June 19
TRINIDAD & TOBAGO:
Fooling with death
The barrage of passionate debate on the death penalty is notable whenever
the State gets around to executing the law that exists in our statute
books. Yet, as far as I am aware, the issue has never been adequately
debated in our Parliament, the place where citizens' representatives are
supposed to openly and fearlessly discuss issues that are of key
importance to them.
Clearly, those who are strongly opposed to capital punishment are
under-represented in our Parliament, if represented at all. This is merely
one example of how our Parliament fails in its duties, for Parliament is
the place where such discussion should properly occur. One essential
requirement to promote fuller debate is to expand the numbers of
parliamentarians to at least 60 or 61 members, as our Prime Minister,
Patrick Manning, has suggested in the House of Representatives recently.
Indeed, given our size, diversity, age structure, and literacy, an
appropriate number would fall somewhere between 71 and 130
representatives, according to several criteria and formulae, from our own
historical standards to regional and international ones.
In the meanwhile, one accordingly must be thankful for the presidential
Senators, whose independence of political affiliation adds other important
voices in our Parliament.
Indeed, Senator Angela Cropper last week made the most powerful statement
on the issue that perhaps can ever be made. Suffering the aftershocks of
one of the most brutal, gruesome, and senseless murders in this country's
history, in which she lost her husband, mother, and sister-whom she loved
dearly-at the hands of a young relative whom they were trying to help,
Senator Cropper maintained her ethical opposition to the death penalty.
Challenged in the most horrid manner imaginable, she has stood by her
principled convictions. In doing so, she illustrates what strength,
courage, and civilised behaviour are all about. Unfortunately, her
statement was not part of any official debate on the matter.
What has been discussed in Parliament instead is the Privy Council's
alleged prevention of the death penalty from being carried out. Yet it
would appear that much of the indignation is misdirected.
The Privy Council did rule in the Pratt and Morgan case in 1993 that if a
convicted murderer is not executed within five years of sentencing, then
there would be strong grounds for believing that the delay is such as to
constitute "inhuman or degrading punishment or other treatment", which is
against our Constitution. The ruling did not prevent hangings, but
encouraged justice to be delivered in a timely manner.
The real problem is not the Privy Council, perhaps, but our courts. The
Pratt and Morgan judgment noted, "The death penalty in the United Kingdom
has always been carried out expeditiously after sentence, within a matter
of weeks or in the event of an appeal even to the House of Lords within a
matter of months. Delays in terms of years are unheard of." Certain
standards were imposed on us by the Privy Council, to which we have
largely not adhered.
Others may believe that 5 years on death row is not excessive. In the
United States, for instance, a Senate-commissioned study found that the
average time between sentencing and execution was 9 years.
But even if one accepts that the Privy Council has set unreasonable
standards, the fact remains that executions were not carried out in
Trinidad and Tobago for almost 15 years before Pratt and Morgan. What
prevented the State from executing its duties during that period?
Proper research needs to be carried out on that matter, or if it exists,
it needs to surface. In the meanwhile, we can observe the absurd
ineptitude of the State over the last 2 weeks, since the Attorney General
announced the Government's intention to (assist with?) with resumption of
hangings. (Hanging is not Cabinet's proper responsibility, it must be
remembered. Those powers are delegated to the Judicature.)
In the first case, the warrant of execution was read two Wednesdays ago to
Lester Pitman. He was measured, weighed, and asked about his last meal,
and much was made about his execution scheduled for the next Monday
morning. On the Friday, however, the State admitted to the court that it
was not aware that Pitman had an appeal pending in the Privy Council,
despite the existence of records and a letter sent to the Ministry of
National Security. Pitman also had not yet appeared before the Mercy
Committee. The amateurishness is embarrassing.
Furthermore, on that very Friday, the Assistant Commissioner of Prisons
read letters to 4 other convicts on death row, informing them that they
were to appear before the Mercy Committee on the Monday when Pitman was to
be hanged. That Monday, however, the courts granted a stay of execution of
all death row inmates who were sentenced to death before July 7, 2004, in
keeping with another Privy Council ruling, which stated that all such
persons should be re-sentenced.
The Privy Council was primarily at fault here, giving our courts double
work by making one decision, and then reversing it mere weeks later.
Despite this well-reported judgment, however, the State again was not
aware of its obligations and suffered embarrassment. Does one snigger, or
weep?
So a very difficult moral question which needs to be more adequately
addressed is unnecessarily avoided, overshadowed by what appears to be
sheer administrative incompetence and its excuses. Once again, we find
ourselves limping along, seemingly inadequate for the task.
