Feb. 5
SAUDI ARABIA----execution
Indian beheaded for murder in Saudi Arabia
An Indian convicted of burning a compatriot to death was beheaded in Aseer
in southern Saudi Arabia on Saturday.
G Krishna allegedly burnt one Madrasa Iqbal to death while the latter was
asleep following some quarrel.
The Saudi authorities do not inform the foreign missions ahead of the
execution of expatriate convicts, according to Indian embassy sources.
This has made it difficult for embassies to keep track of or defend those
accused of serious crimes, they added.
The execution brings the total number to 9 this year in Saudi Arabia, one
of the countries with worst human rights record.
In 2004, Saudi authorities executed 35 people. The year before the number
was 52. Many are publicly beheaded.
As per Sharia rule, Saudi Arabia gives death to those convicted of murder,
rape and drug trafficking.
(source: Rediff)
YEMEN:
Yemen Court Sentences Limburg Bomb Leader to Death
A Yemeni appeals court on Saturday sentenced to death the leader of a
group of 15 men found guilty last year of bombing a French supertanker and
toughened other verdicts passed against the al Qaeda supporters.
Fawaz al-Rabe'ie told the court in December the men had given a "pledge"
to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to kill Americans. He had previously
been sentenced to 10 years in jail, a verdict which had surprised some
Yemeni observers.
The court also upheld a death penalty which had been passed last August
against one other of the group. The sentences of two others were raised
from 10 to 15 years, while the rest -- with jail terms ranging from 3 to
10 years -- stayed the same.
The Limburg bombing off Yemen's coast in October 2002 killed one of the 25
crew and ignited a fire on board the supertanker loaded with 400,000
barrels of Saudi crude.
The court sentences included guilty verdicts upheld for other activities,
including a plot to kill the U.S. ambassador to Sanaa and attack Western
embassies.
It was not clear if any of the men would turn to Yemen's high court, which
has the power to overturn rulings.
"God is great, there is no god but God and America is the enemy of God,"
the men shouted after sentencing.
"(We) were very close to Sheikh Osama bin Laden ... We had given our
pledge to Sheikh Osama to kill Americans," Rabe'ie said in his final
statement to the court in December, in the clearest admission yet of the
group's ties to bin Laden.
Yemen, the ancestral home of bin Laden, has cooperated closely with the
U.S.-led "war on terror" to shed its image as a hotbed for militants and
has arrested hundreds of al Qaeda suspects since the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks on U.S. cities.
(source: Reuters)
IRAN:
Protestant Pastor in Iran Threatened with Execution as Trial begins
A Protestant pastor in Iran has reportedly gone on trial before a military
court in the capital Tehran amid international concern he may be executed
for allegedly spreading Christianity in the Islamic nation and deceiving
people about his faith.
47-year old Hamid Pourmand of the Assemblies of God Church was arrested
with over 80 other Christian leaders in September in Karaj, a town 30
kilometers (about 19 miles) west of Tehran during a police raid against
the annual General Council of his denomination. All but Pourmand have
since been released, church sources and human rights watchers said.
Before the trial began last week, the European Union lodged a formal
protest with Iranian authorities over the arrest and alleged harassment of
Pourmand and other members of religious minorities, as well as detained
journalists, and staff of non-government organizations.
The EU protested the arrests of Christians and in particular Christian
pastors like Pourmand as an "infringement of the freedom of religion or
belief." It urged the immediate release of Pastor Pourmand, who was
recently moved to a military prison.
ARMY COLONEL
An army colonel, Pourmand converted from Islam to Christianity nearly 25
years ago, although Iranian laws prohibit non-Muslims from serving as
military officers. However, Pourmand declared in court last week that he
had "documented proof" that the army knew he had become a Christian before
he was ever given officer rank, reported the Compass Direct news agency,
which investigates the plight of persecuted Christians.
Compass Direct said Pourmand will likely be discharged from the military
over the deception accusations, but warned he also faces another trial on
two separate charges of "apostasy and proselytizing", which under Iranian
law is a capital offense.
