March 17
AUSTRALIA/SINGAPORE:
Police deal may save drug trafficker from death penalty
A 24-year-old Melbourne man on death row for drug trafficking in Singapore
may be thrown a lifeline.
It has been revealed Nguyen Tuong Van has been providing the Australian
Federal Police with information over an Australian-based international
drugs syndicate.
His lawyers are hoping his assistance will improve his appeal for
clemency, as Singapore's constitution states a pardon is possible if a
co-accused gives evidence which leads to the conviction or arrest of a
principal offender.
Nguyen's lawyer Lex Lasry has told the ABC'S AM program there is a glimmer
of hope.
"It's important because the Singapore constitution itself recognises that
people who assist authorities with this kind of information are deserving
of particular treatments and it's significant that he's supported as he is
by the Australian Federal Police," he said.
The Archbishop of Sydney, George Pell, has appealed to Pope John Paul II
to help Nguyen.
Cardinal Pell says he has sent the file to the Pope in the hope he can
intervene and advance the appeal for clemency.
Cardinal Pell told AM that clemency should be granted to Nguyen for a
number of reasons.
"It was a very amateur attempt to smuggle 400 grams of heroin, also
significantly he's more than willing to cooperate with the Australian
Federal Police in an endeavour to convict whoever set him up to do this
job," he said.
Nguyen received an automatic death sentence last March under Singapore's
tough drug laws after he was caught carrying almost 400 grams of heroin.
At his trial, Nguyen said he was smuggling the heroin in an attempt to
raise money to pay off his twin brother's legal debt.
(source: ABC)
AUSTRALIA/INDONESIA:
Australian facing death sentence in Bali was unknowing drug mule: lawyers
Lawyers for an Australian woman facing the death penalty in Indonesia for
alleged drug smuggling said Thursday they had new evidence showing she was
unknowingly used as a courier by traffickers trying to move drugs inside
Australia.
But Australian police dismissed the evidence as "hearsay" that had little
bearing on the case of the woman, Schapelle Corby.
Corby, a 27-year-old student beautician from Australia's Gold Coast resort
area, is on trial in Bali for allegedly smuggling 4.1 kilograms (9 pounds)
of cannabis into Indonesia.
She faces the death penalty if convicted.
The marijuana was found in Corby's boogie board bag when she arrived at
Bali's Denpasar Airport last October but she has steadfastly denied
knowing the drugs were in her luggage.
Corby's Australian lawyers said late Wednesday that they had obtained new
evidence that she was unknowingly used as a courier by organised criminals
trying to smuggle the cannabis from Brisbane to Sydney.
They said a man had come forward and signed an affidavit naming 3 baggage
handlers he says planted the drugs in Corby's bag.
The drugs were supposed to be pulled from Corby's luggage when she passed
through Sydney airport, but were missed, the lawyers quoted the
unidentified man as saying.
The man has offered to testify at Corby's trial, they said.
But Mick Keelty, head of the Australian Federal Police, said that
investigators were questioning the informer, who is held in prison, and
that his testimony did not bear directly on Corby's case.
"It does mention Corby, but only in the sense that the prisoner made the
conclusion that it was connected to the Corby case and overheard other
prisoners talking about the Corby case," Keelty said.
"It's at best hearsay evidence."
Keelty criticised Corby's lawyers for going public with "spurious
allegations" about a supposed drug smuggling gang involving airport
baggage handlers, saying it would do the detained Australian "no good
whatsoever".
Corby's Indonesian lawyer, Vasu Rasiah, rejected Keelty's comments and
said the Australian government should be doing more to save his client.
"Mr Keelty can say say whatever he likes, the fact of the matter is there
is a girl in jail who could be executed," he said at a news conference in
Brisbane.
"They need to take this matter very, very seriously. At this stage, the
Australian government has done nothing to ensure her safety," he said.
Rasiah said the Australian police had ignored repeated requests to
investigate aspects of the case that occurred in Australia, despite
willingness on the part of Indonesian judges to allow such evidence to be
heard.
