[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

July 6


SOMALIA:

GLOBAL JIHAD----Death sentence for not praying Islamic regime spells out
law for Muslims in Somali capital; Somali Muslims protest U.S.


Muslims who fail to pray 5 times daily will be sentenced to death under
the rule of Islamic clerics who have taken over the Somali capital
Mogadishu.

"He who does not perform prayers will be considered as infidel, and Sharia
law orders that that person be killed," said Sheikh Abdalla Ali, a founder
and high-ranking official in the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia,
reported Agence France-Presse.

The edict was issued by a leading cleric speaking at the opening of an
Islamic court in the capital last night, who added it was the duty of
every Somali to implement the provisions of Sharia, or Islamic law.

The Quran requires Muslims to pray 5 times daily.

Mogadishu was taken over in June by militia  now called the Conservative
Council of Islamic Courts  that routed a U.S.-backed alliance of warlords
after 4 months of fighting. The U.S. wanted to stem what officials call
"creeping Talibanization" of Somalia by the courts and harboring of
terrorists, including al-Qaida members.

Late Tuesday, militia members broke up a protest against a ban on watching
television, shooting dead 2 people among a crowd viewing a World Cup game
at a local cinema.

The accused killers, however, face prosecution under Sharia law for
shooting unarmed civilians and could be sentenced to death.

In recent months, according to AFP, Muslim militiamen have presided over
several public executions ordered by Islamic courts.

Somalia is regarded as a predominantly moderate Muslim country, but the
Islamists have vowed to impose Sharia law nationwide, challenging a mostly
powerless transitional government.

Last month, the Islamic courts signed a mutual recognition pact with the
government, but are at odds with the regime over a number of issues. The
Islamists oppose a proposal to deploy foreign peacekeepers to help
establish central authority.

The African nation has been in turmoil, with no effective government, for
the past 16 years.

The leader of the Islamic militia, Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, is listed by
the U.S. State Department as a suspected al-Qaida collaborator. Bush
administration officials say Aweys was an associate of Osama bin Laden in
the early 1990s.

(source: World Net Daily)






INDIA:

4-yr-olds murder: Residents demand death sentence for accused


HUNDREDS of Ropar residents today took out a march and demanded death
sentence for Rohit Kumar, who allegedly sodomised and killed four-year-old
Billu of Dasmesh Nagar.

The residents, including mother, maternal grandmother and maternal uncle
of Billu, carrying placards, marched towards the District Courts Complex
to hold a demonstration there.

They submitted a memorandum to the Deputy Commissioner, seeking an inquiry
into the alleged lies told by parents of the accused about his age, which
misled the police.

Meanwhile, the certificates of the accused showed that he was over 18
years of age.

Notably, the police had produced him before the Juvenile Justice Board in
Ludhiana, which had remanded him to police custody till today. He was
produced before the board today along with his age proof. The board
directed the police to produce him before the Chief Judicial Magistrate,
Ropar, tomorrow.

(source: Express India)






IRAN:

Iran sentences man to 10 times execution


A court in southern Iran has sentenced a man to 10 times execution, the
official news agency reported.

Ali Mohammad-Afsaneh, from the town of Jahrom, was handed the sentence
after he was convicted of multiple murders, IRNA reported on Tuesday.

Mohammad-Afsaneh was also sentenced to 148 lashes, 10 years of jail time,
and an 8,000,000 Rial ($800) fine.

Jahrom is situated in the southern Iranian province of Fars.

(source: Iran Focus)






PHILIPPINES:

Leo Echegaray Part II: Postscript to the l999 Execution


By the time this issue of Tribune goes to the press, President Arroyo has
already signed the law abolishing the death penalty in our statutes. This
is the 2nd time in almost 2 decades that the country has scratched off
capital punishment in our books, a move that restores our civility as a
nation and reaffirm ourselves to a humane society. And when President GMA
goes to Rome for her visit, we shall also have already fortified our
position of eminence in the Catholic world.

There has been no conclusive showing that death penalty is one major
deterrent to crime. Statistics would rather show that crime commonly goes
with the marginal conditions of our people, widespread poverty,
inequalities and injustices suffered in life and to some degree, due to
lapses in civil governance. Heinous crimes deserving capital punishment
however are mostly caused not by these community insufficiencies, but by
individual aberrations in willful disregard of severe counter actions by
the state.

In this country, the death penalty runs an erratic course. Its seriousness
as a state policy is more often tainted by the politics of governance. In
fact many agree that the death penalty law is more of a legislated threat
by the state intended against perverts against whom the state lacks the
heart to penalize. Others say it is intended to be just a grim message (or
a Damocles sword!). Otherwise we would have a big number of death
executions if we are really serious about it. The few executions we have
seen were during the times of Marcos and Erap, both political machos. It
was under another macho, FVR, that death penalty law was revived although
no sampling was made. Under Cory Aquino, we heard none precisely because
she abolished it, and expectedly we will never see one under President
Arroyos watch. Such is our state of ambivalence on the death penalty
question.

Caught in the intermittence and this obvious message game is the case of
Leo Echegaray, from a Catandungeno family, whose execution by lethal
injection in l999 resurfaced recently with serious doubts following the
remarks made no less by the Chief Justice of the Philippine Supreme Court.
The issue of judicial error in the Echegaray case raised by CJ Panganiban
will be not as sensational like the execution process and will not
probably last long in the papers. But the remarks gave birth to other
possible basic policy issues such as state apology over the supposed
wrongful execution, indemnification by the state consistent with its own
constitutional guarantees and the impact and costs to the death convicts
waiting for their turn.

What about the costs to Echegaray himself and his family? Last week I had
an occasion to talk to a brother of Echegaray. From him I came to know
what most people do not know. Leo Echegarays family remains mired in
difficulties despite the many press releases about abundance of help for
the forsaken siblings. Baby Echegaray, the rape victim, still lives with
her 4 siblings and their mother Rosalie, not in the house donated by a
generous senator but in the impoverished section of Quezon City. While
Baby was lucky enough to benefit from the assistance that flowed in, the 4
other Echegaray children (a family member says the 4 are the real blood
offsprings of Leo) were not as lucky. 2 sons and a daughter are out of
school and jobless while a fourth is the one in school. With mother
Rosalie taking over from where Leo left, their only way to get out from
this economically cruel situation will depend again on the publicity
generated by the death penalty issue or the Panganiban remarks on the
case. That is if people have the sense and the heart to interpret what the
chief justice himself was saying.

Thus this section of the Tribune congratulates Senator Nene Pimentel, one
of the countrys most liberal minds, when he quickly moved towards
compensating the Echegaray family. A ray of hope descended on the family
of a Viganon who was made to suffer the supreme penalty amidst governments
policy ambivalence. It was by no means a knee-jerk reaction and a cold
manifest of state capitulation to a noisy and unreasonable pro-death
penalty mob.

(source: Opinion, The Catanduanes Tribune)