[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

April 23



TURKEY:

Questioning the death penalty


We should not wait for Turkey to lead us in understanding the diversity of
Islamic thought on different matters. It is essential for Muslims to be
aware of the many opinions that are out there and not assume that what
they have been told by imams, scholars or their elders is the only option.
Since there is no priesthood in Islam and no agency between the individual
and God, it is vital for every Muslim to educate themselves and make up
their own minds.

Take the death penalty, for instance, which is part of the legal code in
some Muslim countries. Given that in the Koran God equates the taking of
one innocent life with the killing all of humanity (Koran 5:32), it seems
quite irresponsible not to clarify any potentially grey areas when it
comes to taking someone's life.

The story of 23-year-old Pervez Kambaksh is a case in point. Kambaksh was
tried and convicted for blasphemy in Afghanistan for distributing
literature taken from the Web about women's rights. He will be executed if
his appeal is unsuccessful and the campaign to save him does not succeed.

Despite the view some people have of Islam as a strict and homogenous
ideology, crimes that are understood to be punishable by death vary
depending on who you speak to and where you are. Even the 4 main schools
of Islamic jurisprudence have different views on which crimes deserve the
death penalty. The differences come largely from the various
interpretations of the hadith, a collection of sayings and deeds
attributed to the Prophet Muhammad.

Some people may think that Turkey's plans to revise the existing body of
hadith  reinterpreting some while extracting those that are deemed
inauthentic for having suspect sources  and to re-examine Islamic law for
the modern age is an encouraging step. But can Turkey deliver an Islam
that has universal application? And can the various hadith ever really be
separated from the era and circumstances they were collected and written
in?

I recently talked to a conservative and prominent Wahhabi scholar, Sheik
Suhaib Hassan, about the crimes punishable by death. He is a board member
of the British Islamic Sharia Council and has been accused of having
extreme views; even he admits there is variation in opinion over which
crimes are deserving of the death penalty: "There is a great debate
amongst scholars about whether [for example] apostasy is punishable by
death. No one was killed for apostasy during the life of the Prophet."

Haroon Khan, co-founder of free-minds.org, a Web site which seeks to
promote the Koran as the only source of religious guidance for Muslims,
explains, "The Koran tells us that the only crimes punishable by death are
crimes against humanity. That is mainly for people like Slobodan
Milosevic. [Even] in individual cases of murder, the option of
compensation is given."

The verse from the Koran to which Haroon is referring states that the only
crimes punishable by death are "murder or spreading mischief in the land"
(Koran 5:32). The problem is how people choose to interpret these terms.
Some consider "mischief" as large-scale corruption or sedition, while
others, as in the case of Kambaksh, see it as handing out flyers from the
Internet.

In the case of Kambaksh, who has not chosen to leave Islam but only to
distribute information, talking about whether or not he is guilty seems
almost like a diversionary tactic. Muslims must first try to raise
awareness of matters of religious freedom within Islam and debate whether
current interpretations which advocate the death penalty for those who
challenge the authority of the state are valid.

(source: Ayesha Khan is a documentary filmmaker based in London. This
article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews)----MIddle
East Times)






PAKISTAN:

6 awarded death sentence by Helmand court


High court in southern province of Helmand, a one time Taliban bastion, on
sentenced to death 6 people charged with abduction cases. The 6
kidnappers, according to Maulvi Abdul Wahid Afghani, who publicly declared
the verdict, were arrested from Nawa district of the province last year.

Suspected abductors had kidnapped Nazar Muhammad and had demanded from his
family 3 million rupees ransom, he added. But later Nazar Muhammad was
recovered as a result of police raid, police also arrested the captors,
Afghani said, the arrested had hand in other abduction cases in the
province.

Shah Sanam Sham an attorney in the province said the arrested had admitted
they committed abduction for many and were killing them if they failed to
provide ransom. One of the outlaws was from eastern Laghman province while
the rest five were from Helmand, he added.

They could turn to Supreme Court if they were not content with the
decision of the court here, he informed. Suspected outlaws however denied
having confessed any crime. Residents in the southern Helmand province
expressed happiness over the death sentence to the abductors.

Muhammad Akram a businessman in Lashkargah city urged the authorities to
enforce the court decision on the kidnappers before long, he said:" death
sentence could be a good example to others." "My children dont dare to get
out fearing abduction." He added. Top Court officials had declared they
would soon sentence around 100 outlaws to death, however armed Taliban and
the right activists have seriously opposed the decision.

(source: Online International News Network)






FRANCE:

France Will Not Extradite If Death Penalty Is Possible


Officials in the United States face a significant legal snag before they
can bring to trial a man accused of killing a Buffalo doctor who provided
abortions.

The suspect, James C. Kopp, was arrested Thursday after a
two-and-a-half-year search tracked him to a French seaside village. But
French law forbids the extradition of anyone who could face the death
penalty, and French officials said yesterday that Mr. Kopp, an
anti-abortion activist, would not be turned over to the United States
unless they were given guarantees that he would not be executed.

''They will refuse to extradite him,'' the local prosecutor, Christian
Lecrom, said in a news conference yesterday in Dinan, a small pleasure
port in Brittany, in the northwestern part of the country, where Mr. Kopp
was arrested by French police on Thursday.

