[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 1



CANADA:

Liberal senator pushes for vote on death row case


A new battlefront has been opened in the political and legal fight over
the fate of Ronald Smith, the only Canadian killer on death row in the
United States.

Liberal Senator Serge Joyal, decrying the Conservative government's
decision to stop seeking clemency for the 50-year-old Albertan "for the
mere sake of the government image that it has to appear 'tough on crime'"
- has tabled a motion in the upper chamber that should force the issue to
a vote next week.

Joyal is seeking Senate support "to urge the government to reconsider its
decision" and "commit itself to supporting, at all international forums,
the abolition of the death penalty in the full knowledge that this country
abolished capital punishment more than 30 years ago."

The Quebec senator added: "This is a sad moment for the legitimacy of our
convictions and our values as a nation ... The government thought it more
politic to exchange the highest principle of the protection of every human
life - the foundation of our shared humanity - for a message tinged with
partisan propaganda, for purely electoral reasons."

Joyal's plan to push a vote on the issue is a response to comments made
last week by the government's leader in the Senate, Marjory LeBreton, who
defended the recent Conservative reversal of a longstanding federal policy
to seek clemency on humanitarian grounds for any Canadian facing execution
in any foreign country.

"The laws against capital punishment in this country will stand," LeBreton
said. "But at the same time, the actions of Mr. Smith cannot allow the
public to lose faith in our system in respect of the heinous acts he
committed. This is a sad case especially relating to the victims of this
double murder."

The government's new policy says Canada will no longer seek clemency for
Canadians on death row in "democratic countries, like the United States,
where there has been a fair trial."

But Justice Minister Rob Nicholson - under persistent questioning in the
House of Commons from an opposition united in its denunciation of the new
policy - has indicated that the government would look at "each case on its
merits" and that "multiple" or "mass" murderers, such as Smith, could no
longer "necessarily" count on Canada to intervene.

The government has refused to explain its apparent softening of the
policy, and since Tuesday - when Smith and a high-profile team of Canadian
defence lawyers filed a lawsuit in the Federal Court of Canada to overturn
the clemency decision - Nicholson has stopped talking about case
altogether, citing the ongoing legal action.

Joyal has pressed the government to "reconsider the dangerous path that it
has embarked upon," which he argues is contrary to the Charter of Rights
and Freedoms and "flies in the face of our heritage in the belief of the
sanctity of life."

(source: CanWest News Service)

******************

Let us not as a nation collude in the execution of Ronald Smith----Killer
deseves to rot in jail, but Canada must stand up for its murderers abroad


It's not easy to summon up much sympathy for Ronald Smith.

The 50-year-old Albertan, who has been sitting on death row in Montana for
25 years, sounds every bit your Hollywood stereotype of a stone cold
killer.

Smith was born in Wetaskiwin in 1957. His dad worked the oilpatch, and
Smith spent his childhood travelling from work site to work site. His
relationship with his father was, by all accounts, violent and volatile.

Smith started stealing as a kid, taking money he found around the house.

"I was a little light-fingered. If there was extra cash around it would be
gone. I made a career out of that," he once told a reporter.

He was drinking by the age of 10, taking drugs by 12 or 13. His first time
in jail came when he was 15. By Grade 9, he dropped out of school. After
that, he was in and out of jail for selling drugs, stealing cars, breaking
into houses.

In August 1982, Smith decided to hitchhike from his home in Red Deer to
Mexico, accompanied by two buddies. In his luggage, Smith packed a
sawed-off .22 calibre rifle. The trio made it across the Montana border
and went to a bar. They drank beer and played some pool with two Blackfoot
cousins, Harvey Mad Man, 23, and Thomas Running Rabbit, 20.

Running Rabbit was the pride of his family, a second-year college student,
a gifted competitive athlete who planned to become a teacher. Mad Man was
a father of 2, the idolized eldest brother in his family.

Eventually, the Canadians left the bar and they started hitchhiking. But
they had trouble getting rides. The 2 cousins they'd met in the bar drove
by and offered the trio a lift. But their generosity was poorly rewarded.

When Mad Man and Running Rabbit stopped the car by the side of the road to
relieve themselves, Smith marched them into the forest and shot them in
the head. Smith and his buddies stole the car. They made it as far as
California, where they robbed a grocery store.

