[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

May 15



NIGERIA:

Court Sentences Housewife to Death By Hanging


A Bauchi High Court yesterday sentenced a housewife to death by hanging
for killing her 2-year-old step son. The court found Hussaina Muhammad,
23, guilty of killing her step son, Tajuddeen Muhammad, in a 1-count
charge of culpable homicide.

In his judgment, Justice Musa Liman said the court was convinced by the
voluntary confessional statement made by the accused and the evidence of
the 5 prosecution witnesses.

He declared: "I am satisfied that the accused deliberately pushed the
child into a well which resulted to his death". Liman noted before
pronouncing the death sentence that there was no alternative punishment
for culpable homicide.

Muhammad, mother of 2 children, was arrested and charged to court by the
police in August 2003 for killing her step son in Azare town of Katagum
local government area.

The prosecutor, Mr Hamidu Kunaza, had told the court that Muhammad pushed
Tajuddeen into a well which led to his death.

He presented 5 witnesses, including the parents of the deceased and a
certified medical report from the Federal Medical Centre, Azare. In her
confession, the convict, had told the court that she and 2 others
conspired to kill Tajuddeen.

Muhammad, who had been in prison custody in the last four years, slumped
in the dock immediately the verdict was interpreted to her.

She was, however, granted 30 days grace within which to appeal against the
judgement.

(source: This Day)






CHINA:

Murder for free meal results in death, life sentences


A court in central China has sentenced a policeman to death and another to
life in prison for the contract killing of a laid-off worker in return for
a free meal, according to news reports on Tuesday.

A third defendant, Lu Liusheng, a court official in Henan province, was
given a death sentence suspended for 2 years for ordering the hit, the
online edition of Xinhua news agency said.

Lu had a personal feud with the victim, Li Shengli, and asked the
policemen to teach him a lesson after treating the officers to a meal.

Officer Li Litian was sentenced to death and his former boss, Leng Fei,
was sentenced to life in prison for detaining Li Shengli on a trumped-up
charge, beating him unconscious and then throwing him from the third floor
of a police station in September 2004.

The officers tried to pass off the murder as a suicide, the reports said.
It was unclear if the two Lis are related.

The court rejected compensation claims of 470,000 yuan ($60,000) by the
victim's family and awarded them 48,900 yuan.

'This is totally unfair,' the victim's sister was quoted as saying.

The city's prosecutors uncovered the murder after resisting pressure to
drop the case.

3 other officers have been charged in the same case.

(source: Reuters)






SAUDI ARABIA----executions

Saudi Arabia beheads Indian for drug smuggling


Saudi Arabia on Tuesday beheaded by the sword an Indian man convicted of
drug trafficking, almost doubling the number of executions carried out
last year in the kingdom, the interior ministry said.

The beheading brought to 73 the number announced by Saudi authorities so
far this year.

For the whole of 2006, at least 37 people were executed in the
conservative Gulf state, while 83 were put to death in 2005 and 35 the
year before, according to AFP tallies based on official statements.

In the latest execution, Abu Bakr Aburat was beheaded in Riyadh for
smuggling heroin into the kingdom, the ministry said in a statement
carried by the state news agency SPA.

Executions are usually carried out in public in Saudi Arabia, which
applies a strict form of sharia, or Islamic law. Rape, murder, apostasy,
armed robbery and drug trafficking can all carry the death penalty.

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

6 beheaded in Saudi Arabia


4 Saudis were beheaded by the sword on Monday after being convicted of
rape and murder, while an Iraqi and a Pakistani nationals were executed
for drug trafficking, the interior ministry said.

The 6 beheadings -- one of the highest numbers of executions in 1 day --
brought to 72 the number of executions announced by the Saudi authorities
this year, almost double the figure in 2006.

The 4 Saudis were among a group of 5 who lured youngster Fahdbin Mazyad
al-Harbi into an unfinished building where they sodomised him, the
ministry said in a statement carried by the SPA state news agency.

One attacker tightened a wire around the victims neck to force him to
submit, leading to his death, it said, adding that the culprits all fled,
leaving the body to rot.

The 5 were named as Dakheel bin Hussein al-Nakhli, Fahd bin Jamaan
al-Luhaibi, Mohammad bin Ibrahim al-Sahli, Raed bin Atallah al-Luhaibi and
Faisal bin Mutair al-Luhaibi.

