[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide----GHANA, UK, JAP., PAKIS., INDIA, MOROC., IRAN

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 27



GHANA:

Waiting To Die: 180 On Death Row, No Executions Since 1993



Some 180 condemned prisoners are languishing on death row at the Nsawam Medium 
Security Prison because successive Presidents had, since 1993, refused to sign 
their death warrants.

The condemned prisoners include 174 men and 6 women, with many of them being 
sentenced to death by hanging for murder.

The Nsawam Medium Prison is the only prison in the country with a condemned 
block that can hold 200 prisoners.

Speaking to the Daily Graphic in Accra last Wednesday, the Public Relations 
Officer of the Ghana Prisons Service, Superintendent Vitalis Aiyeh, said he was 
not in a position to explain why Ghana’s Presidents would not sign death 
warrants.

“Of course, we are in a democratic dispensation and all over the world people 
are clamouring for the abolition of the death sentence, so that could be a 
reason,” he, nonetheless, said.

The laws

The Criminal Code lists crimes punishable by death as murder, treason, war 
crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and smuggling

The Constitution states that individuals who commit treason against the 
constitutional order “shall, upon conviction, be sentenced to suffer death”.

Genocide includes acts committed with the intent of destroying in whole or in 
part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group: killing or causing serious 
mental or bodily harm to members of the group, inflicting conditions intended 
to destroy the group and imposing measures to end births in the group.

For smuggling, the law says any individual concealing or carrying away from 
Ghana any gold or diamond without lawful authority or with the intent to evade 
any enactment concerning the export of gold or diamond “shall be liable on 
conviction to a sentence of death”.

After the conviction, the President will have to append his signature to a 
death warrant before the death penalty will be carried out.

Mental torture

Supt Aiyeh said condemned prisoners went through a lot of psychological torture 
“because the man is there and he wouldn’t know when he will be killed”.

”So when you are there, it is between you and your God, unlike the normal 
prisoner who knows one day he will go home,” he added.

He explained that one relief for condemned prisoners was that they could have 
their sentences commuted to life sentences after serving 10 years or more in 
prison, saying, however, that that would have to be done through the process of 
amnesty.

The last time such amnesty was granted in Ghana was in 2016 when three people 
had their sentences commuted to life.

Lawyers clash

Speaking to the issue, 2 lawyers, Nana Obiri Boahen and Mr Francis-Xavier Sosu, 
gave divergent views on the death sentence.

Nana Boahen, who is based in Sunyani, faulted Presidents of the Fourth Republic 
for failing to sign death warrants when nothing stopped them from doing so.

“Rawlings, Kufuor, Prof. Mills, Mahama, Nana Akufo-Addo — none of them signed 
the death warrant, why?” he asked.

He said there was brazen impunity in the country, with people committing 
murder, sometimes in public places and in broad daylight, adding that he 
believed the death sentence, when carried out, would help check the killings.

He said failure to carry out the death sentence had emboldened criminals to go 
out to kill, without any fear.

The legal practitioner said there were four ways in which the death sentence 
could be carried out — hanging, firing squad, electrocution or lethal 
injection.

“In all these cases, the pronouncement must be made by the judge,” he said.

Human Rights lawyer

But Mr Sosu, a human rights lawyer, said no one had the right to take another 
person’s life.

He said there had been many instances of people who were alleged to have killed 
being later found to be innocent.

According to him, the reason Presidents had not signed death warrants could be 
that they were sensitive to the provision concerning the right to life.

He also argued that the international community had moved away from killing 
people who had killed others.

“Punishment has revolved over the time. It used to be retributive, but now it 
is more of corrective,” he explained.

Touching on how the country should deal with people who had been condemned to 
death, he said their sentences should be communed to life sentences.

“Keeping them in condemned cells is different from keeping them as life 
prisoners. In the condemned cells, you sometimes don’t have the right to 
sunshine; they are kept in dark rooms for many years and that affects their 
health in general,” he said.

Mr Sosu posited that to keep people in condemned cells without signing their 
death warrants and not make them lifers was a clear violation of the dignity of 
those people.

He said if Presidents were not ready to sign the death warrants of prisoners on 
death row, then the courts must begin to move away from giving death sentences, 
providing the caveat that “that also calls for legislative reforms”.

He suggested that most judges restrained themselves from giving life sentences 
to people convicted for murder because they felt the penalty for murder was 
death by hanging.

Amnesty International

The human rights organisation, Amnesty International (AI), is strongly opposed 
to the existence of the death sentence in the statutes.

According to AI, Ghana was among the countries that had not been executing 
prisoners on death row but, strangely, it was yet to stop sentencing criminals 
to death.

