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

[Rick Halperin]

Jan. 13



INDIA:

India's top judge opposes death penalty


India's top judge, whose court turned down an appeal by a man sentenced to
death for an attack on parliament, said on Saturday he opposed the death
penalty but courts were bound to impose it in the "rarest of rare" cases.

Justice Y.K. Sabharwal, the outgoing head of the panel of 5 Supreme Court
judges who rejected on Friday the final plea for review by a Kashmiri man
sentenced to death for helping to launch a deadly attack on the Indian
parliament on 2001.

Mohammad Afzal, an Indian national, had filed the petition before the
nation's highest court on the ground he had been denied satisfactory legal
representation during his trial.

"Once a court arrives at a conclusion that a case falls in the category of
'rarest of rare' it has no option but to award death penalty," Sabharwal
said in his last news conference before his retirement.

"My personal view that death penalty should be abolished doesn't matter,"
he said. "It's up to the legislature to decide whether to retain death
penalty."

The country's president, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, was also against imposing the
death penalty, he said.

Afzal's only hope now lies in a mercy petition pending before the
president and the sentence will not be carried out until the president
rejects the appeal.

Protests erupted late last year in Kashmir against Afzal's execution and
the issue has been heatedly debated by political parties and the media. It
has been argued India should abolish the death penalty.

In India, "rarest of rare" has over the years come to mean gruesome or
revolting cases. The last Indian hanged in August 2004, Dhananjay
Chhatterjee, was convicted of the brutal rape and murder of a schoolgirl.

Indian law stipulates the president should act on the advice of the
federal cabinet, but there is no deadline and a decision can be put off
indefinitely.

5 gunmen stormed the heavily guarded parliament complex on Dec. 13, 2001
but were killed by security forces before they could enter the building
where lawmakers sit. 10 other people, mostly security men, were also
killed in the exchange of fire.

The attack was linked to a separatist revolt in the disputed Himalayan
region of Kashmir, the main cause of political tension between India and
Pakistan.

The Muslim separatist revolt in the region has killed more than 45,000
people since 1989.

(source: Reuters)

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

'I am against death penalty'


Justice Y.K. Sabharwal, who superannuates from the post of the Chief
Justice of India today, has said that he is himself against the death
penalty, Sahara Samay sources said.

Interacting with the media persons on his last day in office here today,
he said the court has to award death penalty in appropriate cases because
judges cannot give their personal opinions in such cases.

Sabharwal will be succeeded by Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, the 1st person
from Scheduled Caste to occupy the highest position in the judiciary.

(source: Sahara Samay ***********************

Personal opinion immaterial for death penalty: CJI


A day after confirming death penalty for Mohd Afzal, outgoing Chief
Justice Y K Sabharwal today said that personal opinion of judges against
capital punishment has no meaning and courts will have to give it as long
as it existed in the statute.

"The debate about death penalty is going on world over. In Europe, there
is no death penalty but it is there in America. The President (of India)
is against it. I am personally against it.

"In Government there are many who support it. There are 2 views. Opinion
is equally divided but death penalty will be given as long as it is there
in the laws. The personal opinion has no meaning for those (judges) who
decide cases within the framework of law," he said when asked about his
view on the existence of capital punishment in the statute.

(source: The Hindu)






GEORGIA:

Abkhazia Imposes Partial Moratorium on Death Penalty


The Parliament of breakaway Abkhazia approved a draft law imposing a
moratorium on death penalty, Apsnypress news agency reported on January
12.

According to the same report, the moratorium on death penalty has been
acting in Abkhazia since 1993, however this time it was legally
formalized.

According to article 1 of the draft law, the death penalty, until its
abolition, is imposed by the criminal legislation of the Republic of
Abkhazia as an exclusive sentence for especially grave offences,
encroaching on the life, on the principles of constitutional system, state
security, offences against military service.

Moratorium on execution of death penalty acts in a peace time, according
to the draft law.

(source: The Georgian Times)






PERU:

President's Bid Unlikely to Save Bill


In an attempt to overcome the congressional defeat suffered by his death
penalty bill, Peruvian President Alan Garca said he would seek a
referendum to allow citizens to vote on whether or not they want capital
punishment for terrorists.

Forty-nine members of Congress voted against Garca's bill late Wednesday
and decided that it should be shelved. The initiative only won the support
of 26 governing APRA party legislators and supporters of former president
Alberto Fujimori, grouped in the Alliance for the Future. The session was
attended by 75 of the 120 members of parliament.

In response, Garca said he respected the legislators' decision, but that
it was "out of sync with the public, 80 percent of whom (according to the
polls) are in favour of the death penalty for terrorists."

"When the political class fails to respond to what the people think, it
seems anti-democratic not to consult them (by means of a referendum)," the
president argued, after his 1st congressional defeat in his nearly 6
months in office.

