May 30
LIBYA:
Top EU official in Libya, seeks release of medics
The EU's External Relations chief on Wednesday pressed Libyan Prime
Minister Shokri Ghanem to release 5 foreign medical workers sentenced to
death last year, as both sides seek to improve long-frozen relations.
EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, on a previously
unannounced trip to Libya, raised the case with Ghanem after visiting some
of the medics in jail and meeting children they are accused of having
infected with the HIV virus which causes AIDS.
The Libyan authorities say the 5 Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian
medical worker deliberately infected 426 children. They have been in jail
since 1999 and were sentenced to death by firing squad last May, creating
a major block to EU-Libya ties.
The European Union does not accept the evidence under which they were
convicted on scientific grounds, and is opposed to the death penalty in
all circumstances.
"Today I raised these cases with the prime minister and I underlined
Europe's strong desire to see the evidence that led to these convictions
re-examined and that they be released as soon as possible,"
Ferrero-Waldner told Reuters.
Ferrero-Waldner on Tuesday met 4 of the 5 imprisoned Bulgarian nurses and
the Palestinian medic, the 1st time a top level EU representative has seen
them.
She also toured the hospital in the eastern city of Benghazi which saw an
outbreak of HIV/AIDS in 1999, meeting children suffering from the disease
and their families as well as Libyan medical staff.
"We have great compassion and sympathy to what has happened in Benghazi. I
was deeply moved yesterday to see them," she told Ghanem on Wednesday
morning.
The EU is to give the Benghazi hospital the best available European
technology and expertise to treat HIV/AIDS sufferers, and
Ferrero-Waldner's visit was partly designed as a gesture of solidarity
with Libya.
SEEKING CLOSER TIES
Her visit came as the 2 sides seek to improve relations following a Libyan
decision in 2003 to dismantle its nuclear program, and an agreement to pay
compensation following a bomb attack blamed on Libya at a Berlin night
club.
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi visited Brussels last October at the
invitation of Romano Prodi, then president of the EU's executive
Commission, and set up his trademark tent in a state guest house garden.
Ferrero-Waldner had hoped to meet Gaddafi during her visit but it was
unknown whether this would happen.
The Bulgarians and the Palestinian say they are innocent and were forced
to confess under torture. Libya's supreme court is expected to rule on
their appeal on May 31.
A Tripoli court began the trial on Tuesday of 9 Libyan policemen and a
physician charged with torturing them to extract confessions. The court
said it would give its verdict on June 7.
The defendants are charged with torturing the 6 to make them confess they
deliberately infected the children.
Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov will visit Tripoli on May 27 at
Gaddafi's invitation and is expected to raise the case. Bulgaria has
called the verdicts on the medics "unfair and absurd" and has insisted the
charges be dropped.
Libya has said it wants to join the Euro-Mediterranean partnership, an EU
initiative to boost political and economic links between the bloc and its
Mediterranean neighbors. Resolving the issue of the medics is a condition
if the EU is to give Tripoli the green light to join.
(source: Reuters)
SRI LANKA:
SC acquits 5 death row convicts
5 men sentenced to death for their role in a massacre of inmates at a
prisons rehabilitation centre in central Sri Lanka were freed on Friday
after the Supreme Court overturned a lower court decision to convict them.
The 5 were acquitted by 5 judges on the basis that the evidence against
them lacked merit, allowing their appeals and setting aside their
convictions by the High Court Trial-at-Bar. 2 were former policemen and
the others, civilians. They were among more than a dozen charged with
murdering 27 detainees and attempting to murder another 14 detainees at
the Bindunuwewa camp at Bandarawela about 3 years ago. The incident
occurred when inmates launched a protest over prison conditions.
(source: The Peninsula)
IRAQ:
Death penalty returns to Iraq, with a vengeance
With 4 death sentences handed down within the space of days, judicial
executions are set to return to Iraq where the authorities are desperate
for a deterrent to halt rampant insurgent attacks.
Seven convicted Iraqi criminals and insurgents are currently on death row
and although the sentences have yet to be carried out, the interior
ministry have vowed that the first hangings will take place next month.
