May 26
VIETNAM:
Death penalty upheld in Vietnam's biggest drugs case
A Vietnamese court has upheld death sentences for 16 people in the
country's biggest drug trafficking case.
It was the highest number of death sentences passed in a single trial in
Vietnam.
The court in the southern business capital, Ho Chi Minh City, commuted
only 1 death penalty passed by a lower court, and upheld 9 life sentences.
3 others received jail terms of six to 20 years.
In January, the 29 defendants were sentenced for trafficking more than 820
kilograms of heroin and 1,000 pills of amphetamine from Laos and Cambodia,
and of selling them in and around Ho Chi Minh City.
Under Vietnamese law, possession of 300 grams or more of heroin or more
than 10 kilograms of opium carries the death penalty.
At least 16 people have been executed in Vietnam this year, and 55 have
been sentenced to death.
(source: ABC News)
SOUTH AFRICA:
South Africa waives death penalty for 62
South Africas Constitutional Court today waived the death sentence for 62
prisoners condemned before capital punishment was abolished in 1995,
saying it should be replaced by an alternative sentence to end 10 years of
legal limbo.
The court set a deadline of August 15 for prison authorities to submit a
report with full details on what progress had been made in complying with
its order, including the name of every person detained under sentence of
death.
The death penalty - a measure used to intimidate black activists in the
apartheid era - was declared unconstitutional, cruel and inhuman in 1995
by the government of President Nelson Mandela, who swept to power in
democratic elections the previous year.
Four prisoners on death row appealed to the court in March, saying they
should be given a new trial and sentence to end their uncertainty.
The court said there was no need for a new trial but upheld their appeal
for a new sentence, saying the process of commuting the death sentence had
"taken far too long".
Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson commented that it was intolerable that
imprisonment on death row should have been allowed to continue for so long
after sentence, according to the South African Press Association.
"Are these people in limbo somewhere in jail?" he said. "They may stay
there forever because nobody knows what to do with them."
(source: SAPA)
