[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

April 30



AFGHANISTAN:

Death Row Numbers Raise Grave Doubts


By lifting the shroud of secrecy over the number of Afghans on death row
-- some 100 -- the government has ended up raising grave doubts about the
trial procedures that led to the extreme sentences.

On Apr.16, the Afghanistan Supreme Court announced it had confirmed death
penalties for about 100 convicted of such crimes as kidnapping,
hostage-taking, armed robbery, murder and rape. The surprise press
statement immediately revived memories of the mass execution by firing
squad of 15 inmates on one day last October -- without any prior warning
whatsoever.

"This is the estimated total number of all death row prisoners in
Afghanistan," Elaine Pearson of the international rights lobby Human
Rights Watch (HRW) told IPS. The Supreme Court had not issued the names
and locations where the death row inmates were held, she added.

The independent human rights commission of northern Afghanistan confirmed
that it had not been provided with additional details. "As soon as we get
the names we will disclose them to the media," Qazi Sayed Mohammed Sami
told IPS. He added that the cases would then be "assessed" to see whether
internationally-accepted trial standards had been observed.

But some independent legal experts immediately charged that the 100 had
not been given fair trials, suggesting that the Supreme Court should have
overturned the death sentences.

"All these cases were dealt with in closed trials without observers -- and
in most cases without legal representation," Prof. Wadi Safi, an expert on
international public law at Kabul University, told Human Rights Watch.

Safi added that it was common practice in regional courts for the accused
to be kept in the dark about the evidence against them.

The Washington-based HRW supported his charges. "There seems to be a lack
of due process -- not only in death penalty cases but also in a lot of
criminal cases," Pearson said.

But officials in the Supreme Court insisted that professional judges had
presided over the death penalty cases in "transparent" trials. Abdul
Rashid Rashed, a justice on the Supreme Court, rejected any criticism of
the Afghan courts review procedures.

"We have professional staff able to take firm and proper decisions," he
told IPS. All the sentences had passed in accordance with Islamic law.

The Afghan legal system was also recently criticised after the sentencing
to death of a young Afghan journalist, Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh, last
January. He was allegedly guilty of downloading from the Internet and
circulating an article critical of the Prophets teaching on the place of
women in society. The exact details of the case were never clear.

"Kambakhsh didnt have access to a lawyer. In this particular case, there
were concerns expressed by his family that he was threatened and
physically beaten while in custody," Pearson said.

Kambakhsh, originally sentenced to death by a court in the remote northern
province of Balkh, has now been transferred to Kabul, according to press
reports. Officials of the government of President Hamid Karzai have
promised that he will soon be set free.

The Kambakhsh case -- taken up by HRW and other western rights
organisations -- received worldwide publicity as an example of Afghan
regional judges ruling in accordance with their extreme,
ultra-conservative religious beliefs. In this case, the Internet became a
symbol of an alternative Western, secular society.

The unexpected announcement of confirmed Supreme Court death sentences is
once again putting the Afghan legal system in the international news.

In 2006, Karzai appointed several new, younger justices to the Supreme
Court. They apparently did not have links with the older conservative
Islamists. He also nominated Abdul Salam Azimi to the crucially important
post of Chief Justice, replacing the conservative Faisal Ahmad Shinwari.

The Supreme Court judges play an all-important role in selecting new
judges and issuing legal directives to the lower courts. Expectations were
clearly pinned on Azimi, partly educated in the U.S., to push through
changes without a wholesale purge of those in office since the overthrow
of the Taliban.

Huge amounts of money have been spent on bringing change to the judicial
system since U.S.-led and Afghan forces brought down the Taliban in 2001.
Afghanistan is now seeking an additional 360 million dollars for its
judiciary, Karzai told a USINFO reporter during a visit to Washington last
November.

The Supreme Court announcement of the 100 on death row has sparked off a
debate on the death penalty in Afghanistan.

Karzai joined this a day after the announcement when he told a press
conference in Kabul that he was against the death penalty. This explained
why his government was moving slowly on carrying out executions. According
to the constitution, a presidential signature is required to issue an
order to a firing squad.

"I am happy to hear the Taliban are opposing the executions," Karzai told
the press conference in Kabul on April 16. "I hope they also have mercy on
people."

Ironically, on Apr. 27 Karzai survived a Taliban assassination attempt
while attending a military parade in Kabul.