In July 1994, Mehdi Dibaj, another minister of the Assemblies of God
Church, was killed after spending 9 years in prison for refusing to abjure
his Christian faith and return to Islam, said the well informed Catholic
AsiaNews Internet website. Several other Christian leaders are also known
to have died.
CHRISTIAN WIFE
Since his arrest, Pourmand has been able to talk briefly to is wife, an
Assyrian Christian, by phone and tell her that he was alright, news
reports said. At the time of his arrest, she and their children were
apparently in Tehran visiting relatives, and later discovered that their
home had been searched and family documents and photos taken.
Last year's raid against the Pourmand's Assemblies of God Church came
after several reported arrests of Christians in northern Iran earlier in
2004, as Islamic hardliners are apparently concerned about the growing
interest in Christianity across the nation.
Shiite cleric Hasan Mohammadi from the Ministry of Education said in a
speech to Tehran high school students recently that on an average every
day, 50 young Iranians convert secretly to Christian denominations,"
reported AsiaNews.
"The persecution of Christians in Iran has especially decimated the
leadership of [the fast growing] Protestant evangelical community in Iran
and created an atmosphere of terror under which the church is presently
suffering," said Jubilee Campaign, a human rights pressure group, in a
recent statement. It stressed that "evidence points to a deliberate
campaign of persecution against the church in Iran, orchestrated at the
highest political levels."
There are an estimated 360,000 Christians in Iran out of a population of
roughly 65 million.
(source: BosNewsLife)
MALAYSIA:
CORRECTION----the info that only 1 Australian has been hanged in Malaysia
is incorrect.
3 Australians have been hanged in Malaysia after being convicted of
drug-trafficking.
Kevin Barlow and Geoffrey Chambers were hanged in 1986. Michael McAuliffe
was hanged in 1993.
______
MALAYSIA:
Malaysia reveals executions: 358 hanged in 24 years
Malaysia has revealed that it executed 358 people by hanging in the past
24 years, parliamentary opposition leader Lim Kit Siang said Thursday.
Lim said he had received the statistics from Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad
Badawi, who is also Minister for Internal Security, in response to a
written question submitted in parliament.
Figures for the number of executions in Malaysia have rarely been
published, and media attempts to establish the number in recent years were
rebuffed.
The death penalty is imposed in Malaysia for a number of offences from
murder and treason to drug trafficking, for which it is mandatory.
Lim, who leads the biggest opposition party in parliament, the Democratic
Action Party, said the prisons department had provided him with a
statistical breakdown of just 234 of the hangings.
This showed that 50 foreign nationals were hanged, including 7 from
Thailand, 8 from Hong Kong, 23 from the Philippines, 4 from Singapore, 2
from Indonesia and 1 each from Australia, Britain and Pakistan.
46 of them were hanged for drug offences.
Of 184 Malaysian citizens executed, 48 were from the indigenous Malay
majority, 102 were members of the ethnic Chinese minority and 15 were
ethnic Indians. Most of the executions - 129 - were also for drug
offences.
5 of the 234 people hanged were women.
12 of the executions were for offences under the Internal Security Act
(ISA), all between 1984 and 1993. Lim told AFP he could not immediately
account for the number of hangings for security offences in such a
concentrated period.
The act, most widely known for the powers it gives the authorities to
detain people without trial, also prescribes the mandatory death penalty
for certain offences to be tried in court, including carrying firearms,
ammunition or explosives "in any security area".
The ISA was introduced by former British colonisers to fight a communist
insurgency in the 1950s, and has been used more recently to detain without
trial more than 80 suspected Islamic militants.
The number of executions overall, according to the limited figures
released by the prisons department, reached a peak of 31 in 1990 while
just 15 had been hanged since 2000. None were executed last year,
according to these statistics.
Lim said the period between the end of all appeals and the carrying out of
the sentence varied from less than a year to more than 4 years.
(source: Agence France Presse)
(source of correction: Australian Coalition Against the Death Penalty)