(source: Opinion, Trinidad Express)
VIETNAM:
Death sentences to trans-national drug traffickers
The People's Court in the central province of Nghe An has recently
sentenced 3 men to death for trafficking heroin.
3 other defendants involved in this large-scale drug trafficking ring were
sentenced to life imprisonment, while 5 others received jail terms of
between 8 and 22 years.
The 11 convicted criminals were also fined 1 billion and 590 million VND.
The group, which also included 4 Lao citizens, was caught red-handed on
February 10, 2004 when trafficking 7 kg of heroin from Laos to Viet Nam.
The illicit drug was hidden in their car.
The investigation also discovered that the defendants trafficked more than
200 cakes of heroin (about 70 kg) from 2000 till their arrest in 2004
(source: Vietnam News Agency)
IRAQ:
Iraqi Security Tactics Evoke the Hussein Era -- Many detainees face
beatings and some are killed. U.S. officials are troubled by the reports.
The public war on the Iraqi insurgency has led to an atmosphere of hidden
brutalities, including abuse and torture, carried out against detainees by
the nation's special security forces, according to defense lawyers,
international organizations and Iraq's Ministry of Human Rights.
Up to 60% of the estimated 12,000 detainees in the country's prisons and
military compounds face intimidation, beatings or torture that leads to
broken bones and sometimes death, said Saad Sultan, head of a board
overseeing the treatment of prisoners at the Human Rights Ministry. He
added that police and security forces attached to the Interior Ministry
are responsible for most abuses.
The units have used tactics reminiscent of Saddam Hussein's secret
intelligence squads, according to the ministry and independent human
rights groups and lawyers, who have cataloged abuses.
"We've documented a lot of torture cases," said Sultan, whose committee is
pushing for wider access to Iraqi-run prisons across the nation. "There
are beatings, punching, electric shocks to the body, including sensitive
areas, hanging prisoners upside down and beating them and dragging them on
the ground." Many police officers come from a culture of torture from
their experiences over the last 35 years. Most of them worked during
Saddam's regime."
The ordeal described by Hussam Guheithi is similar to many cases. When
Iraqi national guardsmen raided his home last month, the 35-year-old Sunni
Muslim imam said they lashed him with cables, broke his nose and promised
to soak their uniforms with his blood. He was blindfolded and driven to a
military base, where he was interrogated and beaten until the soldiers
were satisfied that he wasn't an extremist.
At the end of 9 days, Guheithi said, the guardsmen told him, "You have to
bear with us. You know the situation now. We're trying to find
terrorists."
The Interior Ministry, responsible for the nation's internal security,
acknowledges cases of mistreatment but denies that torture is common.
Interior Minister Bayan Jabr is a Shiite Muslim, and some Sunni Muslim
tribal leaders and politicians have accused the ministry of unfairly
targeting Sunnis, who make up the bulk of the insurgency.
"There are no official accusations that the ministry's forces are carrying
out widespread abuse and torture of detainees," said Col. Adnan Joubouri,
a ministry spokesman. "There was some abuse of authority, and those
officials responsible are being punished."
U.S. officials, whose image on detainment issues has already been
tarnished by the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, say they are
troubled by the allegations of torture. They worry that mistreatment by
Iraqi police and national guardsmen, thousands of whom were trained by
American instructors who sought to steer the departments away from
Hussein's corrupt legacy, may be viewed as an extension of Abu Ghraib.
"We understand and we hear that [torture] is potentially happening, and
this is an issue we are constantly talking about," said a senior U.S.
military official in Baghdad. "I think this is an issue no one can afford
to ignore."
Stories of torture and abuse against suspected Shiite and Sunni criminals
and rebels are unfolding in the midst of the campaign against a relentless
insurgency. Iraqi forces are frustrated by their inability to stop car
bombings and ambushes that have killed more than 1,000 people in recent
weeks.
Rising crime, a shaky court system, the lack of a constitution to define
civil rights and an Interior Ministry underequipped to pursue well-armed
rebel networks have made human rights less of an immediate concern for
Iraqis than bringing order to the nation, Iraqi and U.S. officials say.
Having endured more than two years of violence since the U.S.-led
invasion, many Iraqis favor tough measures to end the unrest. The death
penalty was recently reinstated, and for much of the country there is an
unspoken acceptance - often rooted in harsh tribal justice - that
intimidation and torture serve a purpose. Such attitudes are complicated
by sectarian strains between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
Under Hussein, the minority Sunnis were the core of the ruling Baath Party
and controlled the country. The new Iraqi government is dominated by
Shiites, who make up the majority of Iraq's population. Each side blames
the other for the bloodshed. This dynamic poses an incendiary possibility:
Accounts of torture in detention given by Sunni extremists might have been
fabricated or embellished to help instigate a civil war against Shiites
and the government. The Human Rights Ministry says it has encountered
made-up allegations of abuse.