Police caught up with them not long afterwards.

Smith pleaded guilty to 2 murder and kidnapping. He actually requested the
death penalty in lieu of a 110-year prison term.

"I wanted to find out what it would be like to kill somebody," he told the
judge who sentenced him.

Despite his initial request for a lethal injection, Smith has spent most
of the past 25 years appealing his sentence through the U.S. courts, and
fighting to be sent to a Canadian prison. Until last month, Ottawa was in
his corner.

Canada abolished the death penalty in 1976. It has long been our policy to
appeal for clemency for Canadians convicted abroad.

The principle is simple.

As a nation, we believe the death penalty is morally abhorrent. Even when
a citizen commits a heinous act abroad, we uphold our belief that capital
punishment is wrong, by lobbying governments to commute death sentences
imposed on Canadians abroad.

But something odd happened last month. On Oct. 27, the Ottawa Citizen ran
a front-page story about efforts by the Department of Foreign Affairs to
win clemency for Ronald Smith, including complaints from Montana's
governor about Canadian pressure.

On Oct. 31, four days after the story ran, the Department of Foreign
Affairs made an abrupt change in policy. No longer, said Ottawa, would it
seek clemency for Canadians convicted in democratic countries after fair
trials.

Last week, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson modified that stance, saying
Ottawa would not "necessarily" intervene to help those convicted of
multiple murders.

Now, Smith is taking the Canadian government to court, demanding a
judicial review. His lawyers argue that the government has an obligation
under the Charter of Rights to protect Smith's right to life and his right
not to be subjected to cruel and unusual treatment, and that abandoning
their support for him at this point is an act of bad faith, and violation
of his rights under the Vienna Convention.

Smith is no poster boy for the abolition of the capital punishment. He
committed a vicious, pointless murder. His guilt is not in doubt. He's had
a competent American legal team to represent his interests in the U.S.
courts -- he's getting his due process.

And you could certainly argue Smith chose to murder in Montana and should
be prepared to be punished according to Montana law.

Still, as a nation, we made up our minds 30 years ago that we would no
longer countenance the death penalty, even for the nastiest killers.

The Harper government shouldn't change such fundamental policy on the fly,
spurred by one embarrassing newspaper article. How capricious, how
knee-jerk, would it be, to make such a life-and- death decision on an ad
hoc, political basis?

Smith is not a sympathetic figure. But few murderers are. Either we uphold
the fundamental principle that we as a nation deplore capital punishment,
or we don't.

It's tempting to disown Smith. But for better or worse, he's our
responsibility. The world needs to know that we will defend our citizens
-- right or wrong.

Otherwise, when some Canadian faces a death sentence in China or Sudan or
Iran or Thailand, our moral authority to lobby for clemency could be
fatally diminished.

If Stephen Harper's Conservatives want to reopen the capital punishment
debate in Parliament, that's their prerogative. But to do an end-run
around public debate to score ideological points with Smith's life hanging
in the balance, is distasteful and disturbing.

By all means, let Ronald Smith rot in a U.S. jail for the next 50 years.
It's no more than he deserves. But as a nation, let's not collude in his
execution. Smith has already shamed our country.

Let's not let him damn us, too. Let's not have his blood on our hands.

(source: Commentary, Paula Simmons,The Edmonton Journal)

*****************

Hanging: Many executions were bungled


"As he's strangling at the end of the rope because his neck didn't snap,
he's got these notes (clenched in his hands) from his daughter telling him
that she loves him and his son saying he forgives him," Pfeifer recalls.
"For me, it really brought the essence that these aren't the standard bad
killers off the street killing randomly. There's real tragedy. There's
pain, such pain."

One of the more memorable for Leyton-Brown is the hanging of Alikomiakand
Tatamigana of the Yukon. "Blood feuds and a culture of revenge were facts
of life on the Kent Peninsula during the 1920s and both men had grown up
with the belief that killing was a socially acceptable way of resolving
problems," the book states. Together they killed four people, including an
RCMP officer who befriended 18-year-old Alikomiak. The prisoner shot the
officer when he mistakenly thought the Mountie had made a disparaging
remark. The hangman given the job had botched one of his previous
assignments, prompting Canada's best-known professional hangman, Arthur
Ellis, to hold a press conference at which he reportedly said, "The Eskimo
is just as much entitled to a decent hanging as a white man."

