[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

April 10



RUSSIA:

Beslan Massacre at the Core of Russian Debate


The only hostage-taker to survive the Beslan school tragedy has received
unlikely support in his bid to avoid the death penalty: a group of parents
whose children died in the September 2004 attack.

Shortly after public prosecutors requested the death penalty for Nurpashi
Kulayev, The Voice of Beslan organisation sharply objected. The parents'
group said Russia should keep in place a 10-year moratorium on capital
punishment made when the country joined the Council of Europe. A court
will decide Kulayev's sentence in July.

"We do not want to become barbarians in response to barbarity. We do not
support deputy prosecutor general Nikolai Shepel... in his call for... the
death penalty," says a statement signed by committee head Ella Kesayeva.

Kulayev was among the 30 kidnappers who seized the elementary school in
southern Russia at the start of its new academic year in 2004. More than
330 people, half of whom were children, died during the siege.

The attackers took the school to pressure authorities to withdraw federal
forces from the autonomous Chechnya republic. Students, teachers and
parents were held for 3 days without food or water. Many perished in an
explosion detonated by the rebels. Others died from gunfire between the
captors and Russian military when government special forces began rescue
operations.

Kulayev, a 25-year-old Chechen carpenter, proclaimed his innocence in his
final statement at his Feb.16 trial at the North Ossetian Supreme Court in
Vladikavkaz: "I would like to give my condolences to everyone who lost
their family members. I lost relatives myself for 8 years. But I am not
guilty."

While The Voice of Beslan made its plea for Kulayev, another parents'
group, Beslan Mothers Committee, said it would insist on death for the
militant and called for a national referendum to lift the death penalty
moratorium. Moreover, they want to reopen an investigation of the hostage
crisis and punish officials responsible for what they see as a bungled
hostage release operation.

Without a referendum however, the death penalty will not be easy to impose
on Kulayev, parliamentarians and human rights activists said. Russia
agreed to begin the process of prohibiting the death penalty when it
joined the Council of Europe a decade ago. Though it has not done so
completely, it has placed a moratorium on executions. It is the only
member of the Council of Europe that does not prohibit the death penalty.

A June 2005 report by the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly found
there had been "very little progress" on Russia's commitment to the formal
abolition of the death penalty.

Before joining this European body, there were 716 convicts on Russia's
death row. Russia halted executions, although courts continued to hand
down death sentences.

>From 1989 to 1991, 470 people were given death sentences and 228 were
executed. But between 1992 and 1995, the number of executions fell to 10
per year. This was possible, in part, because of legislative changes that
allowed death sentences to be commuted to life imprisonment. In 1995, when
the moratorium was put in place, the president pardoned only five of 91
death row inmates who petitioned for clemency.

Death penalty abolition advocates hope Russia's presidency of the Council
of Europe's committee of ministers this year will help persuade State Duma
legislators to abolish capital punishment completely.

"We have examined the case and acknowledged the fact that the militant
group's aim was to cause instability and social chaos in the region. But
under the present circumstances our membership in the Council of Europe
does not permit us to kill the remaining culprit. It's simply impossible
and impermissible because the parliament has adopted a bill that confirms
the abolition of death penalty," Duma legislative committee chairman Pavel
Krasheninikov told IPS.

"It was an emotional tragedy but we have to act within some framework of
the law in order to avoid being expelled from the Council of Europe," he
added.

The court is expected to issue its sentence in July. Prosecutors should
insist on life imprisonment for Kulayev, Krasheninikov said. Human rights
advocates agree.

"If one follows the mood and attitudes of the general public, which
readily endorsed the death penalty, Russia would have to lose its
membership of the Council of Europe," Alexander Petrov, deputy director of
Human Rights Watch in Russia, told IPS.

"Reintroduction of the death sentence as the severest form of punishment
in Russian society, even for most terrible criminals, would not conform to
modern democratic ideals," he added. "We believe instead that authorities
should take measures to provide adequate security and be able to prevent
terrorist attacks in the future."

The newly-created Public Chamber also expressed alarm over the public
prosecutor's call for the death penalty, saying that authorities would be
reversing to a primitive society by allowing the this maximum punishment.

It is important that the country's judicial institutions operate
independently without any influence from other branches of the state, says
Grigory Tomchin, an executive member of the Public Chamber and president
of the Foundation to Support Legislative Initiatives.

"Society gives everybody certain basic rights -- such as the right to life
-- and limitation should not be placed on people's rights. Taking away the
life of a person does not really constitute punishment for a crime,"
Tomchin told IPS. "It's a senseless form of action to be meted out for a
crime."

The sentiments expressed by the Beslan Mothers Committee could put on
pressure for harsh punishment decisions, but civilised society should
ignore their demands, he suggested. Instead, society should heed the call
of The Voice of Beslan and stop the barbarity.

(source: Inter Press Service)






IRAQ:

SADDAM'S CIRCUS SIDESHOW----Chaos Reigns in Iraqi Dictator's Trial


Saddam Hussein likes to dismiss the Iraqi Special Tribunal as a circus. A
new chief judge in the case is seeking to impose order in the court, but
will it be enough to provide the Iraqi dictator with a fair trial? Doubts
persist.

Saddam Hussein sits grimly in front of the barrier separating him from the
judges. He is hostility personified, his face appears as if it has beeen
chiselled in stone, his eyes are calculating, cold and always alert.
Unlike the other defendants, he always wears a suit or at least a jacket
so as not to be mistaken as a common man on trial. After all, Saddam still
thinks he is president and that his trial is some kind of circus sideshow.