While the looming prospect of executions is worrying human rights groups,
the government insists it has no alternative. "We must maintain order and
dissuade criminals and terrorists," said government spokesman Leith Kubba.
The death sentence was widely practised under now imprisoned former
dictator Saddam Hussein, who himself could face the death penalty if he is
ultimately found guilty of charges of crimes against humanity.
Capital punishment was suspended by the former US military commander in
Iraq, General Tommy Franks, soon after the invasion, before being
reinstated in June last year by the unelected interim Iraqi government.
3 common law criminals were sentenced to death in Karbala, southern Iraq,
a month later for the murder of relatives, but the sentences have yet to
be carried out.
On May 21 however, Interior Minister Bayan Baqer Solagh ended uncertainty
over the use of the death penalty when he said it was "still applicable"
and would be rigorously applied.
Since Iraq's first elected government took office in late March, judges
have ordered that four men be executed for their crimes.
The day after Solagh's declaration, a special criminal court sentenced 3
rebels to death for rape, kidnapping and murder, the insurgents sent to
death row.
Members of the public attending the trial applauded the sentences and
shouted "Long live justice".
And on Wednesday, an Iraqi army captain who served under Saddam Hussein
was sentenced to death for killing police and soldiers in insurgent
attacks.
The first sentences would be carried out "in the next 10 days", the court
said, but no one has been executed yet despite heightened public
expectation.
"This is what most Iraqis want," said Kubba.
With insurgent attacks this month having claimed more than 650 lives, the
government has the backing of the people -- the main victims of insurgent
violence -- to do whatever it takes to stop the violence.
According to a poll conducted by the US International Republican Institute
published earlier this month, 60 % of Iraqis want the nation's
constitution, currently being drawn up by lawmakers, to mention "extensive
use of the death penalty".
Only 29 % oppose capital punishment being enshrined in the constitution.
"It is very difficult for Iraqis to live in such a situation of
insecurity," said lawyer Nizar al-Sammarai.
"For the time being, we need something to stop (the violence) and that's
the death penalty."
Yet research has shown that the death penalty does not act as a deterrent,
and is especially unlikely to in Iraq where almost daily suicide bombings
testify to a ready supply of people prepared to die for their cause.
"It shouldn't be applied to all criminals, only those who carry out
(insurgent) attacks," tempers Abdel Majid al-Sabawi, a professor of
constitutional law who wants capital punishment to be repealed once peace
is restored.
"The death penalty alone is not enough," he said. "The government must
also apply stringent security and political measures."
In addition, Sabawi fears that innocent men may be executed because of
failures within the new justice system.
While few Iraqis speak out against the use of the death penalty, foreign
rights groups regularly lobby for a moratorium.
"We have written to the government asking them not to apply this law and
we call on them not to carry out the sentences already passed," said
Amnesty International's Said Boumedouha.
"We are worried about the way in which trials are carried out," he said,
slamming such programmes as Iraqiya television's "Terrorists in the Grip
of Justice" in which alleged militants confess their crimes, often bearing
signs of beatings.
"I recognise that Iraq is faced with serious security problems and that
the population has a wish for revenge," said Human Rights Watch's Joe
Stork.
"But human rights cannot be decided by public opinion."
(source: Agence France Presse)
CONGO:
President Kabila has announced to some representatives of Sant'Egidio,
will vote soon the new Constitution and the death penalty will be
abolished.
In the last months several talks for peace in the Area of the Great Lakes
took place in Rome and Kinshasa between Joseph Kabila, President of the
D.R.of Congo and some representatives of the Community of Sant'Egidio.
During the talks President Kabila had expressed several times his
commitment for the abolition of the death penalty.
The Community of Sant'Egidio, which in the past had intervened to ask for
clemency in favour of the killers of Laurent Kabila (President's father)
applauds the decision of the Parliament to present the new Constitution
which decrees the end of the death penalty, after a referendum.
The Community of Sant'Egidio expects and wishes that the example of the
Democratic Republic of Congo may be soon followed by other African
countries.
(source: Community of Sant'Egidio news)