Leyton-Brown estimates 1/3 to 2/3 of the hangings were bungled. In an
attempt to ensure a humane death, the hanging was to snap a person's neck,
but the authors chronicled cases of decapitations, slow strangulations,
the cutting down of those not yet dead and hanging them again, and heroic
interventions on condemned prisoners who attempted suicide, so the state
could execute them properly. "This is awful," someone penned in one file
after a particularly gruesome hanging in Prince Albert.

"I see nothing in this that is desirable," says Leyton-Brown. With his
background in law, he also points to other "flaws" in the process for some
of the condemned, including a lack of legal representation or absence of a
translator. In some cases, jurors unanimously urged sentences be commuted
because of their doubts about the verdict. "This is a jury that found them
guilty beyond a reasonable doubt," he points out.

By today's legal standards, Leyton-Brown believes many of the condemned
would have been found not guilty of murder, but guilty of the lesser
offence of manslaughter. To that list, Pfeifer adds people who would have
been acquitted because of a psychological disorder.

"The most interesting thing for me . . . was how much that we now
currently recognize in psychology was going on at that point," Pfeifer
says, noting there are clear cases of people acting out because of a head
injury or post-traumatic stress syndrome. "The courts recognize them. They
say, 'There's something wrong here, but it's not mitigating. You're still
going to be executed.'"

There was often little time for second, sober thought. Justice moved at a
swift pace, with executions scheduled for as little as a few weeks, but
more often three months, after the trial. Leyton-Brown points out,
however, that regardless of the date, in the words of one B.C. judge,
"your life may effectively be said to be at an end" from the moment the
sentence is delivered, removing all hope.

"People could spend quite a long time knowing that their life is at an
end, listening to the construction of the gallows . . . being checked over
by the hangman, seeing how tall they are, (how) heavy they are," he adds.

In some cases, notes the book, "a condemned man was called upon to help
build the scaffold (usually located at a 'gaol' or jail near where the
trial occurred) on which he himself was to die."

Canada's last hanging occurred on Dec. 10, 1962 in Toronto -- the
execution of killers Arthur Lucas and Robert Turpin. 5 years later, the
death knell sounded for the gallows when the federal government passed a
bill placing a moratorium on capital punishment except in cases involving
the murder of a police or corrections officer. Under the Trudeau
government in 1976, the death penalty was dead. It nearly won a reprieve
in a 1987 House of Commons debate, but was shot down 148-127.

(source: The Star Phoenix)






INDIA:

Man gets death sentence for killing 3 in Orissa


In Bhubaneswar, a man has been sentenced to death by a court in Orissa for
killing 3 people in the state's Keonjhar district last year, officials
said Friday.

'The district sessions judge at Keonjhar, Anjan Kumar Das, Thursday handed
down the death sentence to 32-year-old Debabrat Moharana for killing three
people,' a police official told IANS.

Moharana, a resident of Alati village that is about 250 km from here,
attacked 5 people with an axe over some personal dispute on July 23, 2006.

While 3 villagers, Sailendra Swain, 50, Gayadhara Majhi, 65, and Jagada
Mallick, 52, were killed, 2 others sustained injuries.

The police arrested Moharana the same day. The judge Thursday found him
guilty of murder and sentenced him to death.

(source: IANS)






IRAQ:

Iraq Seeks to Execute 3 Former Officials


The political battle over a death sentence for Iraqs former defense
minister flared again on Friday, with Iraqi government officials saying
they had demanded that the Americans hand him over for execution.

Sadiq al-Rikabi, a political adviser to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal
al-Maliki, said Mr. Maliki sent a letter to President Bush last week,
arguing that it was a matter of national sovereignty.

The government's letter suggests the case will continue to stoke sectarian
tensions, as Iraq tries to figure out what to do with the former minister,
Sultan Hashem Ahmed al-Jabouri al-Tai, and 2 other senior military
officials under Saddam Hussein, including the notorious henchman known as
Chemical Ali.

