[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

July 22


IRAQ:

Actor's new role: Iraqi Hangman----Basam Ridha has no regrets about
leaving his Southern California life behind to help bring killers to
eternal justice.


Basam Ridha traded the business of Hollywood for the business of hanging.

The Los Angeles resident, an Iraqi who fled Saddam Hussein's regime 25
years ago, is a member of the Screen Actors Guild with a smattering of
small parts alongside the likes of George Clooney and Omar Sharif. But
he'd rather be known for his current role: as Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri
Maliki's advisor on judicial matters and executions and the go-to man for
all things gallows.

Life in the concrete-and-dustbowl environment of Baghdad's fortified Green
Zone is far different from his time in Southern California. Ridha speaks
longingly of his hillside home in San Dimas: the panoramic view toward Los
Angeles, the yard full of fruit trees, and the pleasure he used to take
driving his children to school, without a coterie of bodyguards.

But he has no regrets. Each time the noose tightens around the neck of a
Hussein aide and the platform falls away, Ridha thinks of the tens of
thousands of Iraqis  including his brothers, Bashar and Qazem  who were
killed by Hussein.

"The blood of my brothers will not go in vain," said Ridha, a longtime
Iraqi American activist who was asked to return to Baghdad in 2005 to work
with the first post-Hussein Iraqi government. When Maliki took over the
following year, he asked Ridha to stay on.

"I feel like I deliver something to the Iraqi people, and I feel good
about it when I take these people and send them to the gallows," said
Ridha, whose office is in a dilapidated high-rise that once housed
Hussein's ministers. "It is not a nice thing to see someone being killed
or dying in front of you, but I look at them and say, 'These are the
people who killed my people.'"

In a land of perpetual insecurity, Ridha may have one of the most secure
jobs around. He has a firm future keeping watch on the high-profile trials
of Hussein's aides on charges of human rights abuse and arranging the
logistics of executions.

"All the details, from A to Z," Ridha says proudly.

The deposed president and 3 close associates already have been convicted
of murder and hanged, but more than 115 other people are still awaiting
trial in connection with Hussein-era crimes.

For now, Ridha's preoccupation is with the anticipated execution of the
man whom he and many Iraqis consider the worst offender after Hussein: Ali
Hassan Majid, also known as Chemical Ali. Majid was convicted of genocide
on June 24 and sentenced to death for overseeing the use of chemical
weapons against tens of thousands of Kurdish civilians in northern Iraq in
1988.

Majid and 5 codefendants said they were defending Iraq against Kurdish
rebels. 5 were convicted, and 3 were ordered hanged. The 6th was freed
after the special tribunal hearing the case determined there was
insufficient evidence against him.

Majid's conviction and sentence were appealed, but if this case is like
others involving close Hussein associates, the ruling will be upheld and
he will hang.

"We'd like to get it over with, because this is an important case for
Iraq," said Ridha, who already is preparing for the event.

It is not an easy task. There are regional sentiments to consider,
security issues, and Iraq's reputation, which some human rights groups
have said is suffering as a result of its use of the death penalty. At
least 100 people have been hanged since a moratorium on executions was
lifted in 2005.

Majid's case is especially sensitive because his crimes occurred in
northern Iraq, and people there are clamoring to have the hanging carried
out in that region. It is Ridha's job to weigh the pros and cons of moving
the execution from Baghdad and to make a recommendation to Maliki. At this
point, he is in favor of the shift, despite the ruckus it could create.

"You'd get human rights organizations saying this is revenge, that it
doesn't look pretty if you execute the guy up there," Ridha said. But on
the positive side, he said it would make people in the north happy and
foster harmony between Kurds and the Shiite-led government.

"These are our people. These are the people who belong to Iraq," he said.
"It looks like if we execute him up north, it is better for Iraq."

On paper, at least, Ridha seems an unlikely candidate for his job. His
expertise is in mechanical engineering, which he studied in Ohio and
Louisiana. His Louisiana State University bachelor's degree is displayed
on a shelf in his office, where the air conditioner is set at a chilly
64.4 degrees. Ridha, a young-looking 44 who would look younger still
without the white streak jetting through his black hair, sits behind a
large desk and sips hot, sweet tea from a delicate glass cup.

Privileged youth

27 years ago, Ridha was 1 of 8 privileged children of a wealthy jeweler.
Their family name was Husseini, and they were Shiite Muslims who refused
to join Hussein's Sunni-dominated Baath Party. That was grounds for arrest
under the regime, and in 1980, Ridha's 2 older brothers were taken away by
security forces. Ridha, then a teenager, knew he could be next.

