death penalty news June 5, 2004
INDIA: Europe against death for Rajiv's killers European nations approached by the CBI for assistance in the probe into the Rajiv Gandhi assassination conspiracy are insisting on a promise from New Delhi not to award the death sentence to those who may be adjudged guilty on the basis of "their evidence". The "no capital punishment" pledge has been sought following cooperation request from India to these countries to provide leads and evidences in the investigation of the case being done by Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Agency. The insistence which officials see as a symptom of extreme form of political correctness sweeping parts of Europe, threatens to put a wrench in the works of the Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Agency probing the Rajiv assassination conspiracy. The body whose term has been extended by a year looks set to resume the probe. The agency had sent letters rogatory to 23 nations, seeking their assistance. But only about five countries got back assuring cooperation, with the rest showing indifference in varying degrees. This might be another blow for the investigations which have lingered for almost 13 years since the former Indian premier was killed in a blast on May 21, 1991. This also puts the authorities here in a bind since while they are interested in early conclusion of the probe, they might find giving a "no capital punishment" commitment quite problematic. The MDMA is once again taking up the matter to probe the alleged links of Godman Chandraswami. It would investigate whether he had any dealings with the LTTE around the time when Gandhi was assassinated. The CBI had also identified about 50 channels though which Chandraswami had allegedly carried out some transactions. Detailed investigations are also pending in the matter. The MDMA was set up in August 1998 by the ruling NDA government to probe the conspiracy angle and carry further investigations into questions raised by the Jain Commission with respect to the role of the LTTE. The agency headed by a joint director of the CBI, comprising officers from the IB, RAW and even State Bank of India, was also to probe the financial angle involved in funding the conspiracy. (source: Times of India) ========================== AUSTRALIA: Death exposes an island's secrets Janelle Patton went to Norfolk Island seeking refuge. Her murder inquest has revealed the island's dark side, writes Stephen Gibbs. There was nothing quaint for the curious traveller in how Janelle Patton was killed. Nothing about the way her 29-year-old body came to be found wrapped in black plastic near a waterfall held any old-world romance or charm. But the man from Norfolk Island Tourism was there each morning outside the Georgian courthouse where the coronial inquest was heard; on business, chatting to reporters and handing out his cards. Outside the walls around the former military barracks built in 1832 were tour buses and lowing cows, but inside Ron and Carolyn Patton listened as their daughter was described fighting mightily for perhaps 15 minutes as she was bashed, slashed and stabbed to death by sharp and blunt instruments. Patton was a hospitality worker who had lived on the island for two years. The inquest heard she had fled Sydney to escape an abusive relationship and seek a fresh start; an unnamed man had broken her confidence and her jaw in an affair in the mid-1990s. Norfolk Island, she told a friend later, had been the place where her parents had had their honeymoon. Advertisement But it was no honeymoon for Patton: relationship troubles continued to dog her, with a string of failed affairs, and angry encounters with more than one local. Police have nominated 16 "persons of interest" to their investigation into her murder. There were never more than 20 locals in the public gallery during four days of evidence, but the island phones were running hot throughout. The islanders of this notoriously closed community can see without being seen. Back in the week after Patton's murder on Easter Sunday, 2002, Terence Jope, who met the Sydney woman a month earlier at a party, was seen parked in his Chevrolet pick-up at Queen Elizabeth Lookout above the Kingston church. Talking into a handpiece he was heard saying: "I am at Janelle's memorial service." Jope, who became a "person of interest" to investigators, told police he had taken up this position "to observe other people driving around, as he thought that would be more useful". Despite such evidence that locals kept a sharp eye on each other's activities, an island woman claimed yesterday she had "not really" paid attention to the published list of 16 persons of interest that has so disturbed much of the community. "There's been some fabulous shots of Norfolk on the TV," was her summary of the case. When islanders said at the time of the murder that the killer would not be a local, they were not suggesting that a tourist committed the crime. What it now seems rightly concerned the "real" islanders (those descended from the Pitcairn Islanders) is that the murderer could be found among one of the extended families that resettled the abandoned penal colony in 1856. Those people descended from Pitcairn Islanders, many of them Bounty mutineers, form a third of the permanent population: the Buffet, Quintal, Nobbs, Evans, McCoy, Adams, Young and (Fletcher) Christian families. Everyone "on island" for long knows which residents are in this familial loop, a group that looks to mainland Australia and New Zealand to generationally freshen the gene pool, as the Bounty mutineers once took Tahitian wives. Of the 16 persons of interest named at the inquest, 10 of them are real islanders: Laurie "Bucket" Quintal; all the Menghettis including Charles "Spindles", Paul "Jap" and Dana (Buffetts); Raymond "Tugger" Yager and Rodney "Moose" Menzies (both Quintals); Kim "Frenzy" Friend (an Adams); and Terence Jope, Greg Magri and Steven "Stevie" Cochrane (all Christians). The island clans, who speak a mix of archaic English and Tahitian, but only among themselves, have fierce loyalties probably forged during the years their mutineer ancestors were hunted through the Pacific. The persons of interest in Patton's murder could be cast in a local, darker version of Twin Peaks, an Australian Gothic. This is not a real-life version of SeaChange; it's more like The Wicker Man. In that 1973 film Edward Woodward played a mainland police sergeant and 40-year-old virgin lured to a tiny Scottish isle in search of a missing girl, with Christopher Lee as the patriarch of a pagan society that engages in ritual sex. As it becomes clear the missing girl was sacrificed to the gods, Sergeant Howse tells Lord Summerisle: "Your lordship seems strangely . . . unconcerned." The Christopher Lee character replies, "We do not commit murder here". Norfolk Islanders initially tried a similar tactic with Australian Federal Police, trying to deny that this was a place where murder could Dana called Patton "Crazy Janelle". Other anonymous sources told police Dana was "prone to violence when arguing with people". Patton wanted something more permanent than Jap was offering, and moved into a flat owned by Ruth and "Foxy" McCoy. Patton wrote in her diary on June 18, 2001: "Jap down for tea & spat on me", then on October 19: "Spoke to Jap (f---wit). Found out he's been rooting Robyn & has been since Kurt's b'day or thereabouts. Told me he's my first enemy on Norfolk." (Jap, who told police he was "thrilled" when he learnt Patton had moved on to Laurie "Bucket" Quintal, married Robyn Murdoch, who in 2002 was chief executive officer of Norfolk Island Administration, and is also a person of interest.) Quintal was 42 when he met Patton in mid-2001 at the RSL, where he was on the committee. As with Jap Menghetti, Patton wanted more from the relationship than Quintal, who suggested she would be "better off" going home. Her diary of January 29, 2002: "Saw Bucket @ Foodies - invited me out to tea (Chicken & salad). Basically only wanted a root so I left." Also in January 2002, Quintal allegedly physically forced her out of his house. Patton discussed this break-up with Michael "Boo" Prentice, who in late January 2002 celebrated his 50th birthday. Prentice told police that Patton claimed Quintal attempted to choke her when she refused to have sex with him. A workmate of Patton's at the Castaway Hotel allegedly told Patton not to form a relationship with Prentice because "he does not know the meaning of the word no". In December 2000, Patton had met Raymond "Tugger" Yager, a 37-year-old island carpenter. After Patton's murder Quintal told police that Yager had gone to Patton's flat on at least one occasion claiming to be him. On the day of Patton's murder, Yager said he spent at least three hours cleaning his car, but police found a green paint fleck in the tray that appears to match paint found in Patton's hair. He left Norfolk three days after the murder and is believed to be in Cambodia. The day before he left, travel agent Angela Judd had asked him: "You nowa killar gal did you?" Yager allegedly answered "Yeh yeh whatsar word premeditiated" (sic). Terence Jope, the man who kept surveillance at Patton's memorial service