HRW has joined the death penalty debate by urging the President not to
sign any future execution orders.

"President Karzai should suspend the death penalty immediately," Pearson
said. "We would oppose the death penalty whether it was in Afghanistan,
the U.S. or any other country."

Pearson said she did not believe any executions were imminent.

"It could be a lengthy process," she said, adding that knowledgeable
experts in Kabul had informed HRW that 15 death row inmates could be
executed in 2008 if the president yielded to pressure "from certain
powerful individuals".

Following the Karzai press conference, IPS canvassed views on whether the
100 death row inmates should be granted a reprieve.

"Afghanistan is an independent country so there should be no interference
with what the courts have decided. The Afghan Supreme Court has taken
right decision in these cases," Mohammad Usman, a public prosecutor in the
city of Mazar-e Sharif, told IPS.

"I agree with these sentences. We have many other criminals in this
country who should also be punished in the same way, said Ustad Norollah,
a professor at the Balkh University.

A rare voice expressing an opposite view was Arzoo Geso, a student of
journalism.

"I am very much afraid of executions," she told IPS. "I once watched one
on TV and could not sleep for many days. I think life-imprisonment is a
better alternative to the death penalty."

(source: IPS News)






INDONESIA:

Jailhouse wedding for death row Bali bomber


1 of 3 Islamic militants on death row for the 2002 Bali bombings is taking
a 2nd wife at a ceremony in prison next month, his lawyer said on
Wednesday.

Amrozi, dubbed the "Smiling Bomber" for his constant grin during his
trial, is remarrying his former wife on May 12 in an island prison off the
coast of Central Java where the 3 militants are being held, lawyer Achmad
Michdan said.

The couple were divorced earlier.

"We will have a celebration," Michdan told reporters after visiting his
clients with their families, adding that fellow death row Bali bomber and
brother Mukhlas would give a sermon at the ceremony.

Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra face death by firing squad for their role
in the 2 nightclub bombings that killed 202 people, including foreign
tourists and Indonesians.

Amrozi has 3 children, 2 from his current wife and 1 from the woman he is
remarrying.

Indonesia's Supreme Court has rejected the convicts' final appeals but
they have said they will not seek presidential clemency, making it likely
the executions will now go ahead.

Indonesia does not normally announce dates for executions.

In a statement read out by their lawyers last year, the Bali bombers said
their blood would "become the light for the faithful ones and burning hell
fire for the infidels and hypocrites" if they were executed.

(source: Reuters)






CUBA:

Cuba commutes death penalty


Cuban President Ral Castro's announcement that virtually all death
sentences would be commuted to terms of 30 years to life was welcomed
Tuesday by social sectors calling for the abolition of capital punishment.

The Cuban government does not generally provide statistics on the prison
population or the number of people facing the death sentence. But Elizardo
Snchez, president of the dissident Cuban Commission for Human Rights and
National Reconciliation, said that according to his group's estimates,
around 30 people on death row will benefit from the decision.

"It is a gesture that merits our support and I am sure that as we move
towards a climate of mutual respect in international relations, capital
punishment will be completely eliminated," Reverend Ral Surez told IPS.

The Baptist preacher holds a seat in the Cuban parliament, where he has
publicly spoken out against the death penalty. "Neither in Cuba nor
anywhere else in the world does this punishment effectively fight crime,"
said Surez, who is the director of the ecumenical Martin Luther King Jr.
Memorial Centre (CMMLK).

In a speech published by the ruling Communist Party newspaper Granma
Tuesday, Castro announced that a group of prisoners facing the death
penalty, some of whom have been waiting for years for a pronouncement by
the Council of State, will now serve life sentences or 30-year terms
instead.

Life imprisonment will apply to those who committed their crimes after the
life sentence was adopted as an alternative to the death penalty in the
1999 modification of the penal code, while those who committed their
crimes prior to the reforms will have their sentences commuted to 30 years
in prison.

Orlando Mrquez, director of the magazine Palabra Nueva, put out by the
Roman Catholic archdiocese of Havana, said the announcement was "very good
news and a bold and mature step by the Cuban Council of State, taking into
account how deeply rooted support for this kind of punishment is among a
large part of Cuban society."

"Any gesture of clemency and respect for life, of which this is one
example, exalts, rather than weakens, the state that makes it," said
Mrquez.

