[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

April 25



IRAN/SWEDEN:

Swedes Face Death Sentences in Iran----2 Swedes have been tried in Iran
for photographing military installations.


The Iranian news agency ISNA says a verdict is expected in due course. If
convicted of espionage, they could face the death penalty.

The two men are construction workers from western Sweden. Their trial was
reportedly held Saturday in a Revolutionary Court.

ISNA says they have confessed to taking pictures in a forbidden area. The
Swedish charges daffaires in Tehran, who has spoken to the 2, says they
didnt realize the severity of the photo ban.

(source: Sveriges Radio International)






IRAQ:

Hussein Prosecutors Wrap Up Their Case----First phase ends in the trial,
which has become a political canvas viewed differently by each of Iraq's 3
main ethnic and religious groups.


The Iraqi court trying Saddam Hussein and seven co-defendants on Monday
heard the last prosecution evidence of alleged crimes against humanity,
closing the first phase of a trial that some Iraqis see as a quest for
justice and others as a further example of their nation's growing
sectarian conflict.

The charges stem from the execution of 148 Iraqis in retribution for a
1982 assassination attempt against Hussein as his presidential motorcade
drove through the largely Shiite town of Dujayl, 40 miles north of
Baghdad. The defendants also are accused of wrongfully imprisoning
hundreds of Iraqis, expelling Shiite Muslim families from their homes and
destroying their orchards.

On Monday, the court heard an audiotape in which a voice purported to be
Hussein's received word that expropriations were being carried out. The
former dictator remained impassive throughout the last day of evidence
against him, blinking rapidly but saying nothing.

His lawyers said they would call more than 60 defense witnesses when the
trial resumes May 15. Observers expect the defense to be completed and the
special court's 5 judges to begin deliberations by the end of June, with a
verdict expected roughly a month after that.

All the accused face the death penalty if convicted.

6 months into the first of what is expected to be several trials covering
Hussein's alleged crimes, including one for an alleged campaign of
genocide against Iraq's Kurds by Hussein's secular Sunni Arab regime, the
court has become a political canvas onto which many Iraqis project their
worst sectarian biases and fears.

To Shiites, the nationally televised spectacle offers the pleasure of
seeing their onetime tormentor in the dock, charged in one of the
smaller-scale massacres recorded during his rule. But Kurds are frustrated
by the court's decision to start its multiple proceedings against Hussein
with the Dujayl case.

The Kurds are anxious to get Hussein into the dock for larger-scale
massacres against them, notably his 1988 Anfal campaign against the
Kurdish insurgency that included chemical attacks on civilians. About
2,000 villages were uprooted and 50,000 to 100,000 people were killed
during the campaign, according to international estimates. Anfal was a far
better known and better documented event than the crackdown on Shiites in
Dujayl.

Some Kurds even worry that Hussein will escape justice for Anfal if he is
convicted and executed over the first charges. Court observers say such a
scenario is unlikely, although the sequence of trials and sentencing is
unclear.

Meanwhile, some Shiites complain that the defendants have turned the trial
into a political soapbox that panders to the Sunni minority's frustration
at its loss of influence.

"The defense has presented nothing but the political side, pushing the
court into politics instead of sticking to the criminal facts," said Tariq
Harb, a prominent secular Shiite lawyer.

Evidence of that was on display Monday, as some of the defendants stood to
mock a report by handwriting experts that said their signatures appeared
on death warrants for the 148 executed prisoners. Defendant Barzan Ibrahim
Hasan suggested the documents were forged, saying technological advances
make fraud easy.

"The media say we have killed 148 people, but there is a difference
between killing people and sending them to courts and the courts decide
they should be executed," said Barzan, Hussein's half brother who headed
the regime's security services at the time. "We are not murderers. We are
Iraqi patriots. The people you talk about tried to kill the president."

That argument appeals to many Sunnis, including those who are not
necessarily Hussein supporters but fear what they contend are roaming
Shiite death squads. They long for the protection that Hussein's police
state used to offer them.

"This is a political trial to please the parties who came to power after
the fall of the regime, those who hated and had grudges against Saddam,"
said Hikmat Zubaidi, 59, a Sunni lawyer from the city of Baqubah. "The
court that tries Saddam has a Kurdish judge. The prosecutor is a hard-core
Shiite.

"We feel that this is a trial of all Sunnis, not Saddam."

And Zubaidi has no doubt about the verdict: "The result of the trial will
be the result the Americans want," he said.

(source: Los Angeles Times)