But the president is unlikely to enjoy success in his bid to call a
referendum.

The chairman of the congressional constitution commission, APRA lawmaker
Aurelio Pastor, who had lobbied for approval of Garca's bill, told the
press that the constitution does not allow a referendum to be held on an
initiative that suppresses a fundamental right like the right to life.

One of the clauses of article 32 of the constitution states that the
suppression of fundamental rights cannot be submitted to referendum.

The leader of the APRA legislators, Javier Velsquez, also expressed his
doubts on the viability of Garca's proposal to hold a referendum.

"A constitutional reform would be necessary in order to submit the death
penalty for terrorists initiative to referendum," Velsquez told IPS. "The
APRA members of Congress have not met to analyse the president's new
proposal."

"After the vote to shelve the bill, I believe it is improbable that
Congress will approve a reform that would make it possible to call a
referendum on the death penalty. For now, it is a closed issue for us, and
we are working on other things."

A Constitutional Court magistrate who spoke to IPS on condition of
anonymity said it would not be appropriate to call a referendum for the
public to express its views on whether or not those found guilty of
terrorism charges should be executed.

And if Congress did eventually approve Garca's proposal, the
Constitutional Court would have the final say.

The "Democratic Constituent Congress" (Congreso Constituyente Democrtico,
CCD) created by former president Fujimori (1990-2000) after he dissolved
the legislature in his Apr. 5, 1992 "self-coup", adopted the death penalty
for terrorists.

At the time, the country was still in the grip of a civil war between
government forces and the Maoist Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso)
guerrillas and the smaller Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), when
insurgents and suspected collaborators were imprisoned on terrorism
charges.

However, Fujimori did not apply the death penalty, among other reasons
because the Inter-American Court of Human Rights reminded the government
that as a signatory to the American Convention on Human Rights, it could
not introduce the death penalty.

What Garca's bill would have done is to incorporate the death penalty in
the penal code, in order to make it effective. But the legislators of the
Nationalist Party, the Union for Peru and the National Unity coalition
voted it down.

The failure of Garca's bill in Congress was also a defeat for the
Fujimoristas who, in an undeclared parliamentary alliance with the APRA
lawmakers, backed the death penalty initiative.

Both Garca and Fujimori are facing cases in the Inter-American Court, for
human rights violations allegedly committed by their past administrations.

Garca was president of Peru from 1985 to 1990.

Fujimori fled to Japan in 2000 to avoid prosecution when his government
collapsed amidst a major corruption scandal. He is currently in Chile,
facing extradition to Peru on corruption and human rights charges.

Juvenal Ordez, spokesman for the Nationalist Party -- whose members voted
against the death penalty bill -- said that behind the initiative lurks a
desire to challenge the American Convention on Human Rights, with the
ultimate aim of refusing to comply with the imminent Inter-American Court
rulings, which are expected to find Garca and Fujimori responsible for
human rights abuses.

"We rejected Garca's bill because we discovered that it was concealing the
government's aim of denouncing the American Convention on Human Rights and
withdrawing from the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court. Why? To try
to save his ally Fujimori, and for Garca to save himself, because
sentences for human rights violations committed by their governments will
soon be handed down," Ordez told IPS.

Asked about Garca's proposal for a referendum, Ordez said "That shows that
the president has not read the constitution. A referendum is prohibited
when the right to life is involved."

Legislator Luisa Mara Cuculiza, a representative of the Fujimorista
lawmakers, confirmed that they would back Garca's proposal to call a
referendum.

"We agree, because the people will have the possibility to decide whether
or not they want the death penalty for terrorists. Consulting them is part
of democracy. Didn't they want democracy? Well, there they have it," she
told IPS.

Constitutionalist lawyer Anbal Quiroga Len told IPS that a referendum
"would violate the fundamental right to life," and that a referendum for
abolishing the death penalty would be more viable.

"Applying the death penalty would imply, in juridical terms, restricting a
fundamental right -- the right to life. It would be unconstitutional and
should not be proposed, and the election authorities should not accept the
request for a referendum. The government should consider the case closed,"
Quiroga told IPS.

Garca introduced the death penalty for terrorists bill to Congress in
November, but the APRA legislators held a surprise debate on it after the
Inter-American Court ruled that Fujimori and the Peruvian state were
responsible for the May 1992 massacre of 41 prisoners facing terrorism
charges in Canto Grande prison in Lima, a month after the former
president's self-coup.

The Inter-American Court ruled that the victims did not die as the result
of a shootout triggered by a riot mounted by prisoners belonging to
Sendero Luminoso, as was officially reported by the Fujimori
administration, but that they were singled out and killed by the security
forces. The victims included some of the main leaders of Sendero.

The Court ruling ordered the Peruvian state to pay reparations to the
families of the victims of the massacre and to pay public homage to the
victims.