Ridha left Iraq in 1982. He bribed officials to get a passport and dropped
the Husseini from his name to hide his identity. Even today, his American
passport reads "Ridha," he notes, pulling it out and showing it to a
visitor.

In his senior year at LSU, Ridha visited Los Angeles and was hooked. 6
days after graduating in 1987, he bought a truck and drove west.

He worked for several years as an engineer for the state of California and
eventually built his own business doing home inspections. He bought the
San Dimas home, got married, and started a family. Ridha also remained
active in the Iraqi American community and frequently spoke out against
the atrocities in his homeland.

When Hollywood was looking for a cultural advisor to work on "Three
Kings," a George Clooney film set just after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, it
called on Ridha. He took the job and also got an on-screen part. In the
credits, Ridha is the Black Robe Leader.

That got him his SAG credentials, and more jobs followed: in the 2004
movie "Hidalgo" with Omar Sharif and Viggo Mortensen, the TV show "24,"
and others.

Ridha plays down his Hollywood experience but admits it was lucrative. He
still collects residuals.

"I'm not talking about extra work," he says of his parts. "I'm not going
to make $6 an hour just to get fed and wait around all day. It was pretty
good."

On April 9, 2003, Hussein's rule came to an end. "This was like a dream
come true," said Ridha. "I said, 'I hope I'll be a part of it.' "

By then, his business and Hollywood work were thriving. His son and
daughter had become fans of McDonald's, Universal Studios and the Raging
Waters park near their home. So had he. But Ridha, who sounds more
Californian than Iraqi when he speaks English, did not hesitate when he
was invited to join the prime minister's staff.

He expected to be gone about 3 months. More than 2 years later, he still
is in Baghdad, making occasional visits to his family in California but
mostly living in the Green Zone.

Brothers' fate

Like thousands of Iraqis, his siblings began searching for evidence of
their missing brothers' whereabouts after Hussein was toppled. Each day,
Ridha's sisters would scour intelligence agency records. Their mother
would wait at the doorstep of the family's home in the upscale Mansour
neighborhood of west Baghdad, hoping for good news.

After 11 days, they found a list of names of young men executed by
security forces in the early 1980s. Both his brothers' names were on it.

"We have not found their graves," Ridha said bitterly. "Those mass graves
that everybody talks about  I have two brothers somewhere out there."

His desire for retribution helps drive Ridha, and he makes no apologies.
Hanging those who have done harm will help Iraqis recover from the past,
he said, citing the idea of moving Majid's execution to the north.

This could require building a new gallows in the region, if the two there
are not deemed up to standards. The last thing Ridha wants is a debacle
similar to that surrounding the hanging of Hussein's half brother, Barzan
Ibrahim Hasan, whose head was torn off during his execution in Baghdad.

That followed Hussein's hanging Dec. 30, 2006, during which onlookers
taunted the former dictator on the gallows. The scene was captured on
video taken with a cellphone.

Ridha blames the problems on his government's inexperience in executing
people. He also is convinced that if he had been present for Hussein's
hanging, it would have been a smoother operation.

Instead, Ridha was in the Mall of the Emirates in Dubai, teaching his son
to ski on the man-made slopes after having been assured that U.S.
officials would not hand Hussein over to Iraq's government until after the
New Year.

"I was pretty upset," said Ridha, who had spent months planning the
operation.

After Hasan's botched execution, Ridha had new gallows built. Since then,
executions have gone without a hitch.

"The whole idea is they don't stick around for long," Ridha said. "They
die instantly."

(source: Los Angeles Times)






SAUDI ARABIA:

Legal Aid for Maid - After Close Shave With Sword


The dramatic reprieve for a condemned Sri Lankan housemaid won by lawyers,
beating a Jul. 16 deadline for filing an appeal in the Saudi Arabian
courts, has focused the international spotlight on a closed justice system
which condemns people to death without legal representation at their
trials.

Rizana Nafeek, a 19-year-old migrant worker, was sentenced to death on
Jun. 16 for allegedly intentionally killing a 4-month-old infant who
choked to death while she was giving it a midday bottle feed in May 2005.
Nafeek had only 1 month to file an appeal or she would have been executed
by sword and her body put on public display to deter future offenders.

Her beheading would have been 1 of more than 100 carried out so far this
year in a country currently seeing a surge in state killings, according to
Amnesty International (AI). Many of those executed are foreigners. Saudi
Arabia has a population of 27 million, including 5.5 million foreign
nationals. Last year it executed 39 people, 26 of them foreigners,
according to AI.

Nafeek's last-minute reprieve was secured by the Hong Kong-based Asian
Human Rights Commission (AHRC) which launched an international appeal
campaign "under extraordinary circumstances". The Commission, with the
approval of the Sri Lankan embassy in Riyadh, stepped in to pay the legal
costs to a Saudi law firm to challenge the death sentence in court.