In June, Iraqi courts rejected final appeals by Mr. Hashem and the other
defendants, who were sentenced to death for war crimes. And even though
Iraqi law says they should have been executed within 30 days, they have
remained in American custody while officials on all sides vigorously
debate their fate.

The Shiite-led Iraqi government wants execution. "The court decision
should be implemented," said Mr. Rikabi.

But Sunnis want mercy, and the Americans, the jailers, fear that hanging
Mr. Hashem would set back hopes for a Sunni-Shiite reconciliation.

Mr. Hashem's reputation remains mixed. He was a top officer for decades,
winning respect from many Iraqis for his professionalism. Some American
officials say he helped limit the resistance of the Iraqi Army to the
invasion in 2003, and many Sunni leaders say he was simply a soldier
following orders of Saddam Hussein's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as
Chemical Ali.

But Mr. Hashem was also a leader of the so-called Anfal, an operation in
1988 in which as many as 180,000 Kurds were killed. And as a result, both
Shiite and Kurdish officials believe that if Mr. Hashems life is spared,
it could set a precedent by which others who committed crimes under the
previous rulers would also seek to be let off.

They also fear that Mr. Hashem would become a hero to many members of the
former government and a rallying point for insurgents.

The fate of the defendants remained unclear on Friday. Mr. Rikabi, the
prime ministers aide, said he believed the government had not yet received
a response to the letter to Mr. Bush.

The American military has said it will not deliver the men to Iraqi
custody until it receives an "authoritative" request, but a spokeswoman at
the American Embassy said the case would have to be decided by the Iraqis.

"We are waiting for the government of Iraq to come to consensus as to what
Iraqi law requires before preparing a physical transfer," said the
spokeswoman, Mirembe Nantongo.

Iraqi government officials also continued to spar over the discovery on
Thursday of two car bombs near the home of a prominent Sunni lawmaker,
Adnan al-Dulaimi, a leader of the Iraqi Consensus Front.

Iraqi security officials conducted a predawn raid of Mr. Dulaimi's
compound and arrested around 40 security guards, including his 38-year-old
son, Muhammad al-Issawi.

In an interview, Mr. Dulaimi said 53 people had been detained.

Qassim Atta, a spokesman for the Baghdad security plan, said an initial
investigation showed that some of Mr. Dulaimi's guards had rigged the cars
with explosives.

An American military statement on Friday said one of the detained guards
had keys to one of the cars. It said that Iraqi and American forces had
raided Mr. Dulaimi's house after a member of a neighborhood Concerned
Local Citizens group was killed a block away, and soldiers found a car
nearby matching the description of one that had left the scene.

Mr. Dulaimi denied that he or his employees had been involved in the
killing or the car bombs.

(source: New York Times)






SUDAN:

Calls in Sudan for Execution of British Teacher


Hundreds of demonstrators in Khartoum, Sudan's capital, poured into the
streets on Friday demanding the execution of a British teacher who was
convicted of insulting Islam because her class of 7-year-olds named a
teddy bear Muhammad.

The protesters, some carrying swords, screamed, "Shame, shame on the
U.K.!" and, "Kill her, kill her by firing squad."

They were calling for the death of Gillian Gibbons, the teacher who was
sentenced Thursday to 15 days in jail. Under Sudanese law, she could have
spent 6 months behind bars and received 40 lashes.

Despite the display of outrage, witnesses said that many of the protesters
were government employees ordered to demonstrate, and that aside from a
large gathering outside the presidential palace, most of Khartoum was
quiet. Imams across the city brought up the case in sermons after Friday
Prayer, but few of them urged violence.

"This woman gave an idol the name of Muhammad, which is not acceptable,"
said Ahmed Muhammad, the imam at a mosque in Khartoum 2, an upscale
section of town. But, he added, the proper response was more nuanced: "We
have to first respect ourselves, and then others will respect us."

In Islam, insulting the Prophet Muhammad is a grave offense, and
worshiping idols is prohibited.

British officials said they were pressing the Sudanese authorities to let
Ms. Gibbons, 54, out of jail early, and they played down the protests.

"The protesters went right past the embassy, but it was kept under
control," said Omar Daair, a spokesman for the British Embassy in
Khartoum. "There was lots of police and security."

Mr. Daair said British officials paid a visit to Ms. Gibbons in jail on
Friday morning. "She's fine," he said.