In Paris, a representative for the Ministry of Justice, Frdrique Wagon,
said that no exceptions had been made to the French law against granting
extradition in potential capital punishment cases. France abolished its
death penalty in 1981. Several other countries, including Canada, also
refuse to turn over defendants who might face execution.

Mr. Kopp, a longtime anti-abortion protester known among his colleagues as
Atomic Dog, is charged with the October 1998 killing of Dr. Barnett A.
Slepian. Dr. Slepian was fatally shot in the kitchen of his Amherst, N.Y.,
home as he warmed soup in front of his wife and son.

A federal indictment charges Mr. Kopp with violating a 1993 law protecting
access to abortion clinics and with using a weapon in a violent crime that
resulted in death -- the potential death penalty provision. A separate
Erie County indictment charges him with 2nd-degree murder, which is not a
capital crime in New York.

An official with the Justice Department said efforts had begun to return
Mr. Kopp to the United States under a treaty arrangement in which federal
prosecutors have 40 days to submit information to persuade French
authorities to extradite Mr. Kopp.

Louis J. Freeh, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said
on Thursday that ''we expect he will be extradited.'' But, Mr. Freeh
noted, ''There's a lot of restrictions in the treaty with respect to the
penalty. These are diplomatic issues that have to be determined.''

George P. Fletcher, the Cardozo Professor of Jurisprudence at the Columbia
Law School and a former prosecutor, suggested that American officials
might give assurances to the French that the death penalty would not be
invoked. He said such agreements had been made in cases involving
extradition from Canada and Mexico. ''They don't like it to be known,'' he
said, ''but prosecutors agree in advance not to impose the death
penalty.''

Justice Department officials said that there had been no decision on
whether to seek the death penalty.

A Justice Department official said determining whether to seek the death
penalty begins with a recommendation by the local United States attorney.
It is followed by a review by a capital punishment committee in the
Justice Department and a final decision by the attorney general. This
procedure cannot begin, the official added, until the defendant is
represented by a lawyer.

Officials said the Justice Department's Office of International Affairs
would be handling discussions with the French.

Discussions are also under way in Buffalo between the United States
attorney for the Western District of New York, Denise E. O'Donnell, and
the Erie County prosecutor, Frank J. Clark, over jurisdiction in the case.
In the Oklahoma City bombing, for example, the federal prosecution went
first. But New York's double jeopardy laws mean that an initial federal
case would preclude a state trial, a law enforcement official said.

A Canadian arrest warrant was issued for Mr. Kopp last year, charging him
with the 1995 sniper shooting of an abortion provider in his home in
Ancaster, Ontario, wounding him in the elbow. Mr. Kopp is also a suspect
in three similar shootings.

Kathleen Mehltretter, the first assistant United States attorney in
Buffalo who has been supervising the investigation since the shooting of
Dr. Slepian, said that ''our investigation is definitely continuing to
determine whether or not other people assisted him.''

On Thursday, F.B.I. agents arrested two other anti-abortion activists,
Dennis J. Malvasi and Loretta C. Marra, at what prosecutors called a
''safe house'' in East New York, Brooklyn, for aiding Mr. Kopp in his
flight. Mr. Kopp was seized by French police as he waited in the Dinan
post office, officials said, for a money order from the couple to pay for
his return to America.

Law enforcement officials became interested in Ms. Marra as they checked
the records of Mr. Kopp's many arrests in anti-abortion protests and
identified those who had been arrested with him. Ms. Marra was jailed with
Mr. Kopp after protests against Planned Parenthood in Burlington, Vt., in
1990, and they shackled themselves together during a Long Island protest
in 1991.

(source: New York Times, March 31)






SOMALIA:

Somali Pirates Facing Death Penalty


A pirate was taken into custody on Tuesday in the Somali port town of
Bosasso. (Photo: Abdiqani Hassan/Reuters)What happens to pirates after
they are arrested? In Somalia, seven of them face the death penalty,
though the punishment would be a first in the region in which they are
held, Puntland, according to one report flagged by EagleSpeak.

In France, where 6 others are held, a lighter sentence can be expected.
Capital punishment was abolished there in 1981, and authorities have
refused to turn over suspects without guarantees that they would not be
executed.

No one was killed in either attack, but a Somali official said that the 7
pirates in custody "crossed the line" by attacking a ship so close to a
key port.

One of the 16 members of the Pakistani crew on that ship gave a first hand
account of the hijacking and rescue in an interview today with Reuters. It
all started when they let three fisherman begging for water on board, Alia
Akbar said:

"We let in 3 of them. Suddenly 4 others, who were armed, boarded the ship.
They then ordered the captain to change course and took us between Mukalah
(in Yemen) and Dubai. They held us there at sea all night," he said in
Urdu.

[]When the pirates came on board, the Pakistani crew scattered and tried
to hide in different parts of the cargo ship that had been en route from
Dubai to Puntland. They were all found by the pirates, who promised not to
hurt them.

"In the morning many troops on 2 speedboats surrounded our ship. Then the
shootout started. It was really frightening.

"The pirates surrendered after 3 of them were wounded. I cant believe we
are free. It was a nightmare," he said, smiling.

(source: New York Times)