[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

April 2



YEMEN:

Yemeni who fled death sentence surrenders to authorities


A Yemeni who fled a death sentence for membership in the al-Qaeda
terrorist network including involvement in the attack on a French oil
tanker in 2002, surrendered himself to Yemeni authorities, a security
source said Sunday.

The Yemeni News Agency Saba quoted the source as saying Hizam Saleh Mjalli
gave himself up to security authorities within the last 2 days.

The escaped prisoner was sentenced to death by the country's Appeals Court
after being accused of taking part in the attack on the French tanker
Limburg off the Mukalla coast in October 2002.

Mjalli's surrender raises the number of prisoners to surrender to security
authorities to 6 out of the 23 who escaped at the beginning of February
this year.

(source: Deutsche Presse-Agentur)






JAPAN:

Cult Leader Should Not Be Executed, Daughters Say----They say their
father, who ordered a gas attack in a subway, is mentally ill. Shunned by
Japanese society, the sisters say no one believes them.


Like good daughters anywhere, Mayumi and Kaori Asahara worry about their
father's declining health. They are alarmed that he looks so thin and
won't see a doctor. They fret that he refuses to wear the new clothes they
gave him to replace his fraying old ones.

But they desperately need something back from their father too. They are
seeking an explanation of why the man who taught them to cherish life,
even that of an ant, could be a cult leader responsible for Japan's worst
terrorist attack.

"I need to ask my father directly what happened," said Kaori Asahara, who
was 12 in 1995 when her father ordered the Aum Supreme Truth cult's sarin
gas attack on the Tokyo subway that killed 12 people and made thousands
ill.

On death row, Shoko Asahara isn't talking to anyone. Not to the 2
daughters who visit him regularly, not to his own lawyers who have tried
in more than 140 meetings to get him to help formulate a defense that
might save his life.

Asahara, 50, has been sentenced to death, and his time for final appeals
has run out. In Japan's secretive penal system, he could be sent to the
gallows at any time. But the prospect that he will provide any insight
into his motives is becoming slimmer and slimmer.

Still, Kaori and Mayumi say he should not be executed. They say that their
father is mentally ill and incapable of understanding what is happening to
him, that he is a helpless cripple who must wear diapers to keep from
soiling his clothes. He sits in a wheelchair, head lolling to one side.
His left hand scratches idly at a leg or his chest.

He does not speak. He only mumbles, making no requests and seeking no
last-minute mercy.

Mayumi Asahara, who has visited her father 28 times over the last 19
months, said he was "like a doll."

That is not the image the rest of Japan holds of Asahara. Prosecutors and
prison officials contend the cult leader is feigning mental illness in an
attempt to escape justice.

And when Japanese close their eyes they still see Asahara as he was when
he was orchestrating mayhem: A white-robed guru with a flowing black beard
and glass eye, a man who twisted the minds of well-educated men and women
who seemed indistinguishable from everyone's else's sons and daughters.
The image has become the icon of evil in modern Japan.

But the man in the picture is also a flesh-and-blood father whose children
are paying heavily for his sins.

They have been bullied and banned from schools and fired from numerous
jobs. They say they still are trailed by police and chased by media that
manage to find them every time they move.

Now in their 20s, Kaori and Mayumi grew up in the Aum cult and recalled a
very happy childhood.

"We were told: Do not kill and be kind to other people," Kaori said in an
interview with three foreign journalists at the offices of her father's
defense team. "Now we are told my father directed others to kill people,
so there is a very big gap.

"I think the image of the last 11 years is more famous now," she said,
tears welling in her eyes.

It was the only time during the interview that either daughter, dressed in
sober business suits, cried. Both acknowledged it was "a fact" that the
gas attack victims suffered, but said they did not have words to express
their feelings about what happened.

Their father's lawyer said they agreed to talk with foreign media because
they saw it as their last chance to pressure authorities to provide
psychiatric help to Asahara instead of executing him.

The sisters say there is no point talking to Japanese media, which they
say are more interested in reporting salacious details about Asahara's
prison life.

"Some Japanese media say you are the children of devils so you don't have
any rights," Kaori said.

"Whatever I do is all broadcast and most of it isn't true.. Rather than
try to change our image, we just want them to forget about us."

But the family has not been able to drop below the radar.

Their mother was found guilty in 1999 of conspiring with her husband to
kill another cult member. She was released from jail in 2002.

The Aum cult was declared illegal in the wake of the gas attack, but has
been reconstituted as a legal group called Aleph. The sisters denied they
were members of Aleph or any organized religion, and said they received no
money from it.

"When the name was changed to Aleph, they sent us a form and asked if we
would like to submit a subscription," Kaori said. "We did not."

The family name has cost Kaori part-time jobs as a golf caddy, convenience
store clerk, waitress and grocery deliverer. She said she was fired from
all of them when her identity was exposed.