The events that led to the furor began in September when Ms. Gibbons, who
taught at one of Sudan's most exclusive private schools, opened a project
on animals and asked her class to suggest a name for a teddy bear. The
class voted resoundingly for Muhammad, one of the most common names in the
Muslim world.

As part of the exercise, Ms. Gibbons told her pupils to take the bear
home, photograph it and write a diary entry about it. The entries were
collected in a book, "My Name Is Muhammad."

The government said that when some parents saw the book, they complained
to the authorities. On Sunday, Ms. Gibbons was arrested. Several Muslim
clerics in Sudan called for her to be whipped, while British diplomats
said that she had made an innocent mistake and that she should be cleared.

Ms. Gibbons went to trial on Thursday, and after an all-day proceeding,
the judge seemed to reach for a compromise by finding her guilty of
insulting Islam but handing her a relatively light sentence. The
government said she would be deported as soon as she was released.

It seems that Ms. Gibbons and the teddy bear became enmeshed in the larger
struggle between the Sudanese government, which routinely accuses its
Western critics of being anti-Islamic, and European and American officials
pressing for an end to the crisis in Darfur.

In early November, Sudanese officials said that peacekeepers from
Scandinavia could not serve in Darfur, the troubled region of western
Sudan, because of a dispute two years ago, when several Scandinavian
newspapers published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

United Nations officials have said that the Sudanese government was simply
looking for ways to block or delay the deployment of an expanded
peacekeeping force. This week, United Nations officials said that unless
the Sudanese government started cooperating, the expanded mission might
not be possible.

(source: New York Times)






BAHAMAS:

Bahamas prime minister addresses death penalty issue


The death penalty will be carried out for persons sentenced to death, once
the judicial processes determine it, Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham said
on Wednesday. Prime Minister Ingraham explained that the Privy Council
determined that a mandatory sentence given in respect of a murder
conviction is no longer lawful and that there must be alternate sentences
handed down by court.

"Well a number of such cases are now going through the process of the
courts and eventually they will be disposed of and determined.

"It is our hope and expectation, at the end of the day, that some of them
will result in the imposition of the death penalty and if they do, we will
carry it out as we have done in the past."

At a press conference upon his return from the Commonwealth Heads of
Government Meeting in Uganda that took place November 23 - 25, Ingraham
said his government is very concerned about the number of murders in the
country.

As result, he had Minister of National Security 'Tommy' Turnquest give him
vital statistics on the number of murders committed in the country up to
November 25.

Ingraham explained that there were 71 murders recorded and the last time
the number of murders was that high was in 2000, when there were just over
70 murders.

But he also pointed out that by 2001 there was a reduction in the number
to about 43.

"We have been going up and down," Ingraham said. Some years it is bad and
some years it is not so bad. This is a bad year in terms of the number."

He said he was particularly interested in discovering who is being
arrested and charged and who the victims are.

Ingraham noted that the statistics show that 64 % or 2/3 of the persons
murdered had prior criminal records.

Secondly, he pointed out that 3/4 of the murder suspects had prior
criminal records and that 10 murder suspects (19 %) had been previously
charged with the offence of murder.

And 42 % (or 22) of the murder suspects were already on bail at the time
of the alleged commissioning of these offences.

Giving a rundown of the statistics, Ingraham said of the 71 murders that
have been committed the police have charged just under 60 persons.

17 of them were related to domestic issues; 11 of them related to
conflicts or arguments; 13 of them were related to violent criminal
activity such as robberies; 6 appear to be revenge killings and with the
other 20 it has not yet been determined.

He added that the overall rate of detection so far is just around 70 %,
good, we could do better and we would do better soon.

"So while the numbers in and of themselves is staggeringly high," Ingraham
said, "when one does an analysis of the actual murders committed, one is
able to draw some conclusions that the numbers do not project without
explanations.

He also pointed out that in 2000, many of the murders were related to
drug-related events.

"However, this time lots of the murders appear to be connected with
persons who have been engaged in criminal activity, both from the
perpetrators point of view and in many cases from the victims' point of
view.

"And with the number of murders by persons not so involved, have not shot
up in any substantial way, and the substantial increase appears to be
related to persons previously engaged in criminal activity."