The Country Director of AI, Mr Robert Akoto Amoafo, told the Daily Graphic that 
Ghana needed to learn from other sub-Saharan African countries, including 
Guinea and Kenya, that had abolished the death penalty.

He said it would be sheer wickedness for a President to append his signature to 
a warrant for someone to be killed.

(source: modernghana.com)

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

We need national conversation on death penalty



Throughout history, many societies have used the death penalty to punish the 
most atrocious transgressions.

Equally, many countries have abolished its application.

Of the 198 countries of the United Nations, as many as 106 have completely 
abolished the death penalty, while 56 retain it in their statutes.

Some 28 others, while having not abolished the death penalty, have not carried 
out any killing for more than 10 years.

Human rights groups campaigning against the death penalty have raised cogent 
reasons why the practice must stop.

For them, life is sacred and should be valued.

The argument has also been made that convicted murderers are still able to 
learn, maintain relationships and even reform.

One strong argument against capital punishment is the likelihood of sentencing 
a person wrongly.

Indeed, it is better for many guilty persons to escape punishment than for one 
innocent person to suffer.

Yet others opine that capital punishment symbolises justice and is the only 
surest way to sufficiently voice society’s revulsion of the murder of innocent 
lives.

To such people, the death penalty is a way of restoring society’s balance of 
justice by showing that the severest crimes are abhorred and will be punished 
in equal measure.

It is also the case of such thinkers that the death penalty guarantees that 
convicted murderers will never continue to live to kill again.

Frankly, there have been cases where convicts sentenced to life in prison have 
killed inmates and prison officers.

Some have also successfully arranged murders from within prison, while convicts 
who have been pardoned after serving a part of their sentences have murdered 
again.

It therefore stands to reason that for such people, death may be the only way 
to prevent them from committing more murders.

The Daily Graphic notes that while criminal acts are an affront to society, it 
acknowledges that crimes result from both biological or internal and 
environmental or external factors.

Ghana has, for the past 26 years, not executed anyone and currently there are 
180 prisoners on death row at the Nsawam Medium Security Prison.

This is because successive Presidents have, since 1993, refused to sign death 
warrants.

While some countries, including Ghana, still keep the death penalty in their 
statute books, interestingly, some citizens of countries that have abolished it 
favour its reintroduction.

Although discussion of the death penalty incites moral passion and controversy, 
we call for a national debate on whether to maintain it in our statute books or 
abolish it.

For what is the need for a law that no one would want to apply?

But as the Daily Graphic canvasses for the debate on whether or not to abolish 
the death penalty, we urge society to put in practical measures that will 
prevent crime.

This is especially so because punishment is not only for retribution and 
deterrence purposes but also reformation and to communicate to criminals their 
wrongdoing and give them the opportunity to apologise and reform.

(source: Daily Graphic)








UNITED KINGDOM:

UN Human Rights Council 42: general comment on the question of the death 
penalty -- UK's Ambassador to the UN in Geneva Julian Braithwaite outlined that 
the UK opposes the death penalty in all circumstances.



The UK would like to thank the main sponsors of L.37 for presenting this 
resolution, which addresses the important issue of the death penalty and in 
particular its resumption in some parts of the world.

The UK opposes the death penalty in all circumstances as a matter of principle. 
We are firmly of the view that it is both inhumane and unnecessary. While no 
criminal justice system is infallible, the use of the death penalty is often 
arbitrary, unfair and in breach of international standards. The application of 
the death penalty can also disproportionately affect the most vulnerable and 
marginalised in society.

We reject the assertion that the death penalty is a just response to 
drug-related crime. Not only does the application of the death penalty 
undermine human dignity, there is no conclusive evidence of its deterrent 
value. We also reject the argument that death penalty is a just response to 
terrorism. When states execute, they risk surrendering their main defence 
against extremist ideology.

This resolution urges states to protect the human rights of all persons facing 
the death penalty and other affected persons and to comply with their 
international obligations. In states where the death penalty is still applied, 
we continue to push for greater transparency about the use of the death penalty 
in line with international standards, as defined by the International Covenant 
on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). We deplore any failure to observe these 
standards.

The main sponsors have approached this draft resolution in a constructive and 
collaborative way. We welcome the incorporation of a number of UK suggestions.

While States may be able, in extremely limited circumstances as set out in the 
Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, to denounce or withdraw from an 
international instrument, we nevertheless deplore any consideration of the 
reintroduction of the death penalty by States that have undertaken an 
international obligation to abolish it. Equally, we condemn states that are 
considering reintroducing the death penalty, following abolition or the 
imposition of a moratorium through domestic law.

