[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 24


ALGERIA:

300 Terrorists on Death Row in Algeria


300 convicted Algerian terrorists have been given the death penalty since
the beginning of the year, a record level compared with recent years, the
Algerian daily Al-Khabar reported.

The Boumerdes Court has dealt with as many as 651 cases linked to
terrorism this year, an official source at the court said. The court also
gave life term imprisonments to 102 terrorists, some of them in absentia.

Algeria is an ally of the United States in the war against terrorism.

The most high-profile terrorist to be given the death penalty in Algeria
is 'Abd Al-Malik Droukdal, also known as Abu Mu's'ab 'Abd Al-Wudoud.

He is leader of the Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC) and was
sentenced to death in absentia in 2007.

The GSPC was formed during the civil war in Algeria in the 1990s with the
aim of establishing an Islamic state in Algeria. In January 2007, the
group changed its name to the Al-Qaida Organization in the Islamic Maghreb
(QOIM).

QOIM has emerged as a prominent terror group and has taken responsibility
for several terror attacks in Algeria, while claiming other smaller-scale
attacks in Mauritania and Tunisia.

Al-Droukdal is known for his bomb-making abilities and has led the group
since 2004.

Amnesty International lists Algeria as "abolitionist in practice," with
regards to the death penalty.

This label refers to countries that retain the death penalty for ordinary
crimes such as murder, but can be considered abolitionist in practice
since they have not executed anyone in the past 10 years and they are
believed to have a policy or established practice of not carrying out
executions.

Amnesty said it opposed the death penalty, no matter what the crime.

"We call on countries who carry it out to impose an immediate moratorium
with a view to introducing a complete ban on the use of the death
penalty," an Amnesty spokeswoman told The Media Line.

All criminals should be convicted in a fair trial, she said, but the death
penalty should not be an option.

(source: The Media Line)






CHINA:

China sentences 2 Taiwan drug dealers to death


A Chinese court has sentenced to death 2 Taiwanese drug dealers convicted
of trafficking heroin from Myanmar, state media said on Monday.

Chien Chih-Cheng and Chen Ming-Hsiung were among eight Taiwanese citizens
sentenced last week in the south-eastern province of Fujian for their part
in trafficking more than 12 kilograms of heroin, the official Xinhua news
agency said.

Chien and Chen led a gang that bought 39 packets of heroin from Myanmar in
early September and sold four of them for 400,000 yuan (60,000 dollars) in
the southern city of Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong, the agency quoted
police as saying.

The gang had planned to take the rest of the heroin to Taiwan but a storm
stranded their fishing boats in the Fujian port of Zhangzhou.

Police later arrested 13 people in Fujian and neighbouring Guangdong
province, it said.

The Zhangzhou Intermediate People's Court last week sentenced the other 6
Taiwanese and 5 Chinese citizens to jail terms ranging from 12 years to
life, including 2 suspended death sentences, the agency said.

The heroin was the largest amount seized in Fujian for 3 years, it said.

(source: Asia-Pacific News)






JAMAICA:

System too corruptfor death penalty


The Editor Sir:

As legislators gear up to cast their conscience votes on the resumption of
the death penalty, their collective conscience must be mindful, as well,
of the system on which their sweeping and indelible ballots will be based.

It is not unusual that Jamaica's spike in violent crimes has revived
debate on capital punishment. Jamaica is approaching the new year with
more than 4,000 murders on the books over the last three years. Of equal
gravity and concern, however, are the entrenched deficiencies, corruption
and disparity that characterise Jamaica's justice system; rogue cops and
their particular brand of policing; and the blatantly inequitable manner
in which crime is prosecuted in this country.

We know our weaknesses

Given what we know about these weaknesses, our policymakers are heading
the debate in the wrong direction, should they reinstate such an ultimate
measure in a system so fettered and fractured. Human error, injustices,
biases and personal ideologies create problems that have caused the
rejection of the death penalty among countries that too have debated its
revival in the wake of spikes in serious violent crimes.

Should Parliament ratify the resumption of capital punishment in Jamaica,
it will be among the very few countries, outside of Sri Lanka, perhaps,
that have lifted a moratorium or brought capital punishment back after
having abolished it. Further, capital punishment is expensive and a legal
labyrinth that will lead to staggering taxpayer expense and years of
irresolution. Given the global economic forecast, this will become a
particularly hard pill for Jamaicans to swallow in hard economic times.