Ingraham noted that many of the victims and the persons being held in
connection with murders were on bail for similar offences.

As a result, he will be agitating for speedy trials.

Ingraham added that if there were 4 more criminal courts opened in New
Providence and Freeport, there would be a dent in the backlog of cases.

(source: Caribbean Net News)






MOROCCO:

Conformist Media Blamed for Public Apathy


Lack of media interest in reporting on death penalty issues is responsible
for widespread public indifference to whether or not Morocco eventually
abolishes capital punishment, according to analysts and activists here.

"The Moroccan media has not yet made abolition part of its agenda," Driss
Ould Kabla, editor-in-chief of the Al-Michal weekly, told IPS.

Despite its 15-year-long unofficial moratorium, when the time came to vote
on the recent U.N. General Assembly resolution calling for a worldwide
moratorium on executions and eventual end to the death penalty, Morocco
sided with the rest of the Arab world and joined the pro-capital
punishment camp.

Morocco was one of the 52 countries -- many of them Arab -- which voted
against the moratorium resolution on Nov. 15. Moroccan diplomats did not
even take to the floor during the two days of debate in the General
Assembly's human rights committee -- unlike Egyptian and Syrian diplomats
who expressed strong criticism.

The Moroccan media largely ignored the country's stand on the U.N. General
Assembly resolution.

Al-Michal is the only Moroccan newspaper that regularly reports on death
penalty-related issues.

The near-total media blackout on death penalty issues is largely due to
the failure of the press to jettison its antiquated conformist mentality
-- not because of official censorship, Kabla said.

"We have a long history of support for the death penalty from all
quarters, political, social and religious," Kabla explained.

Expressing dismay at the absence of media interest in this event, Kabla
said that the press did find its voice when there were even more
controversial issues to report. "The Moroccan independent press has been
showing enough daring on other issues," he stressed.

This sensitive reporting involved recent coverage of the alleged
extra-judicial killings during the rule of King Hassan II who died in
1999. Some human rights activists have alleged the killings could number
in the hundreds.

Kabla's own investigations into some of these killings -- particularly
those alleged to have been carried out at a secret service villa in Rabat,
the Moroccan capital -- were published in his own weekly and re-published
on many websites in Arabic.

Kabla said that NGOs shared some of the blame for public apathy towards
death penalty abolition: "Abolitionist NGOs are not communicating widely
enough".

Ahmed Kouza, an Amnesty International activist, agreed that the Moroccan
press was tame in its reporting on the death penalty. Press fail to
appreciate the relationship between abolishing capital punishment and
furthering democratic values, he suggested.

But otherwise the Moroccan media was playing a "crucial role in the
democratic changes taking place in the country", Kouza told IPS.
"Abolition is an integral part of this on-going 'democratic transition' in
the country", he argued.

The 'Democratic Transition' was launched in Morocco in 1998 when King
Hassan II named opposition leader Abderrahmane Youssoufi as prime
minister.

Hassan II ruled from 1961 to 1999. His son, King Mohamed VI, who acceded
to throne in July 1999, continued the democratic reforms. He also launched
a reconciliation process with victims of human rights violations under his
father by setting up the Equity and Reconciliation Board (IER).

The IER -- in its final report submitted to King Mohamed VI in 2005 --
recommended the abolition of the death penalty as part of this
reconciliation process.

In 2006, Bouchra Khiari of the Democratic Forces Front, seized the
initiative by introducing a bill in parliament to abolish capital
punishment. "There was a thoroughgoing debate at this time between the
abolitionists and advocates of the death penalty," Kabla said. But even
this lively debate was not widely reported in the media "because the
abolitionist movement is not yet influential enough," he explained.

Kouza believes that it is only a matter of time before the Moroccan press
will take up reporting the death penalty issue. "The political and social
engagement is still missing," Kouza said. "But journalism is certainly
becoming more professional."

Independent media outlets are flourishing. Since the 'Democratic
Transition', the media landscape has seen the addition of some 400 private
newspapers. The state broadcasting monopoly has been broken up. There are
now 11 independent radio stations -- although television is still
state-controlled.

Morocco's last execution was in 1993, but death sentences continue to be
handed down for murder. Human rights activists believe there are more than
150 currently on death row in the country.

(source: IPS News)