August 17
IRAQ:
3 Set to Hang as Executions Return to Iraq
3 men convicted of dozens of rapes, kidnappings and killings in the
southern city of Kut, in one case displaying the eyeballs of an Iraqi
soldier to obtain payment for his murder, will be put to death by hanging
in the 1st execution by Iraq's civilian courts since the fall of Saddam
Hussein, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said Tuesday.
The case against the men, who acted in concert, is one of 34 in which
death sentences have been handed down since the death penalty was
reinstated in Iraq in August 2004. It is the first case to emerge from a
mandatory review by an appeals court and be sent to Mr. Jaafari and a
3-member council headed by President Jalal Talabani. The council must
approve the execution before it can take place.
The combination of a shaky government eager to show that it is taking
steps against terrorism and overwhelming public support for the death
penalty here could make the Kut case the first of many executions in Iraq.
That could include Mr. Hussein's. He is expected to go on trial within the
next 2 months before a special tribunal for crimes against humanity.
"We know that public opinion is eagerly waiting for this," said Ghadanfar
Hamood al-Jasim, the chief general prosecutor of Iraq, of the Kut case,
which his office oversaw. "They are in pain and they are waiting for
justice to take its course."
That was certainly true of the families of 3 police officers who were
among those killed by the 3 men, who in May confessed to 63 crimes, an
unknown number of them killings.
Mr. Jasim said that beyond the issue of retribution, he believed that the
reinstatement of the death penalty would be a deterrent in a country where
violence has reached such a high level. "It will help stabilize the
security situation," he said.
But human rights organizations immediately questioned that assertion, as
well as the motives of the Jaafari government in announcing the executions
so soon after the embarrassing political debacle of Monday night, in which
negotiators failed to agree on a new Iraqi constitution and the National
Assembly hastily voted to extend the talks for a week just minutes before
the government would have been dissolved.
Human rights advocates say that Iraq's legal system is often too flimsy to
be fair. Beatings and other abuses are routinely used to produce
confessions. Defendants see their lawyers rarely, or not at all, before
trial. Judges are often under tremendous pressure to impose the death
penalty. And, eager to strike back at insurgent attackers, Iraqi security
forces have cast wide nets to round up suspects, increasing the risk that
innocents will be put to death.
"There are too many things that can go wrong," said Joe Stork, deputy
director of the Middle East Division for the group Human Rights Watch in
Washington, D.C.
Immediate questions have arisen in the Kut trial, where at least 3 family
members identified the defendants by saying that they had seen at least
some of them confess to the killings on television. Mr. Jasim acknowledged
that the Interior Ministry, over Justice Ministry objections, regularly
puts defendants on a popular television program that shows criminals
confessing to crimes before trial, often with visible bruises on their
faces.
Mr. Jasim said that once the defendants are on trial, they always
repudiate their televised confessions, and judges are obliged to ignore
what they have seen outside the courtroom. "We don't consider that as
evidence," Mr. Jasim said.
The death penalty has enormous resonance in Iraq, where Mr. Hussein set up
special courts to issue death sentences with no appeal. The executions
were generally carried out at the clanging metal gallows of Abu Ghraib
prison. Iraqi law still specifies that the death penalty is carried out by
hanging for civilians and firing squad for soldiers, said Jaafar Nasser
Hussain, an Iraqi Supreme Court justice.
After the 2003 invasion, the death penalty was suspended by the
American-led administration in Iraq. But in August 2004, Prime Minister
Iyad Allawi reinstated it.
The Kut trial was broadcast on national television. The defendants stood
in a pen at the center of the room, their eyes downcast. The victims
relatives sat along a side wall. Many held photographs of the dead
officers. Security guards in bulletproof vests stood near the doors.
One of the defendants, a taxi driver, Bayan Ahmed Said, described how he
had cut out the eyes of one of the victims and then put them in his pocket
in order to take them to a sheik who he said had ordered the murders.
The other 2 defendants were a builder and a butcher.
The men also were convicted of raping women, beheading them afterward and
throwing the bodies into a river.
Even worse cases are waiting to be tried, said Mr. Jasim, the prosecutor.
A man in Mosul is accused of 113 killings, he said, offering no full
explanation for where the barbarity has come from since the Americans
invaded in 2003. "We didn't know such crimes before," he said.
But there is worry among many human rights groups that, in the confusion
of large-scale arrests and the intense public pressure for convictions in
cases of atrocity, innocent people will be put to death. The biggest
threat, they argued, were forced confessions in police custody.
Researchers for Human Rights Watch interviewed 90 detainees during 4
months in 2004. 72 of them said they had been ill-treated in custody.
There are other problems. Iraqi law, like American, requires that
defendants be brought before a judge within 24 hours of their arrest, but
they rarely are, human rights advocates said.
Still, the current system is widely considered a vast improvement from the
time of Mr. Hussein. Though thousands of families were destroyed in his
system, few equate it with today's proposed executions, human rights
advocates said.
Aiad Jamal al-Din, a Shiite intellectual who supports the death penalty,
said Iraqis even wanted public executions. He gave a succinct explanation
for the popular support for the death penalty: "This is a war field. In
every war, innocent people fall down."
(source: New York Times)
IRAN:
8 hangings, 12 death sentences in 6 days -- Iranian Resistance demands
urgent international action to halt barbaric executions in Iran
Amid the stepped-up wave of executions in Iran, the clerical regime hanged
2 people and sentenced to death nine more, including 2 women.
These bring to 8 and 12 respectively the number of hangings and death
sentences issued in the past 6 days alone.
A man, 43, was hanged on August 11 in Tehran on the charge of killing a
member of the State Security Forces. Another man was hanged in
Malek-Ashtar Square in the city of Arak (south of Tehran) 3 days later.
Yesterday, the daily Sharq and the State controlled news agency, Fars,
reported that the Supreme Court had upheld death sentences for 2 men
charged with murder in Tehran and Gonbad Kavoos (northern Iran).
The Iranian Resistance reiterates the need for urgent action by the world
community, especially the United Nations Human Rights Commission, High
Commissioner for Human Rights and the General Assembly, to stop these
inhuman punishments. It underscores that the international community's
silence and inaction, including the failure to table a censure resolution
at the Human Rights Commission and a lack of a Special Repporteur to
monitor the situation of human rights in Iran, have emboldened the mullahs
to continue and step up their atrocities, particularly the medieval
executions.
(source: Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran)
KENYA:
Fresh Calls to Abolish the Death Penalty
Human rights organisation Amnesty International has rekindled calls for
the abolition of the death penalty.
AI says in a statement that the Government should make provisions
abolishing the capital punishment in the Draft Constitution.
The organisation has also asked the Kibaki Government not to carry out
executions during its entire tenure and to commute death sentences to life
imprisonment.
It says the abolition of the death penalty is essential for a constitution
that respects human rights.
The move, says AI, would be one of the most important by the country to
secure respect for human rights of everyone under its jurisdiction.
The organisation, at the same time, has welcomed the Government's decision
to commute all death sentences to life imprisonment.
"There is evidence that Africa is moving towards universal abolition of
the death penalty.
"12 countries have abolished the punishment. Another 20 countries,
including Kenya, have not carried out executions for over 10 years," says
Amnesty International. AI said it recognised the right of governments to
administer justice for criminal acts but the death penalty was inhuman.
(source: The East African Standard)
