April 24
TRINIDAD & TOBAGO:
Enforce death penalty too, says Deosaran
What about the death penalty?
This is the question being asked by Prof Ramesh Deosaran in response to
Prime Minister Patrick Manning's announcement on Friday night that the
Government would be seeking to reintroduce corporal punishment (strokes)
in the penal system.
Manning was speaking at a People's National Movement public meeting in
Tunapuna when he made the announcement.
Deosaran told the Sunday Express that he was unaware that corporal
punishment had been suspended in the penal system but acknowledged that
there "seemed to be a wavering in this regard in the sentencing" of
convicted persons.
"There is an obvious lack of law enforcement and judicial officers it
seems do not have a sense of what the public opinion is regarding the
punishment of serious crimes," he said.
He said if corporal punishment was recommended by the law then it should
be implemented or removed from the law books, and added that "if we are
going to implement strokes then the public would want to know about the
implementation of the death penalty as well".
"We hear about judges sentencing people to death and the sentence is not
implemented. For some this might be a good thing but for others this
continues to be an embarrassment," he said.
He said that the entire sentencing policy needed to be reviewed and that
the Prime Minister should consult with the sentencing commission in this
regard.
Meanwhile, a senior prison official told the Sunday Express that "except
for one or 2 cases", the courts have generally not been including corporal
punishment in their sentencing.
Asked whether corporal punishment had been officially stopped, he said
"for the longest while the courts have not been awarding corporal
punishment".
He added that while prison officers might have personal views on the
subject, their duty was to abide by the dictates of the courts.
(source: Trinidad & Tobago Express)
YEMEN:
Death penalty stands for politician's killer----Muslim extremist also was
linked to killing of Kansan
A Yemeni court Saturday upheld the death sentence of a Muslim extremist
convicted of assassinating a prominent politician in 2002.
Ali al-Jarallah also was convicted of helping to plot an attack that
killed 3 American missionaries, including a Kansas native, in a hospital
days later.
The court, however, overturned the verdicts and prison sentences of 6 men
who had been accused of aiding al-Jarallah in the assassination of the
Yemeni Socialist Party's deputy secretary-general, Jarallah Omar.
Al-Jarallah, dressed in a blue prison suit and confined in a cage in the
courtroom, remained defiant. After the verdict was read, he took off his
shoes and held them up toward the judge's face, a sign of contempt. He
shouted, "God is great! God is great!" and warned, without elaboration,
that "the court has itself to blame."
Another militant, Abed Abdul Razak Kamel, who was sentenced to death for
killing the American missionaries, had told the court in his trial that he
had coordinated his attack with al-Jarallah. On Dec. 30, 2002, Kamel
walked through a hospital security checkpoint, concealing his weapon under
loose-fitting clothes, and opened fire at a staff meeting.
The shooting killed hospital director William E. Koehn, 60, a native of La
Crosse, Kan.; purchasing agent Kathleen A. Gariety, 53, of Wauwatosa,
Wis.; and a doctor, Martha C. Myers, 57, of Montgomery, Ala.
Yemeni officials have said that Kamel and al-Jarallah might be linked to
the al-Qaida terror network led by Osama bin Laden, who has Yemeni
ancestral roots. Police found bin Laden audiotapes at Kamel's house.
(source: Associated Press)
FRANCE:
Family hope Moussaoui can avoid death penalty
A French lawyer advising the family of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person
charged in the United States over the Sept. 11 attacks, said on Sunday his
family still hoped he would avoid the death penalty.
The lawyer, Francois Roux, said that although Moussaoui had pleaded guilty
in the first phase of his trial, his lawyers would fight to the end to
prevent him being sentenced to death.
Clarifying comments he made earlier on Sunday, Roux said the family did
not support Moussaoui's decision to plead guilty but realised he could not
now go back on it.
"The legal battle is just beginning," he told Reuters by telephone. "It is
clear that if he won't go back on his choice it will be a handicap for us
in presenting his defence. But nothing is hopeless.
"The fact that he pleaded guilty in this first judicial phase had
obviously speeded things up since it lasted two hours instead of several
weeks. In the second phase, the so-called 'sentencing phase', we will
fight to the end to avoid him getting the death penalty."
Moussaoui, 36, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, told a U.S. court in
Alexandria, Virginia, last Friday that he had been handpicked by al Qaeda
leader Osama bin Laden to fly a plane into the White House.
He said he was not meant to be part of the attacks on the World Trade
Center in New York and the Pentagon.
But he pleaded guilty to 6 counts charging him with conspiracy to commit
acts of terrorism, commit aircraft piracy, destroy aircraft, use weapons
of mass destruction, murder U.S. employees and destroy property.
4 charges carry the death penalty.
"We do not support Zacarias Moussaoui's decision to plead guilty, as he
did in the United States last week in the first phase of his trial," Roux
said.
Roux is recognised by U.S. authorities as a representative of Moussaoui's
mother, and helped her negotiate regular contact with her son during his
imprisonment.
He went to the United States to advise Moussaoui at the start of the
affair, but is unable to act as a lawyer there.
Moussaoui pleaded guilty against the advice of his lawyers, who have said
he is not mentally competent to enter the plea. It is not clear whether
Moussaoui recognises Roux as one of his lawyers.
(source: Reuters)
AFGHANISTAN:
Afghan Woman Killed for Alleged Adultery
An Afghan man killed his daughter for allegedly committing adultery,
officials said Sunday, but denied reports that she was stoned to death.
Media reports had said the woman was stoned to death in the Badakhshan
province by villagers who caught her in the home of a man other than her
husband - a punishment allowed under Islamic law and more commonly
reported under the former Taliban government. But police said the reports
were mistaken and that Aslam carried out the killing alone on Thursday.
The man she had visited was beaten as a warning but remained alive.
"With the fundamentalists and the hardline mullahs who are in that area,
these things are not impossible," Shah Jahan Noori, the provincial police
chief, told The Associated Press. "But I know that in this case she was
not stoned."
Deputy Gov. Haji Shamsul Rahman said the woman went to the house of a man
called Mohammed Karim last Wednesday evening. He said Karim's father had
spied the couple, locked them in the house and called people from the
village to witness their supposed crime.
Mohammed Aslam was then summoned.
"According to our report, when Amina's father took his daughter back home,
the father killed his daughter out of shame," Rahman said.
Neither he nor the police chief knew exactly how she was killed.
Mohammed Karim was beaten by the villagers "as a lesson to the other young
people" but escaped with his life, Rahman said.
The officials said authorities were on their way to the village to detain
Mohammed Aslam, Mohammed Karim, Karim's father and the woman's husband,
who had recently returned from Iran.
Noori said a woman had been stoned to death in the same village in the
1990s, when the Taliban ruled much of Afghanistan - but not the far
northwest where the killing occurred.
"People seem to assume because it happened once, it must have happened
again," Noori said. "But we have a new government now in Afghanistan, and
the judges, not the people, should decide who was at fault."
(source: Associated Press)
