Sept. 2
BANGLADESH----executions
Bangladesh Hangs 2 Ex-Policemen for Rape, Murder
2 former policemen convicted of the rape and killing of a teenager were
executed by hanging in a north Bangladesh jail early on Thursday.
Senior prison official Mohammad Azizul Haque said it was the 1st time that
a member of Bangladesh's police force had been hanged.
"The 2, Moinul Hoq and Abdus Sattar, were hanged one minute past
(Wednesday) midnight," he said at the Rangpur jail, 219 miles north of
Dhaka, where the sentences were carried out.
The incident in the northern town of Dinajpur in 1995 sparked protests
across the country by women and human rights groups, driving the
authorities to arrest the offenders and put them on trial.
Accompanied by another policeman, the men kidnapped Yasmin, an 18-year-old
housemaid who worked in the capital, late one night when she asked for a
lift home in their police van after missing the last bus.
They took her to a quiet spot, where they raped and strangled her, leaving
her body beside a road to be found the next morning and returned to her
mother, police and town officials said.
"The departed soul of my daughter will now rest in peace," said Yasmin's
grieving mother Sharifa Begum, 50. "And I pray to almighty Allah to save
all other girls from predators, including police," she told reporters on
Thursday.
The country's leading women's rights activist Farida Akhtar said the
hanging of Yasmin's killers would send a stern warning.
"We are satisfied. Though delayed, justice was not denied in Yasmin's
case," she told Reuters.
"It would also deliver a message to other women-hunters that they might as
well walk to the gallows if they committed a heinous crime," Akhtar said.
A 3rd policeman convicted in Yasmin's case, Amrita Lal, also faces the
death penalty in Rangpur after President Iajuddin Ahmed rejected a mercy
appeal from the policeman's family, prison officials said.
A Rangpur judge, Abdul Matin, sentenced the 3 men to death by hanging on
August 31, 1997. But their executions were delayed because they appealed
to the High Court against the verdict, and petitioned the president for
mercy, officials said.
Since independence in 1971, Bangladesh has hanged 379 people on criminal
charges that include rape and murder, the officials said.
Prison officials said about 550 more convicts await execution in different
jails, more than 450 of them convicted after the government set up "speedy
trial courts" 18 months ago to tackle a backlog of criminal cases.
(source: Reuters)
EQUATORIAL GUINEA:
Equatorial Guinea Judge Suspends 'Mercenary' Trial
A judge in Equatorial Guinea on Tuesday suspended the trial of 14
suspected foreign mercenaries accused of plotting to overthrow its
president, saying more time was needed to investigate the case.
"This court decrees the suspension of this trial for the time it will take
for all complementary investigations to be conducted," Judge Salvador Ondo
Ncumu told the court.
"If we want a trial that will establish as much as possible what really
happened, the court considers that it should grant the request of the
prosecution," he said.
The prosecution earlier asked for the indefinite suspension of the trial,
saying new evidence was coming to light every day from investigations
outside the oil-rich former Spanish colony.
It pointed to the arrest last week in South Africa of Mark Thatcher, the
51-year-old son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who
was detained on suspicion of helping finance the plot.
Of the 14 foreign suspects on trial in the Malabo court, only one has
admitted taking part in a coup attempt: South African arms dealer Nick du
Toit, for whom prosecutors want the death penalty.
The 7 other South Africans and six Armenians also being tried have denied
all knowledge of any coup attempt, as have 5 Equatorial Guineans also on
trial.
(source: Reuters)
JAPAN:
Kin slayer accepts death row fate
The death sentence on a man convicted of stabbing his brother's wife and
her daughter to death and seriously injuring her son became irrevocable
after he rescinded his appeal to a high court, court officials said
Thursday.
Keishi Nako, 34, submitted to the Miyazaki branch of the Fukuoka High
Court a document on Aug. 26 to retract his appeal against the death
sentence handed down on him by the Kagoshima District Court in June this
year. In the document, he did not specify the reason why he abandoned
appealing the sentence.
Nako stabbed his elder brother's wife, 40-year-old Kazumi Nako, her
daughter, 17-year-old Chihiro, and her 2nd son, Kenji, 15, at their home
in Isen, Kagoshima Prefecture, in August 2002, according to the ruling.
Kazumi and Chihiro died from loss of blood while Kenji survived.
(source: Mainichi Shimbun)