The UK will vote in favour of draft resolution L.37 and we encourage all other 
states to do so.

(source: gov.uk)








JAPAN:

Appeal starts over 2017 murder of 9-year-old Vietnamese girl



The Tokyo High Court on Thursday began hearing appeals against a lower court 
ruling convicting a man of the murder of a 9-year-old Vietnamese girl in 2017, 
with prosecutors calling for the death sentence and the accused seeking 
acquittal.

Yasumasa Shibuya, the 48-year-old former head of a parents group at an 
elementary school in the city of Matsudo near Tokyo, pleaded not guilty at the 
first hearing of the appeal trial over the death of Le Thi Nhat Linh, who was a 
third-grader at the school.

In July last year, the Chiba District Court sentenced him to life in prison for 
abducting her in his vehicle, sexually assaulting her and strangling her before 
abandoning her body.

"If Linh were still alive, she would have been a 6th grader. She could have 
made various plans for her future," said Le Anh Hao, the girl's 37-year-old 
father before the start of the trial.

He has collected signatures from 1.34 million people seeking the death penalty 
for Shibuya.

The girl at Mutsumi Daini Elementary School went missing on March 24, 2017, and 
was found dead near a drainage ditch in the city of Abiko two days later. 
Shibuya was arrested the following month.

The district court convicted Shibuya on the grounds that DNA matching his was 
found on the victim's body while the DNA of blood in his vehicle matched the 
girl's.

The defense had argued that the DNA evidence might have been forged or 
contaminated.

But the court did not sentence Shibuya to death as sought by prosecutors, 
saying the murder was not premeditated.

Both the prosecutors and the defense appealed the ruling.

(source: Japan Today)








PAKISTAN:

ATC sentences 2 to death over sectarian killings in Karachi



An anti-terrorism court sentenced on Thursday 2 activists of the proscribed 
Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan to death, convicting them of the targeted killings of 
two people, including a shopkeeper and a physician, belonging to the Shia 
community.

Syed Ahmed Hassan and Muhammad Naeem Khan were found guilty of murdering 
Shehryar Abbas Rizvi in July 2014 and Hassan was also found guilty of murdering 
Dr Naseem Aun Jafferi in August the same year.

Announcing the verdict, the ATC-6 judge observed that the cases were not of 
some regular homicide, arising out of an act of robbery, land or matrimonial 
dispute but the victims were targeted and these acts created terror, insecurity 
and panicked people, particularly the bereaved families.

(source: tribune.com.pk)








INDIA:

Jharkhand: Court awards death penalty to 3 for kidnapping, murdering minor



A local court here on Thursday awarded death penalty to 3 convicts for 
kidnapping and later murdering an 11-year-old boy in 2013.

The verdict was pronounced by the court of Additional District and Sessions 
judge Janardhan Singh.

The convicted had killed the victim after kidnapping him. They even took a 
ransom of Rs 5 lakh from the minor's family.

The victim was a relative of a police official. His body was recovered from 
Gorhar Police Station limits under Hazaribag district.

(source: aninews.in)

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

Man gets death for murder -- He chopped the victim’s body and packed it in 
suitcases



A trial court in Coimbatore awarded the death penalty to Yasser Arafat, 29, a 
native of Tirunelveli, who in 2013 murdered a 54-year-old woman in a service 
apartment on the busy Avinashi Road in Coimbatore, packed her chopped body 
parts in suitcases and sealed them with cement.

Fourth Additional District Judge K. Poorna Jeya Anand awarded capital 
punishment to Arafat, terming the case “rarest of the rare”.

Arafat had murdered N. Saroja, a native of Vennathur in Salem, who lived with 
her husband Nataraj and family in an apartment at Raheja Centre.

The woman was reported missing on February 13, 2013 and her mutilated body 
parts were traced to Arafat’s service apartment on February 21 that year. 
Arafat lived in the neighbouring unit as a tenant.<> The investigation found 
that Arafat used to seek Saroja’s help to light the gas stove. He murdered her 
and stole 12 sovereigns of her jewellery. Unable to dispose of the body after 2 
days, he chopped it and stacked the parts in two suitcases – hands, legs and 
head in one and the trunk in the other.

He then sealed the suitcases with cement to stop the foul smell from emanating. 
The Race Course police registered a case on February 16 after the family lodged 
a complaint that the woman was missing.

Foul smell

The police traced the body parts to Arafat’s residence after neighbours 
complained of foul smell from the place. He lived with the body parts in his 
residence for a week before escaping. The police arrested him from 
Visakhapatnam on March 2.

