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

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 2


CANADA:

Warehouse worker receives letters from inmates


The hundreds of letters are filed in shoeboxes and tucked away in corners
of the small townhouse Thomas Loudamy shares with his fiancee, their
7-week-old baby and his fiancee's father.

Flipping through the envelopes, the return addresses are all from prisons
and the names are well-known to true-crime buffs: Andrea Yates, who
drowned her 5 children in a bathtub; Susan Smith, who pushed her car into
a lake with her 2 children inside; Charles Ng, who murdered and sexually
tortured 11 people in California.

In a matter of seconds, Loudamy locates 4 letters from Canadians who are
accused or convicted of violent killings, including two infamous B.C. men
-- Robert (Willie) Pickton and Clifford Olson.

Loudamy, a 27-year-old warehouse worker, estimates he has received
thousands of letters written by about 400 American and Canadian inmates
since he started his unusual pen pal hobby in 2001.

It all began with an interest in news stories about the wrongfully
convicted. That caused him to get involved with a Canadian anticapital
punishment website, and he started writing letters to death row inmates.

"I wanted to at least, maybe on a small scale, offer my services as best I
could," he said.

After a while, however, he found this depressing because his penpals were
eventually executed. So he branched out to writing to prisoners who are
not on death row -- and his letters are not necessarily directed now to
people who he thinks are wrongfully convicted.

"(I have) sympathy for people that for one reason or another, are just
lost souls, certainly not for what they did or what they were accused of,"
said Loudamy.

Ideally, he hopes an inmate will reveal new evidence in a letter that
could help police close the file on an unsolved crime.

"Maybe on somewhat of a scale I could make some kind of a difference, in
that a lot of people who have written to me have gone on to describe
things that they were not convicted of," he said.

"If I played my cards right in my correspondence with them, it would maybe
help solve cold cases and things like that, which was a big motivator."
Loudamy said he writes 11 letters a day, 6 days a week. Some of the
letters are replies to inmates; others are to new recipients.

They are all done in longhand, because he believes a handwritten letter
has a better chance of getting a reply.

Loudamy said he got many of the addresses for the inmates from people he
was communicating with in chat rooms who were intrigued by "notorious
cases." "A lot of them are stay-at-home moms (and) sort of, I guess,
armchair sleuths and true-crime fans," he said. However, Loudamy said he
has severed ties with the chat rooms because he claimed many of the
participants were serial killer groupies.

"I went online one day and realized that what a lot of people were doing
was using the addresses to write these people and then get them (the
inmates) to send, like, toenail clippings, fingernail clippings, samples
of hair, that kind of thing. And that's where I had to draw the line," he
said.

Loudamy penned his 1st letter to Pickton in June 2005 because he was
shocked by the case and the small amount of public information available
about the accused. He got a reply a couple of months later.

He wrote back to Pickton in early February 2006. He got a prompt rely to
that letter in March. Loudamy didn't write to Pickton again until early
August 2006 and received a reply earlier this week.

"With everyone that I do write to I try to do as much research as possible
about their background," he said.

(source: The Saskatoon Star Phoenix)






PAKISTAN:

Death sentence for Multan bombing----The Multan attack targeted radical
Sunnis


A court in Pakistan's Punjab province has sentenced a man to death for
organising a bomb attack on a gathering of Sunni Muslims in October 2004.

Irfan Ali Shah was convicted of masterminding the twin bombings in the
city of Multan in which 40 people were killed and nearly 100 wounded.

The court found Shah guilty on 40 counts. Another man is still wanted in
connection with the attack.

Shah pleaded not guilty and his lawyer said he would appeal.

The bombings targeted the radical Sunni Millat-e-Islami group and were
believed to be part of a bloody sectarian conflict with minority Shias.

About 3,000 people were present to mark the 1st anniversary of the murder
of a Sunni leader, Maulana Azam Tariq, who was shot dead near Islamabad.

Pakistan has a history of sectarian violence, mostly blamed on rival Sunni
and Shia extremist groups.

About 97% of Pakistan's population are Muslim, the majority Sunnis.

(source: BBC News)






INDIA:

HC turns death sentence of Sadhus to life term in Gadadharanand murder
case


Gujarat High Court has turned death sentence of four sadhus into life term
while aquitting the 5th one in the sensational Gadadharanand murder case.
Lower court had awarded death sentence to all the 5 for the murder of
swami Gadadharanand of Vadtal Swaminarayan temple.

The Swami was kidnapped and later murdered by other swamis of the temple
in 1998. The incident rocked the swaminarayan sub-sect in the state. After
a long trial supported by investigations by the Central Bureau of
Investigation, the Court had ordered death penalty for all the 5 accused.

Gadadharanand was kidnapped on May3,1998 and was taken to a gurukul at
Navli village 12kms from Anand where he was strangulated to death. His
body was taken to a village in Rajasthan where it was set afire after
pouring petrol on it.

On the basis of the evidence the CBI collected and the arguments forwarded
by prosecution, Judge of Nadiad Fast Track Court had awarded death
sentences to all. These Sadhus were Narayan Shastri,Shrijicharan
Swami,Madhav Swami,Vijay Bhagat and Ghanshyam Swami.

The order was challenged in the High Court. In a rare precedent, the
division bench of the High Court hearing the case even visited the temple
on the ground that the prosecution did not submit the map of the temple.
The defence on the other hand said that the case was created on
circumstantial evidence and there was no evidence of direct and active
involvement of anyone in the crime.

The division bench comprising Justice C K Buch and K H Punj reduced the
punishment of 4 and acquitted Ghanshyam Swami.

(source: Gujarat Global News Network)