4 were executed in the western city of Medina, while the 5th man remains
on trial, the statement said. Meanwhile, Iraqi national Hakem Rajouj
Mutair al-Ziyadi was beheaded after being caught red-handed attempting to
smuggle an undisclosed amount hashish into the ultra-conservative kingdom
using a motorbike, the ministry said.

Pakistani national Seraj Mohammad Abdul Mohammad was also beheaded after
being convicted of smuggling an undisclosed amount of heroin he had hidden
in his stomach.

At least 37 people were executed in 2006, while 83 were put to death in
2005 and 35 the year before, according to AFP tallies based on official
statements.

Executions are usually carried out in public in Saudi Arabia, which
applies a strict form of sharia, or Islamic law. Rape, murder, apostasy,
armed robbery and drug trafficking can all carry the death penalty.

(source for both: Agence France Presse)

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

Canadians face beheading in Saudi Arabia


For the past 4 months, home for Mohamed Kohail has been a filthy prison
cell in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he says he has been pushed, slapped
and abused, and forced into signing a confession for a murder he did not
commit.

In a country where capital punishment by beheading is still the law of the
land, the 22-year-old Canadian citizen says he fears the worst from the
Saudi judicial system, which has accused him of killing a Syrian youth in
a vicious schoolyard brawl. His 16-year-old brother also is being held in
relation to the death.

"It's going to be death for now, Mr. Kohail told The Globe and Mail Monday
in an extraordinary interview on a friend's cellphone from inside the
prison. That is what the investigators asked from the court."

"I'm afraid of everything," he continued in accented English, saying he
never wanted to return to Saudi Arabia after spending 5 years in Canada.
"I really want to go back to Canada now. I like everything in Canada."

Until last year, Mr. Kohail was pursuing English-language courses at
Montreal's Concordia University, living with his family in the West Island
suburb of Dollard-des-Ormeaux.

But his older sister became ill and the family decided to return to Saudi
Arabia, where they had all been born.

Because the Kohails are Palestinian, they never were given Saudi
citizenship and were legally stateless until they were granted Canadian
citizenship in 2005. Yet their Canadian status has not stopped Saudi
authorities from meting out their particular form of justice to the 2
brothers.

On their return to Jeddah last year, Sultan, who's 16, began studying at
Edugates International School, a school frequented by non-Saudi Arabs in a
posh suburb of Jeddah. It's there on Jan. 13 that both brothers ran into
trouble.

According to accounts from the family and others, Sultan was accused of
insulting a Syrian girl named Raneem. Sultan was told that friends and
relatives of the girl were coming to school to kidnap him and teach him a
lesson. So he called Mr. Kohail, who came to the school to defend his
little brother along with a friend.

There are differing versions of what happened next.

According to an account in the Arabic newspaper Okaz, a brawl ensued at
the school involving 14 young people, with Palestinians facing off against
Syrians. "As the physical attack intensified, one of the Palestinians
grabbed a Syrian boy named Monther, punched him violently and hit his head
against the school yard fence. Monther fell on the ground and died
instantly." The dead youth has since been identified as Munzer Haraki.

Mr. Kohail said, "I didn't touch anyone. There were 13 people who were
beating me up.  They used knives and sticks and bricks." He said he
suffered injuries to his shoulder, ribs and eyes, and broke his front
teeth.

Yet, as he was being treated at hospital, Mr. Kohail said, he was arrested
by police and transferred to Salamah police station.

He said the police slapped him, pushed him and spat on him until he agreed
to confess to punching the Syrian boy. "There was a policeman who told me,
you have to sign, because if you sign the papers, you will get out" of
prison.

Mr. Kohail said the policeman insisted that Mr. Kohail was risking very
little in admitting to punching the Syrian youth, because he was still
alive. But as soon as Mr. Kohail signed the confession, he was told that
the boy had died and he was going to be charged with murder.

Contacted in Saudi Arabia, the boys' father, Ali Kohail said Sultan had
also been coerced into confessing. "They were both forced to sign."

The father said that the health of both of his sons has deteriorated in
prison and that Sultan had suffered a broken leg when he was thrown down
some stairs by his interrogators.

He said he was convinced "100 %" that his sons had not killed anybody.

