Nov. 27
JAMAICA:
Senate passes amendment removing mandatory death sentence
The Senate yesterday passed an amendment to the Offences Against the
Person Act that removes the mandatory sentence of death for capital
murder, giving the court the option of either death or life imprisonment
for all murder convictions.
Under the amendment, persons convicted of non-capital murder will be given
sentences of no less than 15 years, provides for a review of those cases
in which the mandatory sentence of death has been pronounced with a view
to making a determination as to the appropriate sentence.
However, government senators made it clear that the amended law did not
signify that the administration was backing off from its intention to hang
convicted murderers.
The changes to the law follows a ruling by the United Kingdom-based Privy
Council that the conviction of Lambert Watson to death was "an inhuman
punishment" under Section 17 of the Jamaican Constitution and was
therefore unconstitutional.
Watson was convicted of the 1997 murders in Hanover of his common-law wife
Eugenie Samuels, and their daughter Georgina. But the Privy Council ruled
following his appeal that while the death penalty was not prohibited in
Jamaica, it was nonetheless unconstitutional for individuals convicted of
capital murder to be automatically sentenced to death.
"It has to be recognised that section 3(1A) of the amended (Offences
Against the Person) Act remains valid to the extent that it authorises the
imposition of that (death) sentence," the Privy Council said in its
ruling.
"It will therefore be open to the court in these cases either to impose
the death sentence or to impose a lesser punishment, depending on the view
it takes of the crime which the defendant committed and all the relevant
circumstances."
The attorney general and justice minister, Senator A J Nicholson, who
piloted the bill in the Senate, said the failure since 1998 to resume the
execution of the death penalty has not been due to any lack of will on the
part of the government to execute the death sentences of the courts, but
was due to the several avenues available to those convicted to extricate
themselves from such a sentence.
Noting that there were 12 such avenues available, ranging from preliminary
enquiries to petitioning the Privy Council, Nicholson noted that on the
contrary, the Jamaican authorities had made several moves towards
expediting the processes involved in bringing capital cases to conclusion.
These, he said, included measures such as operating full-time circuit
courts in St Catherine, Clarendon and St James; the operation of full-time
regional gun courts in Westmoreland, Hanover, St James and Trelawny; and
removal from the UN Optional Protocol on Civil and Political Rights,
"since the attorneys, on behalf of condemned men, had developed the habit
of petitioning one human rights body, waiting for the decision and then
petitioning the other. thereby seeking to take further advantage of the
5-year rule."
(source: Jamaica Observer)
SRI LANKA:
Sri Lankan president moves to reinstate the death penalty
Sri Lankan president Chandrika Kumaratunga has seized on the murder of a
high court judge last Friday as the pretext to reactivate the death
penalty for the crimes of murder, rape and drug dealing. Judge Sarath
Ambepitiya and his body guard were gunned down with automatic weapons
shortly after returning to his home at the end of a day at the courts. The
unknown assailants escaped in a van and to date police investigators have
few leads.
Even though Sri Lanka has a history of war and political violence, the
brazen killing of Ambepitiya is the 1st time that a judge has been
murdered. Sections of the Colombo media immediately speculated that it was
the work of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Particular note
was taken of Ambepitiyas sentencing of LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran
in 2002 to a jail term of 200 years for his role in the bombing of the
Central Bank in 1996.
However, without any substantive evidence of LTTE involvement, the press
focussed most attention on the countrys drug barons, rising levels of
organised crime and Ambepitiyas reputation as a defender of
"law-and-order": he was prepared to impose harsh sentences. Just prior to
his murder, the judge had sentenced a woman convicted of drug dealing to
life imprisonment and, according to Chief Justice Sarath Silva, was
hearing another high profile drug case, in which a verdict was due to be
delivered.
Kumaratunga immediately exploited public shock over the killing to proceed
with her longstanding ambition of reinstituting the death penalty, which,
while still on the countrys law books, has not been carried out since
1976. The day after the murder she called an emergency meeting with her
Public Security, Law and Order Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake and other
top officials and issued an edict reinstating capital punishment and
stepping up security for judges.
Kumaratungas decision is a cynical move aimed at using appeals to
reactionary "law-and-order" measures to divert public attention from the
real causes of mounting social tensions and political crisis. The real
causes of growing crime rates and rise of drug addition lie in the
policies pursued by successive governments that have resulted in deepening
social inequality, growing unemployment particularly among young people,
and the systematic dismantlement of the country's limited social services.