"The judges ... have gone an extra mile to open doors so that they can
release the girl, but Australia has gone 10 miles behind to avoid doing
that," Rasiah said. "I can't understand that."
(source: Agence France Presse)
NIGERIA:
Death sentence for man who killed his friend
A Nigerian court has sentenced a man to death by hanging for killing a
friend whose body parts he intended to sell for ritual purposes, court
officials have said.
Justice Felicia Dusu of Jos High Court in central Nigeria's Plateau State
convicted 35-year-old Jacob Wakfan of murder after he confessed to luring
the friend, Jurbi Danjuma, into the bush and stabbing him to death.
After the crime in April 2000, Wakfan removed Danjuma's private parts and
tongue, the judge said.
"The convict's desire to make quick money led him to commit this heinous
and treacherous act," she said.
Ritual killings are rampant in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country of
130-million people, where belief in witchcraft is widespread.
Last week, police in the south-western city of Ibadan found 3 headless and
limbless bodies in apparent ritual-linked murders.
(sources: South African Press Agency & Agence France Presse)
PAKISTAN:
4 linked to suicide bomber get death sentence
4 persons convicted by a court of involvement in bomb attack on Kabul's
tourist-friendly Chicken Street in October last year have been sentenced
to death.
The special court for internal and external security announced that
Haidar, resident of Tajikistan, Abdul Ahad, resident of Tagab district,
Mutawakil and Aziz Ahmad, residents of Tagab District of Kapisa Province
have been given the death sentence for their involvement in the suicide
bomb attack which was carried out by Mohammad Akbar. Three persons
including an American translator and a soldier from the International
Security Assistance Force had died on October 23. The 3rd was a 13-year
Afghan child selling books to tourists on the street.
The sentence handed down by the special court may be appealed by the
accused. According to a court official the attack was headed by Haidar.
The official said that for the suicide attack a man named Khalid had been
chosen initially. When he refused, the job was passed onto Mohammed Akbar.
Attaullah, a resident of Tunis, also came to Afghanistan with Haidar but
there was still no information about him. Some months ago Abdul Ahad, the
son of a high court judge, Naqibullah was also suspected in the blast but
the court declared his innocence on Wednesday.
(source: SANA:
IRAN:
Serial killer's hanging cheers crowd in Iran
Several thousand Iranians cheered yesterday as a man convicted of
murdering at least 20 people, most of them children, was publicly executed
in a town square.
As relatives of the victims looked on, court officials took turns to
administer 100 lashes to Muhammad Bijeh's bare back, leaving it raw and
bloodied, before hanging him from a rope attached to a crane.
Spectators chanted "Marg bar Bijeh!" (death to Bijeh) as the 24-year-old
former brick worker was hoisted high above the run-down town of Pakdasht,
about 20 miles south-east of Tehran.
Bijeh's hanging was the final act in a case which had transfixed the
country. Nicknamed the Tehran desert vampire by Iran's media, Bijeh was
convicted of killing 17 children and 3 adults after apparently confessing
to the authorities.
As Bijeh's body writhed in mid-air yesterday, Ali Khosravi screamed the
name of his son Kavon, 12, murdered with 2 of his friends after being
abducted outside the family home.
"Turn him around, make him swing," Mr Khosravi told the crane's crew. When
they obliged, Bijeh's body swung from side to side, causing both his shoes
to fall off.
"This is my happiest day. It makes up for the day my son was killed," said
Mr Khosravi.
"My boy and his 2 friends were playing tag outside the house when Bijeh
tricked them into going with him by using some story about hunting for
animals. He took them into the desert and killed them. We never recovered
Kavon's body. All we got were some bones."
Public executions are rare in Iran except as punishment for heinous crimes
which have triggered public outrage.
The government justifies them as setting an example to the population.
They are never used in cases where capital punishment has been imposed for
political crimes or in sentences against women.