The world's media, international human-rights organisations, the new
United States administration, under President-elect Barrack Obama, indeed
all countries and peoples of conscience, will be watching Jamaica as it
casts its vote on a practice that even in the United States is signalling
a gradual movement towards abolition across the board.

Ironically, Parliament will answer to its conscience on the cusp of the
60th anniversary of the International Declaration of Human Rights and the
December visit to Jamaica by the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights, its first on-site visit to an English-speaking Caribbean country
since 1994, and the first visit by a global human-rights organisation on
the invitation of Prime Minister Bruce Golding. Oh to be a fly on the wall
for that discussion!

Fixing the systemic failings of Jamaica's justice system, while it sounds
logical, is searching for the Holy Grail. The chance of achieving
faultless government is non-existent, and the same holds true for the
quest for perfect justice. The frailties and deficiencies in Jamaica's
justice system and policing practices will not magically vanish when
Parliament casts its final vote on the proposed crime bills. Capital
punishment, therefore, cannot be implemented with any sense of balance or
fairness, thus it must remain abolished.

I am, etc.,

D.A.G.

(source: Letter to the Editor, Jamaica Gleaner)

************************

The death penalty


Dear Mrs Macaulay,

How do you feel about hanging? There has been so many murders of children,
men and women. Do you agree that their killers should be hanged?

I am completely opposed to the death penalty. I have yet to know of any
time in history, and in any country whatsoever, when the death penalty or
capital punishment, has been a deterrent to the committing of murder.

It is my view that the rate of murder of women, children and men in
Jamaica has increased because of the failure to apprehend those who commit
murder. I believe it is irrefutable that the most effective deterrent to
crime, is the fear of apprehension. The fear of being caught is the
deterrent, because you have to be apprehended first, with clear and
irrefutable evidence against you, which stands up in trial and leads to
conviction before the question of punishment arises. The crime solving of
our police force resulting from careful, detailed, scientific, reliable
and professional investigations is something that we still hope to
achieve. Therefore, those with criminal intent feel a sense of security,
that they can commit crimes within impunity because they are not likely to
be caught at all. Then we have the sad problem, or should I say the
failure in or administration of justice, which also gives to people with
criminal intent, a certain and absolute sense of security because they
know that it would take an inordinately long time for them to be tried. In
fact, in certain instances, the matter is completely thrown out of court
because of a failure of the State to prosecute the matter.

I know from my experience, when I use to practice in the criminal courts,
that the cases presented by the Crown were largely based on the police
acting on "information received" or on "extracted" confessions with no
other "evidence" to support the purported confession. Those of us who
appeared in those cases which resulted in convictions by jurors who were
clearly not interested in most of the evidence which was adduced and in
the submissions, especially of the defence, know the mental torment such
convictions caused, because we knew the weakness of the evidence and the
system. One lived with the certainty that too often an innocent person had
been convicted.

I speak of "extracted" confessions because I was indeed involved in the
representation of accused persons who had been tortured and who, as a
result, acceded to the direction of the police to sign confessions. My
late husband and I were involved in a second trial - the case Regina vs
Glenroy Watson - which appears in the law reports, in which the accused
had been tortured by the police who tied electric cable on his testicles
with a wet brick at the end, straddling him and then kicking the brick
against the wall - he of course signed the confession. He was lucky,
because he happened to have been seen in the police lock-up shortly after
the torture, and was given medical attention. We were able to adduce the
medical evidence and call the witness to give evidence and because of
this, the "confession" could not be admitted in evidence and as that was
the only "evidence" against him on the charge of murder, that was the end
of the case against him.

There's also the infamous Regina vs Oliver Whylie, who was retried 3 times
for the same offence of murder, on supposedly cogent and honest
identification evidence. The Privy Council allowed his appeal, and quashed
his conviction.

I know that things are not as bad as they to use to be with regards to
police techniques of investigation, but I have seen too much in the
practice of law to accept that some of these things, and the cutting of
corners, the falsifying of evidence, and other deeds, or should I say
mis-deeds, do not still occur. It would seem to me that since we do not
have as yet the high level of professional investigations and an efficient
and timely administration of justice, that the last thing we should wish
to be engaged in is not only the chance but to my mind the certainty of
killing in the name of the State and through the hand of the law, persons
innocent of the crimes for which they have been convicted. Capital
punishment once it is executed, cannot be reversed nor can real amends be
made, when the mistake is discovered.