All of these factors have been compounded by the countrys protracted civil
war. Many of the unemployed youth who were recruited into the army as
cannon fodder in its vicious war against the countrys Tamil minority have
deserted. There are an estimated 30,000 deserters, all of them with
military training and in some cases with access to modern weapons, who
provide a large pool of desperate guns-for-hire.
It is an open secret that the major political parties hire many of these
thugs to act as bodyguards or to terrorise and intimidate their political
opponents. This has led to close connections between politicians, criminal
gangsters and the state apparatus itself, including the police and army.
So blatant is the process that it is a matter for comment in the press.
The Island, for instance, declared in its editorial: "Our leading
politicians--and this is no secret--have precipitated this near anarchic
state.... If the executive president tolerates ministers and deputy
ministers associating with criminals and acting as their patron saints,
then a process beginnings that is virtually unstoppable. It results in
high ministry officials, heads of departments, heads of services, middle
ranking officials right down to the peons being associated with corruption
and criminal activity."
The Daily Mirror scathingly commented that Ambepitiyas murder was not
unexpected. "The signs were clear. Political interference in the judiciary
in a big way; military deserters roaming at will as private guards of
politicians doing their bidding, including bashing up patrons in dance
halls; police top brass hand-in-hand with the underworld; and
politicians--even cabinet ministers--hand-in-glove with the underworld. It
was a deadly cocktail for the body politic of a small country to absorb."
In this context it is worth noting that there are a number of unanswered
questions surrounding Ambepitiyas murder. 3 days prior to the killing, his
additional police security escort was withdrawn. According to police
officials there had been a manpower shortage, but the judges widow has
angrily criticised the decision. She has also threatened not to cooperate
with any investigation unless the police produce the record book related
to the security escort.
Based on Ambepitiyas judicial record, the media have suggested that the
LTTE or drug lords might have had reason to kill him. But little has been
said about several verdicts that no doubt provoked an angry reaction among
layers of the police and security forces and suggest possible motives for
their involvement in Ambepitiyas assassination.
This week Ambepitiya was due to preside over the case of five soldiers
indicted for their involvement in the murder of eight Tamil civilians on
December 19, 2000 at Mirusuvil in the north of the island. The trial at
bar inquiry into the Mirusuvil case was to be heard by Ambepitiya in
January last year but was delayed for nearly two years after a supreme
court appeal by one of the accused.
Ambepitiya was also president of a three-judge high court panel that last
year sentenced several policemen and soldiers to death for their role in
the massacre of 27 Tamil detainees at the Bindunuwewa detention camp in
2000.
Capital punishment in Sri Lanka
The death penalty, and popular opposition to it, has a long history in Sri
Lanka. The British colonial authorities, after taking control of the whole
island in 1815, abolished the arbitrary legal procedures of the decaying
feudal kingdom of Sinhala rulers. The new judicial system included the
death penalty for murder, as well as for "waging war against the [British]
King."
The imposition of the death penalty for political crimes provoked
widespread opposition. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party
(LSSP), then based on the principles of Trotskyism, was in the forefront
of the struggle for basic democratic rights, including the abolition of
the death penalty. Kumaratungas Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), which was
founded by her father S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, sought to undermine the LSSPs
support by combining Sinhala chauvinism with "democratic" and even
"socialist" rhetoric.
Bandaranaike won power in 1956 on the basis of the communalist demand for
"Sinhala only" as the national language, but also sought to give his
government a progressive veneer. He suspended the death penalty but it was
rapidly reintroduced after Bandaranaike was assassinated in 1959 by a
clique within his own party and a layer of the Buddhist hierarchy,
incensed that he had not implemented their chauvinist demands.
In a speech delivered during the 1956 parliamentary debate on the
suspension of the death penalty, LSSP leader Colvin R de Silva eloquently
made the point that crime was the product of an unjust society and that
capital punishment stood in the way of fundamental social reform.
"If we will not face up to the responsibility that the society must take
over every single member of that society, are not ready to face up to the
fact that, in every murder, we are also participants in the murder
inasmuch as we have tolerated the existence of such a social background
and context, upbringing, education, economic and psychological situation
which produce such men: unless we understand that, we will never face up
to this question of the death penalty squarely," he said.