"Ninety percent of detainees say that they confessed under torture," said
Judge Luqman Thabit Samiraii, head of the 1st Iraqi Central Criminal
Court. "Yet 80% of them have no torture marks. But torture does exist
during interrogations, I admit that."
The courts aren't always willing to explore abuse claims. In a trial last
month, Samiraii denied a defense lawyer's request to have 4 suspects
medically examined to determine whether their confessions to the murder of
an Interior Ministry official had been induced by torture. The defendants,
three of whom were sentenced to death, said they had been repeatedly
beaten. One of them said police had sodomized him with a metal rod.
Before the 4 men appeared in the courtroom, their confessions had been
aired on the popular Iraqi television program "Terrorism in the Hands of
Justice." The show is the government's attempt to demystify the insurgency
by portraying suspected rebels as brutish killers rather than
revolutionaries. Defense lawyers argue that some of the accused are
coerced into giving confessions and that the program violates defendants'
right to a fair trial.
"The Americans are occupying the country, but the Iraqi national guard and
Iraqi police are violating the human rights of detainees," said Sattar
Raouf, director of the Popular Committee for Culture and Arts, who has
followed allegations of abuse. "Intelligence and security forces are
torturing people for confessions. You can go to the sixth and seventh
floors of the Interior Ministry and find case after case like this."
The Interior and Justice ministries have been struggling over control of
prisons and detention centers. Interior operates in a secret realm of
intelligence networks in which suspects can be jailed or vanish for weeks.
Sultan said his committee has found less abuse in centers under the
jurisdiction of the Justice Ministry. He added that Justice has stricter
oversight on inmate conditions and is less involved than Interior in
interrogating suspects, including alleged insurgents.
A report this year by the international organization Human Rights Watch
found that abuse had become "routine and commonplace" and that detainees
were often beaten and held in violation of judicial process, including not
receiving court hearings within 24 hours of their arrests. The group
stated that some detainees - many of whom are arrested based on tips by
paid informants - waited months before a court appearance.
"One of the most common complaints made by detainees," said Human Rights
Watch, which interviewed 90 current and former detainees in 2004, "was of
police officials threatening them with indefinite detention if they failed
to pay them sums of money."
The abuses reported by former detainees and human rights organizations
echo some of the Hussein regime's tactics: poor legal protection, crowded
cells, electric shock, threats of sexual abuse and hanging and beating
prisoners for prolonged periods.
Abbas Jibouri said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times that about
25 national guard members raided his house on the morning of May 8.
A 41-year-old farmer from the Maden area near Baghdad, Jibouri, whose
account could not be verified, said he had been taken to a detainee center
and later transferred to the national guard base at Rustumiya.
"There was always one man interrogating me and 4 or 5 others who punched
me in different parts of my body," said Jibouri, a Sunni. "They accused me
of providing terrorists with weapons and money." They gave me a list of 10
names and told me to give information about their being terrorists. One of
the names belonged to my brother and another was a neighbor of mine who
actually died a year or so ago."
Jibouri said he was beaten with pipes and given electrical shocks. "I
didn't know when it would end," he said.
At one point, Jibouri said, interrogators told him: "You [Sunnis] ruled
the country for 35 years. We're going to retaliate now." Jibouri was
released after 10 days in custody. He was not charged with a crime.
Guheithi, the Sunni imam, has been detained by American as well as Iraqi
forces. He said U.S. troops had arrested him in January 2004 and accused
him of preaching holy war at his mosque. He said he was held in solitary
confinement for 7 days and released. American soldiers, he said, "didn't
torture me, but an Iraqi man with them punched me hard several times."
Last month, Iraqi national guardsmen handcuffed Guheithi at the home of
his brother in the Rasafa neighborhood of Baghdad.
"They were beating me and my brothers in front of our children," he said.
"They told me that I was helping the insurgents by sending trucks to
Fallouja during the first [anti-insurgent] offensive in April 2004. They
had piles of reports about me. I was actually only sending humanitarian
aid to the people there, which I gathered from our mosque."
He said he was held for 9 days in the Taji camp, which is used by U.S. and
Iraqi forces.
"I stayed there with 19 other people in a very small room with no
windows," said Guheithi, who added that he was often blindfolded and
beaten. "When they found that we had no information, they set us free." I
and other detainees about to be released had to swear that we were not
terrorists and that we are going to participate in building a democratic
country."
(source: Los Angeles Times)