Arafat had come to Coimbatore after working for a brief period in Malaysia. He 
had informed neighbours that he was working with a telephone service provider.

He had sent an e-mail to his girlfriend in Malaysia after the murder which 
helped the police track his location, collect details of his whereabouts and 
arrest him.

“The judge, who lauded the investigation by the police, observed that criminals 
like Arafat were a threat to peace in society,” said public prosecutor R. 
Sarojini.

(source: The Hindu)








MOROCCO:

Rabat Court Postpones Appeal of Imlil’s Double Murder Case to October 
9----Rabat’s Court of Appeal decided on September 25 to postpone the trial of 
the 24 defendants in the Imlil murder case.



Rabat Court of Appeal in Sale decided on Wednesday, September 25, postponed the 
trial of the 24 suspects involved in the murder of the 2 Scandinavian tourists 
in Imlil (El Haouz province).

The defendants will appear in court again on October 9.

The Court decided to postpone the trial due to the lack of an interpreter. The 
court emphasized the necessity of ensuring the conditions of a fair trial and 
allowing each of the accused the right to a fair defense.

Last July, the court handed sentences ranging from 5 years to the death 
penalty.

The 3 main suspects received the death sentence, while the 4th defendant was 
sentenced to life imprisonment.

The defendants are accused of “forming a gang to commit terror crimes and 
intentionally assaulting the life of persons premeditatedly.”

They are also accused of possession of weapons, and “attempt to manufacture 
explosives with the intention to cause serious public harm, terrorism, and 
violence.”

The mastermind behind the Imlil murder case, Abdessamad El Joud, admitted on 
September 19 that the cell plotted the murder of the 2 Scandinavian victims.

Moroccan police found the bodies of Louisa Vesterager Jespersen and Maren 
Ueland near Mount Toubkal in December 2018.

Both victims were beheaded, authorities confirmed.

During the last appeal court session on September 19, El Joud expressed regret 
but refused to apologize to the victims’ families, the defendants’ lawyer, 
Hafida Maksaoui told Morocco World News.

“They [the victims] are only two, we are millions,” said the defendant, 
referring to Muslims worldwide who he sees as persecuted.

The defendant’s defense team is calling on the court to give lighter sentences, 
while the victims of the families are determined that the accused should 
receive the death penalty.

The victims’ families received sympathy from Moroccan citizens, who protested 
the murder in front of Norwegian and Danish embassies last year to show 
solidarity.

(source: Morocco World News)








IRAN----executions

Iran Executes 11 People Including a Woman in 2 Days



Iranian authorities hanged 3 inmates during the early morning hours of 
Thursday, September 26. The horrific executions of the prisoners identified as 
Rauf Azadikhah, Shahaboddin Mohammad Pour, and Ebrahim Ahmadi Pour were carried 
out in Urmia Prison, northwest Iran.

All of the victims were sentenced to death on drug related charges. A woman 
identified as Leila Zarafshan was also hanged Thursday in the Central Prison of 
Sanandaj. She had been imprisoned for 5 years for murdering her husband in the 
Central Prison of Sanandaj. As in previous cases, the execution of this woman 
has not been published in the clerical regime’s state-run press and media. 
Research done on women who murder their husbands indicate that they were 
victims of domestic violence.

With the execution of Leila Zarafshan, the number of women executed during 
Rouhani’s presidency reaches 95.7 of these women have been executed only in a 
3-month period since the beginning of summer.

On September 25, Iranian regime authorities also executed six men in Raja’i 
Shahr prison of Karaj, 30 km west of the capital Tehran.

2 of the victims were identified as Mojtaba Soleimani and Mostafa Bakhti. They 
had been found guilty of murder.

4 other prisoners who were not identified by name, were executed on drug 
charges.

On the same day another man was also executed on drug charges in the Central 
Prison of Borujerd in Lorestan Province, west of Iran. He was identified as 
Soltan Fathi Rad.

Iran’s deliberate use of capital punishment has been a constant source of 
international outrage and condemnation. According to several independent 
international bodies, including the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in 
Iran and Amnesty International, Iran is the leading state in executions per 
capita, 2nd only to China in terms of figures. Iran also tops the charts in the 
number of executions of women and juvenile offenders.

The Iranian regime has also carried out a large number executions based on 
drug-related charges, including crimes not considered major offences according 
to international norms.

Iran is estimated to have executed 285 people in 2018, the 2nd highest figure 
in the world, according to statistics compiled by Iran Human Rights Monitor.

The actual number of executions are much higher because the majority of 
executions in Iran are carried out secretly, away from the public eye where 
only the masterminds and perpetrators are witness to them.

(source: iran-hrm.org)