[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 9



CHINA----execution

Muslim executed for trying to 'split' China


Beijing: China has executed an activist for attempting to "split the
motherland", sparking protest from rights groups, which said that there
was no sufficient evidence.

Ismail Semed was executed on Thursday in Urumqi, the capital of the
predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang, Radio Free Asia (RFA) quoted his
widow, Buhejer, as saying.

"When the body was transferred to us at the cemetery I saw only one bullet
hole in his heart," Buhejer told the radio station on Friday.

The Xinjiang regional government declined to comment.

RFA said the charge on Semed stemmed from allegations that he was a
founding member of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, outlawed by
Beijing as a terrorist group.

However, Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch said: "The death penalty
was widely disproportionate to the alleged crimes ... his trial did not
meet minimum requirements of fairness and due process."

(source: Gulf News)






IRAQ:

UN human rights chief files brief to prevent death sentence on Iraq's
ex-vice president


The top United Nations human rights official today filed a legal brief
with the Iraqi High Tribunal asserting that international law prohibits
the imposition of capital punishment on former vice president Taha Yassin
Ramadan on grounds of breach of due process, and calling on it not to pass
a death sentence.

The "friend of the court" brief was submitted by UN High Commissioner for
Human Rights Louise Arbour in connection with the court's reconsideration
of the jail sentence imposed on Mr. Ramadan in connection with the same
events for which former president Saddam Hussein and two co-defendants
were hanged. The Tribunal's Appeals Chamber ruled that the life sentence
was too lenient and ordered the court to re-sentence him.

"The High Commissioner argues that the Court's imposition of the death
sentence on Taha Yassin Ramadan would violate Iraq's obligations under the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," a statement issued
by Ms. Arbour's office in Geneva said.

The 18-page brief describes shortcomings in the proceedings against Mr.
Ramadan and concludes that these constitute "an unfair trial."

The statement points out that the Covenant, which Iraq has ratified,
provides that a death sentence may only be imposed following proceedings
conducted in strict adherence to due process requirements, and guarantees
the right to seek a commutation or pardon. "In the circumstances, the High
Commissioner submits, the Court should refrain from imposing the death
sentence."

Mr. Ramadan was sentenced for his role in crimes against the civilian
population of the town of Dujail in 1982. Ms. Arbour's move followed a
call last month by two independent UN rights experts that Iraq should
suspend without delay any further executions until a fair trial is
provided.

"International law allows the imposition of capital punishment only within
rigorous legal constraints, including respect of fair trial standards,"
Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers Leandro
Despouy and Chairperson-Rapporteur of the Working Group on Arbitrary
Detention Lela Zerrougui said then.

They cited the violation of a number of international standards on the
right to be tried by an independent and impartial tribunal and on the
right to defence, including numerous reports of external pressure on the
judges that appear to have led to the removal and resignation of some of
them.

The right to appropriate and independent defence was severely undermined,
in particular by the "extremely serious attacks" against defence lawyers,
some of whom were killed, they said. "The assassination of defence
attorneys appearing before the Iraqi High Tribunal threatens the entire
procedure, since the role of defence lawyers is critical to a fair trial,"
they added.

(source: UN News Service)






GRENADA:

Privy Council throws out death sentence against Maurice Bishop's killers


Grenada celebrated its 33rd anniversary of political independence from
Britain on Wednesday with the usual pomp and ceremony befitting such an
occasion.

But for 13 former political and military officials, February 7 could also
mark the turning point in their efforts to be released from prison more
than 23 years after they were convicted of murdering the island's 1st
left-wing Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and members of his government in a
palace coup.

Ironically, their freedom could come through the intervention of an
institution that Grenada and other Caribbean countries still regard as a
remnant of the colonial era and are now seeking to replace with the
region's own Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).

The ruling by the London-based Privy Council that the death sentences
imposed on the 13 men, including Bishop's own deputy, Bernard Coard, and
the head of the then People's Revolutionary Army (PRG) Hudson Austin, are
invalid and that they should be re-sentenced was greeted with much
enthusiasm by the lead defence lawyer for the group, Trinidadian Keith
Scotland.

Scotland, who said he would be traveling to Grenada on Thursday to discuss
the new developments with his clients, says he will ask the Grenadian
courts to set an immediate date for the re-sentencing.

"I am totally gratified and I feel that we have at least taken a step in
the right direction and that justice has been done in this case," he said.

"The Privy Council has vindicated our position, which from the outset was
that anything to do with the sentencing should have been done by a
competent impartial court," Scotland told reporters.

On Aug. 15, 1991, Grenada's governor-general commuted the death sentences
to life imprisonment on condition that each of the convicted men would be
"kept in custody to hard labour for the remainder of his natural life."

In their 12-page ruling, the 5 Law Lords agreed that the governor general
was not legally empowered to amend the sentence.

"The validity of the life sentence substituted by the warrant of
commutation is dependent upon the validity of the sentence of death. In
the absence of such a sentence, the Governor-General has no power to order
that the appellants be imprisoned for life and the appellants therefore
remain held in detention without lawful authority," they ruled.

Coard and the 12 other appellants were among 17 people, including Coard's
wife, Phyllis, who were convicted of murdering Bishop and other members of
his left-wing administration in October 1983. The killings brought to an
end Grenada's flirtation with a popular but undemocratic government that
had ousted the Sir Eric Gairy administration in the English-speaking
Caribbean's first ever coup.

Last December, three of the convicted men were released after spending 23
years in jail. Phyllis Coard has been out of prison for the past two years
seeking medical treatment for cancer.

The men had also gone to the Privy Council contending that the imposition
of the death sentence was unconstitutional, and in its ruling the Privy
Council noted that the state did not contest that point.