Getty Images

Saddam Hussein: "I've been your president for more than 30 years!" When he
stands up, it's not out of respect for the judges, but to praise and stir
up "his" people and condemn the court -- in the name of God, whom he
invokes emphatically. The judge asks him to calm down. But that does
little to stop Saddam from his absurd tirades: "I've been your president
for more than 30 years! Who are you anyway? You're nothing. I've never
seen you before. I wouldn't recognize you on the street."

When the trial against former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein began in
Baghdad on November 19, the Kurd Rizgar Mohammed Amin was 1 of 5 presiding
judges -- the only one whose name was made public. Amin was a politically
independent, well-educated man who had always refused to become a member
of Saddam's Baath Party, a decision that long prevented him from judicial
office despite his excellent qualifications.

He tried to prove that, despite the odds, Iraq was finally on its way to
becoming a democratic state, a state fully in line with international
legal standards. He envisioned an independent judiciary, a democratic
division of powers, respect for human rights, equality before the law. But
within just 4 weeks, things had already started to go badly wrong. On the
7th day of the court proceedings, Saddam launched into one of his rants
against the US government. He interrupted the judge, complimented himself
on his own rule and bemoaned the occupation of Iraq. In other words, he
behaved just as men of his ilk tend to do in court -- whether it be former
Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic or Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan.
They all ignore the atrocities they stand accused of, they mock the
suffering of their victims, they openly display their contempt for the
court and engage in provocative political demagoguery. They either act as
if they were still in charge of the law or as if they are just as capable
of ignoring it as they used to be.

FORUM

Is Saddam Hussein getting a fair trial in Baghdad?

But Amin didn't shout Hussein down. He didn't ask him to be led out of the
court or unleash an avalanche of penalties. His reaction was measured and
sober -- after all, he didn't want to be accused of behaving unfairly
towards the defendant. Internationally, Amin's response was met with
approval. But Saddam's enemies accused Amin of being "too nice," and of
allowing the trial to be slowed down by endless rants. The Iraqi daily
Essabah El Djadid remarked cynically that the only one profiting from
Iraqi democracy so far was Saddam.

Pressure from the government and from part of the public increased with
every court session -- especially the outrage of those who had suffered
personally under Saddam's cruelty, who wanted revenge in the form of a
show trial against their former tormentor. Despite pleas from his fellow
judges to stick with the trial, Amin resigned in January. Too much had
already happened: two trial lawyers had been shot and assassination
attempts had been made on the chief judge and the investigative judge;
Sunni insurgents had also planned a rocket attack on the court complex
(Saddam is a Sunni). The situation got so bad that witnesses refused to
appear before the court or spoke only anonymously.

Can justice function under such conditions? After Amin left, Raouf Rashid
Abdel-Rahman became the new chief judge. He's a man who knows how to make
himself understood. At one point, the court turns into a scene of chaos.
Saddam's co-defendant and half-brother Barzan Ibrahim Hassan Al-Tikriti
shows up in his underwear and calls the Iraqi Special Tribunal the
"daughter of a whore." Saddam cries out: "Down with the traitors!"
Abdel-Rahman has Al-Tikriti led out of the courtroom along with his
lawyer, whereupon all remaining lawyers leave as well -- as does Saddam.
"You're welcome to leave!" the chief judge calls after him. "I was your
president for 35 years. I ruled you," Saddam snarls back contemptuously.

A trial without defendants?

What now? A trial without the defendants -- just like under Saddam? The
defense lawyers accuse Abdel-Rahman of being biased, pointing out that he
was tortured under Saddam as a politically active Kurd, and hence couldn't
possibly be impartial. Abdel-Rahman replies coolly that he is only
applying the laws Saddam has created. More ruckus and a small scuffle
ensues. So Abdel-Rahman has everyone thrown out who behaves
inappropriately. The disruptive lawyers are replaced by more docile ones.
Problem solved.

Statements are read by citizens whose fathers, mothers and even children
died in the brutal reprisals against Shiite Muslims after a 1982 attempt
on Saddam's life in the town of Dujail. They tell stories about execution
and the torture of innocents that chill the blood. And they tell stories
of the 148 Iraqis who perished during those reprisals.

The identity documents of slain children are presented to the court.
Saddam dismisses them bluntly: "Those are political matters. You can buy
those kinds of documents on any market square." Of course he signed
execution orders. An attempt had been made on the life of the president,
after all.

But there is one important difference between this trial and others. This
trial isn't based on a stable legal system, but on the ruins of a reign of
terror characterized by bombs, assassinations and fear. And despite
Abdel-Rahman's hardline approach, chaos rules inside and outside the
courtroom. So which law is valid -- yesterday's or tomorrow's?

The Iraqi Special Tribunal is nothing like the United Nations War Crimes
Tribunal in The Hague, where Milosevic had to answer for his crimes, and
nothing like the International Criminal Court. It's nothing like room 500
of the criminal court in Moabit, Berlin, where the trial of former East
German dictator Erich Honecker was held. And it has nothing to do with
Nuremberg in 1945 either. Judge Amin's goal is to prove to the Iraqi
people that the investigation of past crimes -- even those committed by a
former ruler -- is compatible with fairness towards the defendant. Amin is
still a long way from achieving his goal.

The next trial against Saddam and 6 co-defendants -- among them his cousin
Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as "Chemical Ali" -- may begin as early as
this month. The trial will be about the poison gas operation against Kurds
in northern Iraq that killed 5,000 people in the city of Halabja alone --
among them women and children -- on March 16, 1988. It would be a miracle
if one were to hear any kind of insight or regret from the defendants.

(source: Der Spiegel)