The second part of the sentence drew a loud protest from President Garca,
who announced that he would consider whether or not to comply with the
ruling.

APRA leaders like Mauricio Mulder and Javier Velsquez even warned that
Peru might withdraw from the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court.

Velsquez said he and his fellow APRA lawmakers did not feel that they had
been defeated in Congress. "We proposed what people in the streets are
calling for: the death penalty for terrorists. If Congress decided not to
listen to the voice from the streets, then we had better take a look at
what is happening, why Congress is out of step."

Ordez, however, said the real defeat was for Garca himself.

"Of course this is a political defeat for President Garca, since he was
the driving force behind the introduction of the death penalty for
terrorists," said the National Party congressman. "Congress refused to
commit itself to a question that would force us to allow people to be
killed, in the name of the state and justice, which is something we do not
want to be involved in. We do not want dead people on our conscience."

The president of the non-governmental Human Rights Commission (COMISDEH),
Miguel Huerta, applauded the vote by Congress. "President Garca's proposal
implied a violation of the American Convention, because it was a clear
violation of the right to life," he told IPS.

"Approving it would have put us in a controversial position on the
international stage. And contrary to what APRA says, the vote against the
bill is not a step backwards in the fight against terrorism, because we
have very stiff laws. The Sendero leadership was recently sentenced to
life in prison," he added.

What most drew the attention of local human rights groups, said Huerta,
was that the arguments set forth by Garca and his party coincided with
those of the Fujimoristas. "And who would benefit the most? Fujimori," he
argued.

Garca had also presented another death penalty bill, one that would
provide for capital punishment for child rapists. Passage of that law,
however, would require a constitutional amendment.

Velsquez said that after this week's decision, approval of the child
rapist death penalty bill is unlikely. "I think that before submitting the
bill to debate, we should seek a consensus, otherwise we will lose again
when it goes to vote," he said.

(source: IPS)

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

Peru leader seeks referendum on death penalty


Peru's President Alan Garcia on Thursday proposed the country hold a
referendum on introducing the death penalty for terrorists after Congress
rejected his plan, although analysts said Congress was likely to block a
referendum as well.

In the first defeat for his 5-month-old government, legislators voted late
on Wednesday against Garcia's proposal to implement capital punishment for
terrorists by 49 votes to 26. The result surprised many Peruvians, who
broadly support the idea, and it prompted speculation about potential
damage to Garcia's popularity.

Painful memories of deadly bombings and raids by Maoist rebels during an
insurgence between 1980 and 1998 are still fresh in Peru. Garcia's popular
death penalty proposal was part of a platform that helped him win last
year's election.

After the setback in Congress, Garcia was unwilling to admit defeat and on
Thursday launched the referendum idea.

"I propose a referendum that will allow the people to decide ... because I
think the political system is completely separate from the Peruvian
people," he told reporters. "I believe that it is my duty to fulfill what
I have promised and mentioned in the campaign."

A Datum poll in November showed his popularity diving to 53 % from 64 % in
August with respondents citing "not fulfilling what he promised" as
Garcia's main weakness.

Congress still has to approve a referendum, and political analysts said
the legislature was unlikely to back it.

"It's more of a war of image; Garcia is defending himself," said Manuel
Torrado of the Datum International consultancy and polling firm.

"I see it as very difficult for Congress to give green light to the
referendum. This kind of thing cannot rely solely on popular opinion...."

EMOTIONAL ISSUE

He said more than 70 % of Peruvians favor capital punishment for
terrorists. Several thousand leftist rebels have been sentenced to long
jail terms for terrorism.

Ernesto Velit, a political scientist at the Ricardo Palma university, said
the capital punishment idea was "a populist gesture, which ultimately
debilitates the government and the state" by hurting Peru's international
image.

He said popular support for the death penalty is guided by emotion, while
the issue is too serious to rely on emotions.

"To have a referendum to get the people's opinion on the issue means
embarking on a very dangerous project because we won't be able to discern
the real vote of conscience," he said.

Capital punishment for terrorism is permitted under Peru's 1993
constitution, but it is not in the penal code. The proposal would have
added the death penalty for terrorists to the code, which does not now
allow it under any circumstance.

Congress deputies said doing so would have breached the American
Convention on Human Rights, which Peru has signed and which says the
signatories cannot restore the death penalty or apply it more widely.

Separately in another terrorism-related case, Prime Minister Jorge Del
Castillo said Peru would not withdraw from the Inter-American Court of
Human Rights which has ordered Peru's government to honor 41 leftist
rebels killed in a 1992 prison raid and pay compensation to their
families.

Some officials had suggested Peru would withdraw from the court after a
wave of indignation in the country, but Del Castillo said it would seek to
overturn the court's decision in the Organization of American States.

(source: Reuters, Jan. 11)