In his view, Cuban society has other legal instruments that work just as
well in terms of protecting the country's citizens and guaranteeing public
order, without the need to punish people by putting them to death.

The decision reaffirms the de facto moratorium on the death penalty in
place since 2000, which was only interrupted in 2003 by the execution of
three men who hijacked a passenger ferry to attempt to sail to the United
States.

The executions drew cries of outrage from the international community as
well as criticism within Cuba.

"Many people disagreed because although what they (the hijackers) did was
bad, they didnt kill anyone," retired high school teacher Digna Martnez
told IPS. "I think they should have been kept in prison, like these
prisoners will be now, rather than shot by a firing squad."

Castro said the death penalty was handed down in the 2003 passenger ferry
case to cut short a wave of more than 30 attempted and planned hijackings
of boats and planes, "encouraged by U.S. policy."

The decades-old conflict with Washington was thus once again blamed for
the decision not to completely do away with capital punishment, with
Castro stating that under the present circumstances, "we cannot disarm
ourselves in the face of an empire that continues to harass and attack
us."

Castro said that "in all these years, there have been 713 acts of
terrorism against Cuba, 56 of which have occurred since 1990, organised
and financed from U.S. territory, leaving a total of 3,478 people dead and
2,099 injured and disabled."

He added that although the death penalty remains on the books, "Cuba
understands and respects the arguments of the international movement
advocating its elimination or a moratorium," and said that "for this
reason our country has not voted against such initiatives in the United
Nations."

"We have been forced to choose, in legitimate defence, the route of
establishing and enforcing severe laws against our enemies, but always
strictly within the framework of the law and with respect for legal
guarantees," Castro said Monday at the closing session of the sixth
plenary session of the Communist Party Central Committee.

Observers described as "highly significant" the choice of venue for making
the announcement.

"Socialism must be based on moral considerations, above all, and if we
examine things from another point of view, to some extent we are all
responsible for what other people do," said Raymundo Garca, the founder of
the Christian Centre for Reflection and Dialogue, a Cuban civil society
organisation in the city of Crdenas, 150 kilometres east of Havana.

"The death penalty is not a solution, but part of the problem," the
Baptist preacher told IPS.

With respect to the prisoners who will have their sentences commuted,
Snchez said that "some have been awaiting execution for more than 10
years.

Reacting with little enthusiasm to Castros announcement, the dissident
leader told IPS that "what would be truly meaningful would be the
immediate abolition of capital punishment, because otherwise the risk of
it being applied remains latent."

But other dissidents said that was unlikely to happen. "I would say this
is virtually a permanent de facto moratorium. I think it is improbable
that after making this public commitment, a sentence of this kind would be
carried out again," said Manuel Cuesta Mora, spokesman for the moderate
opposition coalition Arco Progresista.

Castro also mentioned the case of 3 men on death row whose appeals, he
said, would be reviewed soon by Cubas Supreme Court: Salvadoran nationals
Ral Ernesto Cruz and Otto Ren Rodrguez, who were sentenced to death in
1999, and Cuban citizen Humberto Eladio Real.

The 2 Salvadoran citizens were convicted of carrying out a string of
terrorist bombings in tourism establishments in Havana in the summer of
1997, one of which resulted in the death of an Italian businessman.

The Cuban citizen, Real, was arrested in 1994 after illegally landing in
Cuba and murdering a man in order to steal his car. He was sentenced for
crimes against the security of the state, homicide and the illegal use of
firearms.

Capital punishment is reserved in Cuba for the most serious cases of
homicide, rape, sexual abuse of minors involving violence, robbery
involving violence and intimidation, and crimes in which corruption serves
as an aggravating factor.

The penal code also establishes the death penalty for crimes against the
countrys external security, including acts aimed at undermining its
independence or territorial integrity, the promotion of armed actions
against Cuba, aiding the enemy, and espionage.

In addition, the penal code chapter that addresses crimes against the
countrys internal security stipulates the use of this punishment for
offences like rebellion, sedition, usurpation of political or military
leadership, sabotage and terrorism.

But the death penalty cannot be applied in the case of people under 20 or
women who were pregnant at the time the crime was committed or when the
sentence was handed down. In practice, no woman has been executed since
the 1959 revolution.

(source: Human Rights Tribune)