The Foreign Affairs Department in Ottawa has confirmed "the arrest of 2
Canadian citizens in Saudi Arabia" and said that consular officials are
following the case and have been granted "several consular visits" to the
brothers. A spokesman refused to comment further, citing privacy laws.

The case is the most sensitive to arise in Canada-Saudi relations since
the arrest in 2000 of William Sampson, a Canadian marketing consultant. He
said he was tortured repeatedly during the 2 years he spent in a Saudi
prison and forced to confess to a series of deadly car bombings that he
did not commit. Mr. Sampson was released in August of 2003, but his
incarceration and ill treatment created a chill in relations between the 2
countries.

In the current case, the brothers' Saudi lawyer insists that Mr. Kohail,
the older brother, has confessed to striking the blows that killed the
victim. But cellphone pictures of the brawl apparently show Mr. Kohail
being repeatedly struck on the head with a brick.

The death penalty is still practised in Saudi Arabia and there has been a
recent increase in beheadings, according to Christoph Wilcke, a researcher
with Human Rights Watch, who says that there have been at least 40
executions so far this year, compared with 35 in all of 2006.

Foreigners, particularly guest workers from Third World countries like
Nigeria and Sri Lanka, make up the majority of those executed, and experts
say it's rare for holders of Western passports to face execution.

"The death penalty is much more likely than an actual execution," said
Brian Evans, Saudi Arabia country specialist with Amnesty International in
Washington. "It's doubtful they would ever be executed.  I can't remember
the last time they executed a Westerner."

Yet, in the next breath, Mr. Evans said it would be wrong to presume that
the brothers are necessarily off the hook. "Just because they are Canadian
citizens, [it doesn't mean] they can't get executed. It's not out of the
realm of possibility."

And Mr. Evans thinks the fact that the brothers are of Palestinian origin
will still be held against them, despite their citizenship. "If they were
white Canadians, they'd be better off than being Arab Canadians," he said.

At Place-Cartier, an adult education centre in the Montreal suburb of
Beaconsfield where Mr. Kohail was a student before attending Concordia,
there was consternation yesterday that he was in trouble.

"He was an absolutely straight-on polite kind of guy," said guidance
counsellor Barry Gaiptman. "He was a very fine guy, very polite. He wasn't
the greatest student here, but he was always a nice guy."

Mr. Gaiptman recalled how Mr. Kohail would just wander into his office to
talk, sometimes about the Middle East. Mr. Gaiptman said the fact he was
Jewish never was a barrier to their relationship and Mr. Kohail once told
him that one of his best friends was an Israeli.

The brothers' lawyer, Saleh Bin Misfer Al-Ghamdi told The Globe and Mail
that he did not believe the brothers would face the death penalty because
the killing was unintentional. He said that Mr. Kohail was being held at
Briman prison in Jeddah, while Sultan is in a juvenile detention centre,
because he is under 18.

He said that he meets with the brothers regularly and is allowed to talk
to them by phone.

Mr. Sampson, contacted in Britain, said that from his experience having
Canadian consular visits is no protection against abuse and torture by
Saudi officials. "Consular access doesn't prevent anything." But he said
that what the Kohail brothers have in their favour is the fact that the
altercations appear to have no political overtones. In the end, the whole
issue may be settled by the payment of blood money to the victim's family,
he added.

As for Mr. Kohail himself, he dreams of moving back to his suburban home
in Canada. For the moment, he shares a cell that he estimates is 15 by 10
metres with 185 other prisoners in horrific conditions.

"There are 5 washrooms without doors and they are filthy," he said in the
interview. Meals consist of 5 kilos of rice delivered to the cell in a
large plastic garbage bag. "I don't eat any more, Mr. Kohail said.

(source: Globe & Mail)






EUROPEAN UNION

Italy, Germany back worldwide ban on death penalty


Italy and Germany are advancing a United Nations resolution, sponsored by
the 27-nation European Union, seeking an international ban on capital
punishment.

Representatives of Italy and Germany are currently looking to identify
potential co-sponsors for the UN measure. Italys foreign minister, Massimo
DAlema, has suggested that Brazil, South Africa, and New Zealand might be
appropriate co-sponsors.

In April, several Italian government ministers joined in a demonstration
against the death penalty, and Prime Minister Romano Prodi told
participants that he would champion a worldwide initiative at the UN.

There are currently 69 countries in the world that allow for capital
punishment, according to UN figures.

(source: CWNews)