"We have filed the appeal by the due date," Sri Lankan deputy minister of
foreign affairs Hussain Bhaila told IPS in Colombo, before flying out to
Riyadh at the end of last week on a mercy mission. With him on the flight
were Nafeek's parents and a local Muslim leader.

This assembled mission was a separate approach to save the maid who now
had a stay on execution. They hoped to meet with the dead infant's parents
and through various intermediaries secure a pardon. They also hoped to
visit the maid in jail.

"It is not going to be easy meeting them (the parents)," Bhaila said,
adding that they had already refused to see the Sri Lankan ambassador.
Under Saudi law only the parents can grant a pardon, something they had
declined to do when the death sentence was passed.

The drama over the international efforts to save Nafeek's life illustrates
the near-impossibility of other condemned migrant workers to engage Saudi
lawyers -- even if they are aware they have this right. Nafeek comes from
a poor Sri Lankan family and had been working in Saudi Arabia at her
employers home just two weeks when the tragic incident occurred.

The legal costs of filing her appeal were first put at Saudi Riyal 250,000
(about 66,000 US dollars). The Sri Lankan embassy eventually negotiated a
28,000 dollar reduction.

Although the appeal can now go ahead, lawyers are still waiting for Saudi
officials to send them essential documents, including a copy of the final
judgement. Even a week before the appeal deadline, the Sri Lankan embassy
issued an "urgent request" for this and other key documents needed by
lawyers.

With the appeal being filed, Nafeek for the 1st time since her arrest has
legal representation. At her trial she had no independent legal advice,
according to the AHRC. This was also the case in the trials of 4 Sri
Lankan migrants who were executed for armed robbery in February this year,
according to AI.

The cases are similar in many respects and may be representative of others
involving capital trials of foreign workers in Saudi Arabia.

Nafeek was put under duress to sign an incriminating statement that was
used to condemn her for strangling the child to death. "At the police
station she was very harshly handled and did not have the help of a
translator or anyone else to whom she could explain what had happened. She
was made to sign a confession and later charges of murder by strangulation
were filed in court," according to the AHRC.

In the case of the 4 Sri Lankan men who were beheaded, they told judges at
the trial that they had been beaten by the police during interrogation. 1
of the 4, Ranjith de Silva, in a telephone interview with Human Rights
Watch a week before his execution, said he understood that but for his
incriminating confession he might not face the death penalty.

De Silva had also said that the judge at his trial did not inform him that
he could appeal or provide any of the 4 a copy of the judgement, according
to Human Rights Watch. 1 of the 4 is believed to have thought he had been
sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment, according to AI.

The conduct of the Saudi judges is under scrutiny in the Nafeek case.
According to the AHRC she is said to have informed the judge that she was
17 at the time she arrived in Saudi Arabia in 2005 -- not 23. Her date of
birth on her passport had been falsified by the employment agency. This
would have meant that she was just 17 at the time of the infant's death
and an underage girl.

But the judge failed to call for a medical examination to verify this,
according to rights organisations. The Sri Lankan embassy in a statement
on Jul. 8 has confirmed that there is a certified copy of Nafeek's birth
certificate confirming that she was born on Feb. 4, 1988.

Saudi Arabia sets the minimum age for employment at 22 years, according to
Suraj Dandeniya, President of the Association of Licensed Foreign
Employment Agencies in Colombo.

The practice of falsifying documents is widespread. According to some
estimates, between 10 and 25 percent of Sri Lankan Muslim women who go
abroad to work are underage and succeed with bogus documents and
passports. There are currently some 300,000 Sri Lankan migrant workers in
Saudi Arabia, 1/3 of whom are Muslim women.

"All officials involved in this illegal process are culpable  not only the
recruiting agent," said Dandeniya.

David Soysa, director of the Migrant Workers' Centre, a long-standing
Colombo-based institution which supports migrant workers, believes Nafeeks
case illustrates just how unprepared and untrained many migrant workers
are for their duties in Middle East households. The Sri Lanka Foreign
Employment Bureau, the main foreign employment promoting arm of the
government, provides only 12 days of training.

"There is a serious problem about lack of proper training of migrant
workers. The maid didn't know how to burp a child when choking occurs
during feeding, which is common. A trained maid would have handled this
easily," he said.

He also believed that this was a case of child trafficking. "The offenders
should be punished," he said.

Saudi Arabia is a signatory of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
This bans any member nation from executing anyone for a crime committed
while under the age of 18 years.

It is not known when Nafeek's case will come before the appeal courts.

(source: IPS News)