According to press reports, Bijeh's victims were sexually abused and
killed. An accomplice, Ali Baghi, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for
his role in the crimes.
The police's investigation into the murders, which occurred over the
course of more than a year, has been criticised, with a number of officers
suspended for incompetence.
Several victims came from poor Afghan refugee families who were afraid to
report their children missing for fear that they would be expelled from
Iran.
Bijeh's public execution was in sharp contrast to his trial, which was
held behind closed doors, a measure the authorities said was justified to
spare the victims' families further pain.
One senior court official defended the decision to hold the execution in
public.
"Look at the way the emotions of the people have calmed down. We had to
hold it in public," he said minutes after Bijeh's hanging.
A cleric had sought to whip up the passions of the spectators with chants
of "Allahu akbar" (God is most great) before the hanging.
Holding a photograph of his murdered nine-year-old son Mohammad Nouri, 49,
an Afghan refugee, thanked Iran for administering justice to Bijeh.
"Today's execution will reduce my suffering. I am satisfied with the
Islamic Republic of Iran and the Iranian people," he said.
But Fauzel Shamsi, 35, also an Afghan, said she would have preferred blood
money - permitted under Islamic law - to the death penalty to compensate
for the death of her son, Nematolah, 12, who was working full-time in an
oven-making factory at the time of his disappearance.
"We had to sell all our things while we spent 8 or 9 months searching for
our son," she said.
"We have lost everything and my husband has a bad back, making it hard for
him to work. We would have preferred some money."
(source: The Guardian)
******************
Thousands attend killer's public execution
Thousands of people cheered, whistled and clapped as a serial killer was
publicly executed in Iran yesterday.
Mohammad Bijeh, who was convicted of kidnapping, raping and murdering 21
people - most of them young boys - was flogged, stabbed, cursed, slapped
and finally hanged from a crane in the main square of Pakdasht, 20 miles
south of the capital Teheran. Handcuffed and shirtless, Bijeh was first
lashed 100 times by judiciary officials using electrical cables.
The brother of one of his victims lunged from the crowd and stabbed him in
the back, drawing blood.
Bijeh, dubbed the "Vampire of the Teheran Desert", sank to his knees but
remained silent throughout. To cries of "God is Great" and "Make him spin
so he will suffer more", he was lifted high into the air from the crane,
slowly dying from strangulation.
Such treatment is meted out in Iran when national outcry over a crime
demands a public punishment. An accomplice was jailed for 15 years.
(source: The (UK) Telegraph)
BANGLADESH:
Name mix up puts man on death row
A Bangladeshi with the same nickname as a murder suspect was mistakenly
tried and given the death sentence for a crime he did not commit, his
lawyers told a court Wednesday.
The lawyers launched a petition in the High Court asking for Shah Alam
Babu to be acquitted due to the alleged mix-up.
"We have petitioned the court for him to be freed on the grounds that
somehow one person was accused but another person was summoned to court
and tried for the crime," said lawyer Elina Khan of the Society for the
Enforcement of Human Rights.
Both men share the same nickname "Babu". The word means baby or small boy
in Bengali and is commonly used.
"It is not clear how this situation came to be but it is true that they
both have the same name. We have investigated the case and are convinced
that there has been a miscarriage of justice,'" she added.
The victim's widow, Rokeya, said the man tried in the case was not the man
she had accused.
"I told the judge that they were sentencing an innocent man to death while
the real killer of my husband was roaming freely in the city," she told
AFP.
"I've been telling the same truth since the case began and I have given
written statements to the investigating officer and to the court."
Rokeya's husband Gazi Liaquat Hossain was shot dead in March 1998 after
leaving his house in the capital Dhaka.
She said she registered a case with police accusing a man named Sundar
Babu on the basis of eyewitness accounts of the killing.
But when the trial began she discovered that another man, Shah Alam Babu,
was in the dock. He was convicted and given the death penalty by a court
in Dhaka last August.
(source: Agence France Presse)
