[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

September 1



RWANDA:

Abolition Needed for 'Integrating into International Justice'


Rwanda's minister of justice announced that the government will propose a
law ending capital punishment inwanda by December 2006 to encourage
European countries to extradite suspected masterminds of the genocide that
occurred in the country in 1994.

The move puts th

e country in a bind. Foreign governments, the United Nations and
non-governmental organisations applaud it. The Rwandan public -- still
reeling from the rampage that left 800,000 dead and countless injured or
infected with HIV/AIDS after being raped -- want genocide perpetrators to
hang.

Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama admits the majority of the
population made it emphatically known during the writing of the
constitution that do not want to scrap the death penalty, given the
magnitude of the suffering from the genocide, in which extremist Hutu
militias massacred Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

He told IPS in an exclusive interview that abolition now was a necessity
in order to achieve a sense of closure. Unless the country abolishes
capital punishment, it will not be able to try in its own national courts
the masterminds of the genocide, he said.

For more than a decade, the Rwandan government has demanded the return of
the suspects they know are living abroad. Some nations, notably Belgium,
Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland, have refused to extradite the
suspects because the countries feared the suspects may be executed.

These countries preferred instead to prosecute them in their own courts.
Only the United States, which allows the death penalty, has extradited a
genocide suspect to Rwanda. It deported Enos Kagaba from the northern
state of Minnesota in 2005 after he was judged to have entered the United
States illegally.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) is reviewing the
cases of 57 suspects in a specially built prison in Tanzania. Rwanda would
like those suspects to be sent back or, if found guilty, to be imprisoned
here. So far, the United Nations, too, has declined because officials fear
the suspects will be put to death -- a violation of UN principles.

By abolishing the death penalty, Karugarama said, Rwanda could gain faster
access to the accused.

"We're satisfied with the speed of the negotiations with ICTR officials.
All the necessary requirements for transferring cases have been fulfilled
except for abolition of the death penalty," he added.

Although the ICTR is mandated to complete all business by December 2008,
officials in Tanzania predict their work will not be finished by then.
Since it inception in 1996, 28 suspects have been tried. Of those, 25 have
been convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life
imprisonment.

The international body now has begun to negotiate with courts in countries
that have abolished the death penalty and have modern prisons that are up
to international standards.

"Rwanda is one of the only two countries which have up till now expressed
their wish to receive the cases of accused genocide perpetrators from the
ICTR. We've accepted this proposal, but we're obliged to set up a rigorous
monitoring system to insure, number one, that this law is applied," the
ICTR's public prosecutor, Hassan Bubacar Jallow, told IPS.

Rwanda must guarantee that no convicted perpetrator of genocide will
receive the death penalty, Jallow said.

There are currently some 650 prisoners on death row in the country's
overcrowded penitentiaries, according to the justice ministry. Since the
genocide ended in 1994, 40 people were sentenced to death in 2002 for
crimes committed during the genocide, and in 2003, 18 received the the
sentence for perpetrating it.

In 1998, however, 22 people found guilty of masterminding the genocide
received the death penalty and were executed.

But ideas on capital punishment seem to have evolved since then,
especially in the official circles of this central African country in the
Great Lakes region.

"In spite of genocide's aftermath, Rwanda remains a country which needs to
rebuild itself anew and integrate itself into the reality of standards of
international justice," Minister Karugarama said.

Yet news that the law abolishing the death penalty soon will be adopted is
painful to genocide survivors.

"Those who carried out the genocide should be executed in order to forever
eradicate the culture of impunity that has always marred Rwanda. The only
solution: sentencing them to a grave punishment, which their past actions
merit," said Francois Ngarambe, president of a genocide survivors group,
Ibuka ("Remember" in Kinyarwanda, the national language).

Moreover, they say close relations of the perpetrators, if not the
perpetrators themselves, continue to threaten them.

"Abolishing the death penalty would be a new humiliation for the
survivors, and would encourage the killers to finish off their
extermination plan," according to Jean Glauber Burasa, the editor of
Rushyashya, a bimonthly independent newspaper published in Kigali.

"It's unfortunate that even though a large majority of them (the genocide
perpetrators) have just spent a decade in prison, they continue in the
extremist ideology that the former genocidal regime infected them with,"
he added.

A Kigali attorney, who requested anonymity, disagrees. "The crime of
genocide perpetrated in Rwanda had a disastrous effect on the social
fabric here. Even though justice must be served, we'd have to agree on the
advantages this reform will bring to Rwandan justice by conforming to
international standards of justice," he said.

In a May 2005 report on the progress of judicial reforms, the U.S.-based
group Lawyers Without Borders (LWB) said that for justice to be served,
the main difficulty lies not only in abolishing the death penalty, but
providing compensation to the victims.

"There have hardly been any reparations paid to the victims of the 1994
genocide. The Rwandan authorities need to assume their responsibilities
and resolve this problem immediately," Hugo Jombwe Moudiki, the head of
LWB's office in Rwanda, told IPS.

(source: IPS)






BANGLADESH:

Bangladesh confirms death sentence to 7 top terrorists


Bangladesh High Court Thursday confirmed death punishment to 7 top
terrorist leaders, including chief of Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh
(JMB), Shaikh Abdur Rahman and his deputy Bangla Bhai, widely blamed for
countrywide bombing and suicide bomb attacks, according to a deputy
attorney general of the High Court.

The death sentences to the seven top leaders of JMB were given by a lower
court of southern Barisal for killing 2 judges through suicide bomb
attacks on Nov. 14 last year in southern Jhalkathi district, 263 km from
Bangladesh capital Dhaka.

Bangladesh High Court started hearing of the death reference on Aug. 1 and
held continuous hearing. The High court ended hearing of death reference
on Aug. 23.

Unless the JMB leaders appeal to the Supreme Court of Bangladesh for
hearing, their case the death sentence will be executed.

The JMB launched a campaign to establish Islamic rule in this 2nd largest
Muslim country of 140 million and blasted around 500 bombs throughout the
country almost simultaneously on Aug. 17 last year.

The quick finish of hearing by the High Court suggested that the 4-party
Islamist alliance government wanted to send the JMB leaders to gallows
before it hands over power to a non-partisan caretaker government in
October possibly to earn credit and prove themselves that they never
support Islamist terrorism.

The caretaker government will supervise the national elections in January
next year.

(source: Xinhua News)