"The managers would say, 'I'm sorry, but . ,' " Kaori said. Her close
friends know who she is, and some have been harassed by reporters seeking
gossip.

2 years ago, Kaori went to court when three Japanese universities refused
to honor acceptance offers after finding out who her father was.

The courts overturned the ban and Kaori is attending one of the schools,
which she declined to name.

"I am studying psychiatry so I can understand about my internal condition
and understand other people from a scientific point of view," she said.

She already has had rare insight into human behavior.

Years ago, when bullying at elementary school drove their elder sister to
cut her wrists and they feared she would kill herself, the family sought a
meeting with the school principal to ask him to intervene.

They received no sympathy.

"The headmaster said: 'Your sister's life is only one. But many people
lost their lives in the sarin attacks,'" Mayumi said.

In February, a junior high school refused to admit Asahara's youngest son.
The principal said he could not guarantee the safety of other students
since the 11-year-old, who was a newborn when his father was arrested,
could conceivably be under the influence of the cult.

"The school never even interviewed the son; they just acted on the basis
of the Asahara image," said Takashi Matsui, one of Asahara's defense
lawyers. He said the boy and Asahara's other son had been prevented from
attending elementary school.

Mayumi, 25, says she has no friends and doesn't go out much because she
fears being followed. Instead, she studies law by correspondence.

In visits since August 2004, she has recorded her father's condition in
notebooks, page after page of his mumbles and her impressions. And she
looks for signs that prison officials are lying about his condition.

Prosecutors and prison officials say he acknowledges questions with a
mumbled Japanese phrase that means "I understand."

"But he says the phrase even when he's alone," Mayumi said.

The sisters would like to move on with their lives, but won't as long as
their father is alive.

Kaori visited Toronto last year and reveled in the freedom of being
someplace where no one knew her.

"It was only there that I finally understood about the heavy pressure I'm
under in Japan," she said. She would like to leave permanently, but for
the time being that is not an option.

"Of course many things are bitter," she says. "But I think I would regret
it if I didn't do everything for my father's case."

(source: Los Angeles Times)






SOUTH KOREA:

Hearing on death penalty


Religious and human rights organizations in the nation have long
championed the abolition of capital punishment. But it is only a recent
development that debate on the issue is quickly moving into the public
domain. This change, though belated, should be welcome.

In late 2004, as many as 175 lawmakers endorsed a bill on abolishing
capital punishment in favor of life imprisonment without parole. The
National Human Rights Commission also recommended its abolition last year.
But few follow-up measures were taken.

But a tectonic change came last month when the Ministry of Justice,
hitherto one of the staunchest defenders of capital punishment, said it
would seriously consider writing its own bill in favor of life
imprisonment without parole or commutation. Now a National Assembly
committee is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the issue tomorrow.

But pushing for legislation is much easier said than done, given
substantial public opposition to the proposal to substitute life
imprisonment without parole for capital punishment. According to a
nationwide poll conducted on commission by a broadcasting company last
month, 46.1 % of the 625 respondents supported capital punishment, while
37.9 % opposed it.

The public hearing to be held by the Legislation and Judiciary Committee
should be part of a long and arduous process of building public consensus
on the issue of abolishing capital punishment. The general public as well
as activist groups should be encouraged to engage in lively discussions.

Advocates for capital punishment claim that potential criminals will be
deterred from committing heinous crimes for fear of being executed. But
their adversaries often cite such studies as one conducted for the United
Nations, which concludes that "it is not prudent to accept the hypothesis
that capital punishment deters murder to a marginally greater extent than
does the threat and application of supposedly lesser punishment of life
imprisonment."

Restitution is another justification presented by those who insist on
retaining capital punishment. In attacking this argument, their opponents
make a moral or religious case that no one, be it an individual or a
state, has the right to kill a person under any circumstances.

But one of the most serious problems with capital punishment is the
possibility, no matter how remote, that a person may be executed for a
crime he or she did not commit. One such case is the 1975 execution of
eight dissidents, against whom the KCIA fabricated the charges of
attempting to overthrow the government of South Korea on the orders of
North Korea. It is awaiting retrial now. To overturn the case, however,
will not completely undo the wrong already done.

This and other similar cases should do abolitionists much service when
they try to make a convincing case against capital punishment. Another
merit for them is that none of those condemned to capital punishment has
been executed since December 1997. This fact will certainly help make it
easier for Korea to renounce the death penalty in law as well as in
practice.

Barring the unexpected, Korea will soon join the group of countries that
are classified by Amnesty International as "abolitionist in practice."

They are the countries that "retain the death penalty in law but have not
carried out any executions for the past 10 years or more."

It should not be too late if Korea should become abolitionist in law as
well during the next couple of years. According to a recently updated
report from Amnesty International, 86 countries and territories have
abolished the death penalty, and another 11 countries have retained it
only for exceptional crimes such as those committed in wartime.

(source: Editorial, The Korea Herald)