Oct. 16
INDONESIA:
Bashir to face Bali charges
Radical Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir will go on trial for killing
202 people in the Bali bombings, after prosecutors lodged an indictment
against him in a Jakarta court yesterday.
Lawyers lodging the file confirmed that Bashir would face charges related
to the bombing of Jakarta's Marriott Hotel last year but the surprise lay
in a series of secondary charges which relate to Bali.
The ABC has gained exclusive access to the indictment.
The secondary charges accuse Bashir of causing fires and explosions at the
Sari Club and Paddy's Bar in Bali in October 2002, resulting in deaths and
injuries.
It will be the 1st time the leader of the extremist Jemaah Islamiah (JI)
organisation has faced charges in connection with the Bali attacks.
Police were prevented from using anti-terrorism legislation to charge
Bashir over the Bali attacks when the clause making those laws
retrospective was found to be unconstitutional.
Until yesterday, prosecutors had said they had given up on the idea of
charging Bashir over the Bali attacks under routine criminal laws. The
shock turnaround could see Bashir facing 20 years jail on the Bali charge.
He could also face the death penalty under the primary charges of inciting
or ordering acts of terrorism, which centre around his ties to a JI
training camp in the Philippines, a bomb factory in central Java and the
bombing attack on the Marriott, which killed 12 people.
Abu Bakar Bashir's defence team has consistently ridiculed suggestions
that the cleric was behind that attack, as he had been in custody for nine
months leading up to the bombing.
A trial could now begin within weeks.
(source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
PHILIPPINES:
Catholics demand the death penalty be abolished -- More than 3 death
sentences in 4 are the result of "judicial error".
The Filipino Catholic Church and the Coalition Against the Death Penalty
have called on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo "to abrogate the death
penalty" and replace with "a new law providing a penalty that will have
the same effect as intended by the death penalty in protecting society."
Fr Robert Reyes, head of the Coalition Against the Death Penalty, has
being fighting for the dignity of inmates. In his view, there has been too
much "focus on prisoners and how to keep them in prison while hardly any
attention ahs been given to what goes on outside in a society of
institutionalized injustice and violence," he said.
"Prisoners serving their term, especially those condemned to die, are a
most effective testimony to the religion of power and competition," Father
Reyes stressed. In comparison, those who have "the right connections [. .
.] enjoy virtual immunity and impunity for their own crimes, injustice and
blatant abuse." Although those who have committed crimes must be aware of
their guilt, they are still entitled to human rights. For Fr Reyes,
"prisoners and the rest of us in society need to live lives of meaning,
dignity and integrity. We must fight to abolish the death penalty and
pursue a society where prisoners too can lead a life of genuine justice,
compassion and dignity."
According to attorney Soccoro Diokno of the Free Legal Assistance Group
(FLAG), "it has been 10 years since we had the death penalty and nothing
much has changed. Crime has not been deterred despite 7 executions and
1,082 people on death row (209 waiting to be executed and 42 set for
execution over the next few months). If you exclude Saturdays and Sundays,
thats one execution a day." To make matters worse, as Mr Diokno points
out, the Supreme Court has conceded that 77 % of all cases now before the
lower courts are the result of judicial error.
FLAG lawyers have been working on behalf of death row inmates for some
time. "The country is facing problem after problem and it [the death
penalty bill pending in congress] does not seem to be a priority," Diokno
said adding that "the problem is that the government is not looking at the
root causes of everything that is going on [. . .] If you want to deal
with crime effectively, you cannot deal with it simply by having the death
penalty "that has never been the solution."
The death penalty was reinstated on January 1, 1994, for 13 crimes:
treason, piracy, corruption, parricide, homicide, infanticide, kidnapping
and holding people, armed robbery, arson, rape, fraud (involving sums of
US$ 2 million or more), and car theft involving rape and/or murder.
Offenders under 18 and over 70 at the time of the crime are excluded.
Human rights groups have charged police and prison institutions with
abuses. Several reports indicate that suspects have been tortured to
extort confessions.
Some judges have instead created an association "the guillotine club" that
has publicly backed the death penalty arguing that it is a deterrent to
crime.
(source: AsiaNews)