The British Law Lords pointed to several cases involving other Caribbean
states with similar constitutions to Grenada's, and noted that upon the
true construction of the Grenadian constitution, such a sentence was
unconstitutional at the time it was passed in 1986.

"The result is that section 230 of the Criminal Code must be interpreted
to mean, and has meant since the Constitution came into force in 1974,
that the death penalty for murder is discretionary: a person convicted of
murder may be sentenced to death but may instead be given a lesser
sentence. The judge did not exercise this discretion and the sentence was
therefore unlawful."

"There appears to be no adequate mechanism in Grenada for providing the
appellants, even now, with the judicial sentencing procedure to which they
were entitled," the Law Lords wrote. "The only prospect of a review of the
sentences is by means of the exercise of the royal prerogative of mercy,
which depends entirely upon executive discretion."

In addition, the Privy Council noted that the prison rules require that
the Board of Review review the life sentences of all prisoners after the
first 12 months have been served and thereafter at 4-year intervals, but
this not appear to have been done in the appellants' case.

In their 12-page judgment calling for re-sentencing, the Privy Council
noted that "perhaps most important is the highly unusual circumstance
that, for obvious reasons, the question of the appellants' fate is so
politically charged that it is hardly reasonable to expect any Government
of Grenada, even 23 years after the tragic events of October 1983, to take
an objective view of the matter."

(source: Caribbean360.com)






NIGERIA:

Prisoners On Death Row


Capital punishment is the severest punishment in this country, but the
government is never in a hurry to execute the condemned persons, except
coup plotters - for security reasons. Of the estimated 65,000 inmates in
the country's 227 prisons, no fewer than 1,000 inmates are reported to be
on death row, awaiting execution.

Many of the condemned persons are said to have spent over 18 years in
prison awaiting execution. The situation has persisted over the years. For
instance, at the Kirikiri Maximum Prison in October, 1986, there were 58
condemned murderers including a woman who had waited for the hangman for
16 years, as at that date. The condemned prisoners occupied the condemned
block originally built for 30 criminals.

Recently, the Director of Legal Council for Ogun and Oyo states, Mr. Fatai
Bakare, traced the delay in executing the condemned persons to the
reluctance of state governors to sign the relevant death warrants as
required by law. The hesitation of the governors to discharge the
responsibility, as rightly stated by Mr Bakare, has worsened the state of
the prisons and the plight of the condemned persons, who suffer ceaseless
mental torture.

Horrors of Nigeria's prisons exhibited in their squalid and constricted
conditions constitute a serious insecurity, which is worsened by habouring
indefinitely condemned persons in the same prisons. Experts in prison
reform allude to long delay in execution of death sentences as one of the
factors responsible for prison riots and jail breaks. Besides, once the
whole process of trial, including appeal, is completed, and a person is
sentenced to death, it will be legally, morally and humanly wrong to
subject the condemned person to endless pains of waiting indefinitely for
execution.

We find the apparent hesitation by the governors in appending their
signatures to the death warrant as adding salt to a festering wound.
Perhaps the governors are being hesitant because none of them wants to be
associated with public execution or hanging. The report that only three
public executions have taken place in the present democratic dispension
since 1999 lends credence to that suspicion.

However, the governors have clear choices to make in the matter involving
those on death row. They can avail themselves of the prerogative of mercy
clause as stipulated in section 212 of the 1999 Constitution. The
provision empowers a governor to grant a convicted or condemned criminal
pardon, respite, either for an indefinite or specified period. He can
mitigate the punishment to a less severe punishment, or remit the whole or
part of the conviction to the state, provided any of the options taken
gets the approval of the state council on the prerogative of mercy. The
governors must exercise this privilege in good faith and in the best
interest of justice.

To us, the options stated in section 212 (subsection a-d) are clearly
unambiguous. The options avoids the encumbrances often encountered by
governors who are less than courageous in signing the death warrants.
Leaving condemned persons on the death row endlessly is in fact
dehumanizing.

As long as capital punishment exists in the country's penal code, it must
be enforced. A law exists only when it is being enforced. But there is a
serious caution.

Since life cannot be replaced when taken, the trial of a person charged
with capital offence must be thorough to avoid miscarriage of justice. If
in the end the person is sentenced to death, he should be executed. That's
what the law says. Though this is not an endorsement of capital
punishment.

The essence of capital punishment, however, is deprivation of life, and to
this should not be added any gratuitous and sadistic infliction of mental
torture and humiliation.

(source: Opinion, Daily Champion)






ETHIOPIA:

Ethiopia Demands Death Penalty For Former Ruler


Ethiopia is calling for the death sentence to be meted out to its past
ruler Mengistu Haile Mariam and his aides instead of a life sentence. They
were found responsible for the death of thousands during the regime's
17-year rule.

Although Mengistu, who has been living in exile in Zimbabwe for 15 years,
is considered exempt from extradition and was tried in absentia. The 3
judges presiding over the case were divided with the presiding judge
calling for the death penalty but the other 2 opting to give life
sentences instead.

"Considering the age of the accused... and the state of their health...
the court has rejected the prosecution's call for the death penalty and
passed life imprisonment," the court said.

State prosecutor Yosef Kiros is demanding that the ruling be overturned
for the death sentence instead.

During the 12-year case, a total of 73 people were accused of genocide and
crimes against humanity. Some 33 were present while 25 including Mengistu
were charged in court in absentia. An additional 14 people accused died
during the case's trial with another man being acquitted.

The military committee headed by Mengistu called the Derg, took over in
1974 after overthrowing Ethiopia's last emperor Haile Selassie.

The Derg would inflict what would be known as the Red Terror where
suspected opponents and intellectuals were nabbed and killed.

The bodies of the victims would be piled up in mass graves or left on the
streets.

(source: All Headline News)