Oct. 24
AUSTRALIA:
The death penalty as society's loss
The death penalty arouses the rawest human emotion. It has been out of
favour with Australian governments - but not all politicians and certainly
not all Australians - since Ronald Ryan was hanged at Melbourne's
Pentridge Prison 37 years ago, but remains a penalty of choice in many
countries.
It is a punishment advocated largely in terms of black and white, good
versus evil, an eye for an eye, deterrence over compassion. This is
despite the highly questionable deterrence value of capital punishment and
despite its zero capacity for undoing errors of judgement against
individuals convicted of heinous crimes they did not commit. In these
latter cases, execution is not just a sin against innocent individuals but
a crime against society itself. More broadly, capital punishment is a
victory of pessimism over optimism where the most dogmatic form of
retribution sweeps away all consideration of reformation, where an
individual life is so disposable that society might rightly ponder its own
worth.
The issue is back on the Australian agenda not because of any immediate
prospect of capital punishment's reinstatement here but because one of our
own - Nguyen Tuong Van, a 24-year-old salesman from Melbourne - is left
with one slim hope of avoiding execution in Singapore, where he was
arrested 2 years ago on heroin smuggling charges. Nguyen, who came to
Australia as a refugee, was in transit at Singapore's Changi Airport, en
route from Indochina to Australia. He allegedly told authorities he was
carrying 396.2 grams of heroin on instruction from a Sydney-based crime
syndicate to repay the legal debt of his twin brother, who had been
arrested in Australia on drug and affray charges. This explanation is
presumably what Australia's High Commissioner to Singapore, Gary Quinlan,
refers to as the "very specific compassionate and humanitarian
circumstances" that will form the basis of an appeal for clemency to
Singapore's President, S.R. Nathan, now Nguyen has lost his last court
opportunity to have the conviction and death penalty overturned.
The chances of clemency are remote, indeed. Amnesty International thinks
the Singapore Government has hanged about 400 people since 1991, mostly
for drug trafficking. Clemency has been granted on just 6 occasions.
Singapore has always insisted it would not yield to imposition of what it
regards as soft Western standards.
Australia has a sound relationship with Singapore and the Australian
Government prudently has adopted a softly, softly approach in the Nguyen
matter for fear that stridency will only stiffen Singaporean resolve. The
issue is not whether Nguyen should be punished for his crime but whether
the punishment is proportionate to his wrongdoing.
Leo Tolstoy, who saw much horror in his life, never overcame the emotional
pain of witnessing a French execution by guillotine. He recalled, "There
is no reasoning will, but a paroxysm of human passion." The execution, he
said, was marked by "coolness to the point of refinement,
homicide-with-comfort, nothing big". And that's the point. No society
grows from its inhumanity; it just diminishes.
(source: Editorial, Sydney Morning Herald)
UNITED NATIONS/IRAQ:
UN rejects involvement in Saddam's trial -- The UN refused to train judges
and prosecutors trying the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein
The UN has rejected a U.S. request to train some 30 Iraqi judges and
prosecutors trying the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, saying that the
Special Tribunal is empowered to impose death penalty opposed by it and
the court's rules also "fails to meet the minimum standards of justice".
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Secretary General Kofi Annan said that
"UN officials should not be directly involved in extending assistance to
any court or tribunal that is empowered to impose the death penalty."
"The Tribunal's rules fail to meet the minimum standards of justice,"
'Washington Post' quoted Dujarric as saying.
"The Bush Administration appealed to UN war crimes tribunal to send some
judges and prosecutors to a training conference in London for members of
the Iraqi tribunal. But UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's office sent the
court's chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, a letter barring her staff from
attending the week-long conference, which ended Monday", Dujarric said.
Serious doubts
At a press conference at UN headquarters Dujarric said that "serious
doubts exist regarding the capability of the Iraqi special tribunal to
meet relevant international standards."
According to Dujarric, the UN is tied in its ability to cooperate with the
court without a "specific mandate" from "a competent political organ" such
as the UN Security Council or the General Assembly.
"The decision", said The Post, "was a blow to the U.S. and Iraq's interim
government which had hoped that a UN imprimatur on the court's activities
would lead to greater international credibility".
A weeklong training session for Iraqi judges and lawmakers was scheduled
to be conducted in London by American lawyers who assist Iraqi judges and
investigators, according to the New York Times.
(source: AlJazeera)
IRAQ:
About 150 Arab fighters face death penalty in Iraq: minister
Some 150 to 160 Arab fighters have appeared in Iraqi courts charged with
carrying out terrorist attacks and could face the death penalty if
convicted, the justice minister told AFP on Sunday.
"The Arabs have been referred to Iraqi courts and the verdicts against
these foreigners are due to be pronounced soon for acts of terror they
carried out in Iraq," Malik Dohan al-Hassan said in an interview.
He said those on trial included Egyptians, Iranians, Jordanians, Lebanese,
Syrians, Yemenites and Moroccans.
"The crimes committed in Iraq would be judged according to Iraqi law which
reserves the death sentence for those charged with premeditated murder or
those who carry out a car bombing to kill the biggest number of people,"
he said.
Capital punishment, which was in force under the ousted regime of
president Saddam Hussein, was reinstated by the interim government on
August 8 after being abolished by the previous US-led occupation
authority.
Both the government and US-led forces accuse foreign fighters,
particularly those linked to Jordanian-born militant Abu Mussab
al-Zarqawi, of carrying out some of the worst car bombings and killings in
Iraq.
(source: Agence France Presse)
