[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

April 24




INDIA:

Amnesty to release India-specific death penalty report on May 2


Human rights watchdog Amnesty International India and the People's Union
for Civil Liberties, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, will release a Report on
Death Penalty on May 2.

This will be the 1st report dealing with the status of death penalty in
India since independence. According to Amnesty, recently in November 2007,
the Indian Government had failed to affirm a resolution at the 62nd
Session of the United Nations General Assembly for a Global Moratorium on
Executions though 104 countries supported it.

Furthermore, the lack of a strong campaign by civil society organisations
in India for the abolition of death penalty in India and the consistent
push by certain political forces to mandate and preserve death sentence
jeopardize the enjoyment of the right to life, and therefore, right to a
life with dignity. The death penalty remains an issue of concern in the
movement to protect the right to life, primarily due to the following
reasons:

-Secrecy and cruelty towards people on death row, judicial subjectivity
and errors in criminal judicial system and political opportunism

- Forms of torture that precede the taking away of life

- Failure of death penalty as effective deterrence to crimes like rape and
murder, political violence, terrorism, suicide bombing, and

- As an ineffective tool in booking perpetrators of genocide or caste
atrocities.

The report will be released at 12:00 noon at the Press Club of India.

Capital punishment is legal in India although rarely used. Between 1975
and 1991, about 40 people were executed, though there was a period between
1995 and 2004 when there were no executions. Therefore India has the
lowest execution rate amongst retentionist countries.

In August 2004, a 41-year-old former security man, Dhananjoy Chatterjee,
was executed for raping and killing a 14-year-old schoolgirl in Calcutta.
This was the countrys first execution since 1995 and the 1st execution in
West Bengal since 1993 when Kartik Sil and Sukumar Burman were hanged.

The death penalty is to be used in the rarest of rare cases according to a
finding of the Supreme Court of India, although the meaning of this phrase
is not clearly defined. Capital punishment can be imposed for murder,
instigating a childs suicide, treason, acts of terrorism, or a second
conviction for drug trafficking. A judge can refuse to award the death
sentence even in "rarest of the rare" cases by providing reasons for doing
so.

About 40 mercy petitions are pending before the president, some of them
from 1992. At least 3 are women. Many more are on death row after having
been sentenced to die by lower courts, but on appeal most of them are
likely to be commuted to life imprisonment by the State High Courts or the
Supreme Court of India.

(source: ANI)






IRAQ:

Iraq's Aziz faces trial over execution of merchants: lawyer


Former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz will go on trial next week
over his alleged role in the execution of 42 Iraqi merchants in 1992, his
lawyer said.

"Aziz will face trial in the Iraqi High Tribunal on April 29, along with
eight former officials, including Ali Hassan al-Majid (Chemical Ali) and
then interior minister Watban al-Hassan," Badie Aref told AFP on
Wednesday.

"Their lawyers will decide to attend the trial if the security situation
is suitable."

The case relates to the execution of merchants accused by the president
Saddam Hussein's government of raising food prices at a time when the
country was under UN sanctions.

These merchants were arrested in Baghdad's wholesale markets and executed
after a quick trial in 1992.

The former regime also seized their money and properties.

Aziz, who turned himself in to US forces in April 2003, one month after
they overthrew Saddam, could also face charges of mass murder, allegedly
committed in 1979 and 1991, and could be executed if convicted.

And Chemical Ali is already on death row for overseeing a brutal military
campaign against Kurdish civilians in 1988 known as Anfal, or Spoils, that
left 180,000 people dead.

It will be the 4th trial of former regime officials to be conducted by the
tribunal.

The trial will be presided by Kurdish judge Rauf Rasheed Abdel Rahman, who
sentenced Saddam to death in 2006 for his role in the killing of 148
Shiites in the town of Dujail after an assassination attempt on him in
1982.

Saddam was hanged on December 30, 2006.

(source: Agence France-Presse)