy officer is on death row in Pakistan which has accused 
him of spying. Earlier,New Delhi had asked Islamabad to provide “unimpeded” 
contact with the Indian national in response to Islamabad’s conditional offer 
of consular access that had been conveyed to India.

India maintains that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he had business 
interests after retiring from the Navy and has been wrongly framed by Pakistan.

Last month, the International Court of Justice had ruled that Pakistan had 
violated Jadhav’s rights under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and 
sought a review of his death sentence.

The 2 sides are engaged in sensitive negotiations on consular access in view of 
the complex diplomatic and legal issues involved. People familiar with 
developments said Pakistan had attached several conditions to its offer, 
including the presence of Pakistani officials during a meeting between Jadhav 
and Indian officials and the use of audio and video devices to record the 
conversation.

This was the reason why the Indian side had insisted on the meeting being held 
in an environment free from intimidation and reprisal. This will ensure Jadhav 
can speak to Indian officials freely and not be afraid of any possible 
reprisals, they added.

Jadhav was arrested by Pakistani security agencies in Balochistan in March 2016 
and charged with involvement in spying and subversive activities. In April 
2017, Pakistan announced he had been given the death sentence by a military 
court.

India rejected the allegations against Jadhav and said he was kidnapped by 
Pakistani operatives from the Iranian port of Chabahar, where he was running a 
business. In May 2017, New Delhi petitioned the ICJ, which stayed Jadhav’s 
execution. In its ruling on July 17, the ICJ said its stay of the death 
sentence should continue.

(source: Hindustan Times)