and who police suspect had access to the black plastic sheeting found wrapped around her body, was the subject of further disturbing evidence. Leonie Newton had initially been reluctant to talk to police. She made a statement on condition it be used only in connection with the homicide "not in any other, unrelated, investigation". Newton had known Jope since about 1996 and said he had a reputation as a "consummate womaniser". In April 2003, a year after Patton's murder, Newton had been home alone one night. Her dog had been given a pethidine injection, so she had left the door open for him. Between 2am and 3am Newton woke to find Jope standing next to her bed. He began talking about his relationship with his wife and his belief that there was an Australian Government conspiracy to take over Norfolk Island. After between one and two hours he simply left. There is no factual nor forensic evidence against anyone that could convince coroner Ron Cahill to find on Thursday anything other than that Janelle Louise Patton was murdered somewhere on Norfolk Island by a person or persons unknown. But the consequences for the killer, if caught, appear suitable for the setting: "Whosoever commits the crime of murder shall be liable to suffer death," states the NSW Crimes Act of 1900, upon which the island's criminal code relies. And while Commonwealth legislation abolishing capital punishment in all states and territories would override that death sentence, flogging and putting a prisoner in leg irons are still technically legal punishments. An arrest is not pending, but at any future trial in which the accused could expect to be judged by a juror of his or her peers, finding 12 citizens who could be guaranteed not to appear in evidence might be harder than solving this crime. (source: The Age, Australia) =============================== PAKISTAN: Pakistani editor's death sentence reduced to life The death sentence on a Pakistani editor has been reduced to life imprisonment by a court here, which ruled that the drug trafficking charge for which he was convicted did not warrant capital punishment. The family of Rehmat Shah Afridi, chief editor of the Frontier Post, said they would appeal the ruling of the Lahore High Court in the Supreme Court, Daily Times reported Friday. Afridi was arrested April 12, 1999, after his car was stopped and 20 kg of hashish found in it. He denies the drug charges and maintains he was framed for criticising the government of then prime minister Nawaz Sharif. An anti-narcotics court July 21, 2001, sentenced Afridi to death. Judges Tassaduq Hussain Jillani and Saeed Akhter of the Lahore High Court Thursday reduced this to life but maintained the Rs.2 million fine imposed on Afridi. "Observing that the court could reduce a sentence on the basis of the amount of the drugs found, the bench wanted to know from the prosecution if anyone had been given the death sentence for possessing hashish. The prosecution said that it could not reply with conviction," Daily Times noted. Afridi's case is the first in Pakistan in which videotapes were accepted as evidence. The tapes, recorded by the Anti Narcotics Force (ANF), showed Afridi apparently making deals to sell drugs to customers. Prosecutor Khawaja Sultan Ahmad contended the video proved Afridi was meeting undercover agents who were trying to make a deal with him to buy drugs. In the video, Afridi was seen offering a pack of cigarettes to another person. The ANF lawyer said he was actually showing a sample of hashish to an undercover agent. A voice purported to be that of Afridi also suggested that he would never deal in dangerous drugs such as heroin because they had killed hundreds of youths. Ahmad pointed out that Afridi did not say that he would not deal in hashish. Afridi's lawyer raised several objections to the video, saying it was of poor quality and the voices could also not be made out. The lawyer said the videos were never subjected to sonographic tests, did not display the time or date and the law in Pakistan and in many other countries did not accept video and videocassettes in evidence. He said that undercover agents or videocassettes were not mentioned in the police report made after Afridi's arrest. According to Afridi's lawyer, a video could be used as evidence only if it was of excellent quality, the person making the video appeared in court as a witness and the lip movement of the people shown in the video synchronised with the voice in the video. He maintained that the video produced against Afridi did not fulfil any of these conditions and, therefore, had no value. (source: newkerala.com)
