[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

June 4


GUYANA:

Death sentences are still passed but not carried out


Everyone seems to be getting the death penalty these days. There have been
numerous persons over the past couple of months who have been added to the
long list of those awaiting their deaths by way of the gallows. I am in
full support of capital punishment whether it is by lethal injection,
hanging, gas chamber, firing squad, etc., however if the judicial system
is going to just sentence persons to death and the sentences are not
carried out we are surely wasting our time.

The judges, lawyers and others involved in these trials are wasting their
time and people's time. Guyana is one of the nations in the world which
has not carried out an execution in more than ten years.

While abolished in countries such as Canada and Australia, the death
penalty is widely used across the world. The United States of America
carries out hundreds of executions each year, with Texas putting more
people to death each year than any other state of the Union. I will in no
way compare such a country with Guyana. It is not my intention to do so.

Guyana falls within the category of retaining the punishment but not using
it.

Then why are we fooling the world with headline after headline over these
past months which state that persons have been sentenced to death?

Why are we doing this when there are dozens of persons awaiting their
death warrants to be read to them for the gruesome crimes which they
committed (some since umpteen years ago)?

Yours faithfully,

Leon Jameson Suseran

(source: Letter to the Editor, Stabroek News)






VIETNAM:

Vietnam issues death sentences to drug smugglers Vietnam


A Vietnamese court has sentenced to death 2 heroin smugglers and jailed 19
others for trafficking the drug from neighbouring Laos.

Seven defendants received life terms from the Dien Bien province people's
court, while the rest were jailed for between 1 and 20 years.

The state-run Vietnam News Agency says most of the smugglers came from the
same extended family and all live in the same Tuan Giao village.

Last year they reportedly spent US$25,000 on nearly 2 kilograms of heroin
from a village across the Lao border, for both selling and personal use.

Vietnam imposes the death penalty on people found guilty of possessing
over 600 grams of heroin or more than 20 kilograms of opium.

(source: Radio Australia)






BAHRAIN:

Death penalty appeal for killer adjourned


AN appeal for the death penalty for a convicted killer who murdered
Bahraini father-of-2 Mahdi Abdulrahman Mohammed in Muharraq last August
was adjourned yesterday.

The High Criminal Appeal Court postponed the case until June 10, after the
29-year-old Bahraini killer's lawyer failed to show up.

Nooh Idrees Sanan Mubarak was jailed for life on January 24 after pleading
guilty to fatally shooting Mr Mohammed, owning a gun without a licence and
using hashish and morphine.

However, the Public Prosecution appealed against the sentence and is
demanding the death penalty.

Mubarak has been jailed for 26 years in total, 25 years for murder and
weapons charges, in addition to one year for drug charges that also carry
a BD1,000 fine.

He admitted to shooting Mr Mohammed in previous court hearings. Mubarak's
lawyer had claimed that his client was acting in self-defence by saying
that Mr Mohammed had chased the defendant in his car before getting out
with the intention of attacking him.

It was previously said that the defendant had tried to sell his gun 3
weeks before the killing.

After the shooting, he had hid the gun in Shaikhan mosque.

Mr Mohammed, 38, had met the defendant just 15 minutes before the shooting
and had no earlier contact with him. The Reuters technician was killed by
a single shot to the chest in the early hours of August 20. He left behind
an 11-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter.

(source: Gulf Daily News)