By 1964, the LSSP completely capitulated to the SLFP, betrayed its
international socialist principles and joined the bourgeois government led
by Bandaranaikes widow. But the political struggle that the LSSP waged
nevertheless created ongoing resistance among working people to attacks on
democratic rights, including to the death penalty. Even the right-wing
United National Party government of J.R.Jayawardene felt compelled to
modify the use of capital punishment in its autocratic constitution of
1978.
Under the new legal arrangement, state executions could only be carried
out with the unanimous approval of the trial judge, the attorney general
and the minister of justice. When there was no agreement, the sentence was
to be commuted to life imprisonment. Before being carried out, the death
sentence also had to be finally authorised by the presidenta clause that
effectively ended executions. The last hanging took place in 1976.
Over the last decade, however, President Kumaratunga has made several
attempts to reintroduce the death penalty. Confronting mounting opposition
over the failure to end the war and the continuing deterioration of living
standards, she and her coalition government turned to the right-wing
nostrums of "law and order" to divert attention from their broken promises
and lies. The LSSP, which is widely discredited and little more than a
hollow shell, has been no obstacle.
In March 1999, as she neared the end of her first term of office,
Kumaratunga demagogically declared at a provincial council election rally:
"The crime rate is rising and it's no time to pour compassion on criminals
who have no respect for human life. My government therefore, decided to
re-introduce the death penalty." She was compelled to back down in the
face of widespread protests. Since then, the issue has hung in the
balance: no death sentence has been commuted to life imprisonment, but
neither has it been carried out.
The UNP-led coalition government, which held office from 2001 to April
2004, also made moves to revive state executions in 2003. But confronting
widespread opposition over the impact of its economic restructuring
policies, it proved incapable of implementing its plan. After her United
Peoples Freedom Front (UPFA) coalition won the April election, Kumaratunga
is now attempting to do the same.
(source: World Socialist News)
EQUATORIAL GUINEA:
Coup plotters escape death penalty
A court convicted dozens of South Africans and Armenians as alleged
mercenaries in a coup plot in the oil-rich African nation of Equatorial
Guinea, but rejected death penalties requested for 2 top figures.
The forbearance on the death penalty could help Equatorial Guinea in its
bid to extradite the most prominent figure in the alleged plot: Mark
Thatcher, son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
21 shackled defendants listened in a courtroom in a converted conference
centre as Judge Salvador Ondo Nkumu read out verdicts and sentences. He
said the court would make no comment on its verdicts.
South African arms dealer Nick du Toit, who earlier this month repudiated
an alleged confession that had provided the bulk of Equatorial Guinea's
case, received a 34-year prison sentence.
Opposition figure Severo Moto - the only other defendant for whom
prosecutors had requested the death penalty - was sentenced in absentia to
63 years.
8 other opposition figures also living in exile were sentenced to 52 years
each.
Equatorial Guinea alleged Thatcher and other, mainly British, financiers
commissioned the bid to overthrow the 25-year-old regime of President
Teodoro Obiang.
Plotters intended to install an opposition politician as the figurehead
leader of Africa's No. 3 oil producer, Equatorial Guinea charges.
Thatcher - charged in South Africa in connection with the alleged
conspiracy - and all others deny any involvement.
The court sentenced 6 other South Africans whom prosecutors said were
mercenaries to 17 years' jail each.
3 Armenian pilots whom the government said were hired to fly in gunmen and
materiel received 24 years each in prison, and three others 14 years each.
Equatorial Guinea citizens accused in the alleged plot received more
leniency. Two received sentences of one- to 4 months, and 2 were
acquitted. Three other South Africans also were acquitted.
Defence lawyers said they would appeal against the convictions.
The verdicts brought no reaction in the courtroom, filled with family
members of the defendants.
Defendants - in leg irons, handcuffs and chains since their arrests in
March - rattled out of the courtroom after the verdict was read.
Equatorial Guinea has one of the world's worst human rights records.
The US State Department and others accuse it of routine torture and
stopping dissent.
The International Bar Association has questioned the independence of the
court system, accusing Obiang of interfering in trials.
Several mercenaries said earlier in court they had been tortured, with at
least one showing scars to the courtroom.
(source: The Age)