I would suggest that the most effective punishment for anyone convicted of
murder, should be life imprisonment, with the addendum that the convict
must work throughout his sentence to (1) feed himself, (2) pay over the
rest of his earnings to the family of his murdered victim. I believe this
would be real punishment, because he would live to work for the memory of
and himself remember the person whose life he took. In addition, he will
not be a complete liability to the taxpayer, and he would also learn
skills so if the Parole Board so decides, will be rehabilitated if he
qualifies for release. This indeed should be extended to the rest of the
prison population. I believe that if we do not try in this way to
rehabilitate instead of merely locking up and leaving them as idle
persons, our prison population in Jamaica is going to grow by leaps and
bounds each year with the corresponding need for increased taxes to pay
the prison's bill.

>From my little experience, the countries which do not have a death
penalty, but have a truly efficient and professional police force with a
successfully high rate of arrest and convictions due to their superb
investigative techniques, their rate of crime and murders is negligible.
Those who believe that the imposition of the death penalty is going to
result in the decrease of murders here, are misguided.

I feel very strongly of course about the brutal murders of women, children
and men, and in recent times, the abducting of persons for reasons of
sexual violations and murders. But, I do not think that just having the
death penalty is going to protect any one of us. Yes, the person
convicted, if hanged, is no more and he cannot commit any further crime,
but, has he paid for his crime or as he been released from the struggle of
life?

(source: Margarette May Macaulay is an attorney-at-law and a Women's and
Children's Rights Advocate; Jamaica Observer)

*************

Watching our backs on the death penalty


Not unexpectedly, the prolonged debate in Jamaica's Parliament on whether
or not the State should retain or abolish the death penalty for capital
murderers has drawn considerable interest abroad.

Some, caught up in emotion, may wish to suggest that international
thinking on the issue should have no bearing on the debate or the
conscience vote which is now expected this week.

In fact, though, our parliamentarians would do well to pay close attention
to opinion not just locally but internationally.

For example, the European Union (EU) - to which countries like Jamaica and
it's Caribbean neighbours and Caricom partners are closely connected
through aid, trade, history and a huge diaspora - have long made its
opposition to the death penalty abundantly clear.

There have been more than subtle hints and threats from the Europeans that
considerations such as the death penalty and gay rights - lumped under
human rights - could in future be linked to the denial of or restrictions
on aid and trade.

Indeed, there are some who believe that the Europeans have refrained from
going the route of wholesale sanctions on such issues largely because of
the fact of a George Bush-led Republican Government in the United States
over the last 8 years.

Many Jamaicans may not wish to believe it, but there are some issues on
which the majority of our people have more in common with the Republicans
and the American political right than with the liberal Democrats and
president-elect Mr Barack Obama. Those issues include gay rights, abortion
and, of course, the death penalty.

While Mr Obama has voiced support for capital punishment in cases in which
"the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its
outrage", he is also on record as suggesting that it does not deter crime.

It seems reasonable to assume that with the more "dovish" Democrats now
about to take full power in the United States, both at the executive and
parliamentary levels, there will be renewed lobbying from the EU and human
rights groups for global abolition of the death penalty.

Of course, in so far as Jamaica is concerned, all of the above could prove
to be no more than academic unless the Government takes steps to ensure
that a likely pro-hanging decision in the parliamentary conscience vote is
not mere window dressing.

For, as has been pointed out repeatedly in this space and elsewhere,
unless a way can be found to bypass the UK Privy Council's Pratt and
Morgan ruling that condemned men should have their death sentences
commuted after 5 years, there is unlikely to be any State executions any
time soon.

The apparent willingness of the Government to take on board an Opposition
proposal to make that bypass possible is really what we will have to
watch.

If that happens, we can expect the EU and others breathing down our necks.

(source: Editorial, Jamaica Observer)



AFGHANISTAN:

THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN----Karzai's death-penalty dilemma; President's new
toughness is popular at home but hardly thrills donor countries opposed to
capital punishment


In a counterweight to his image as too gentle a leader, incapable of
dealing with the rising instability, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has
resumed signing death warrants and responded to the recent acid attack
against schoolgirls with a vow to kill the perpetrators in public.

"I will tell the Supreme Court to issue the death penalty to them," Mr.
Karzai said. "I will hang them to death and the people of the world will
watch."

His new enthusiasm for executions is popular in a country where ordinary
people often blame the government's weakness for the return of the Taliban
and rampant criminality. But the death penalty poses a dilemma for the
countries that support Mr. Karzai's government because many of the donors
are opposed to capital punishment and have special concerns about death
sentences handed down by Afghanistan's corrupt courts.

"I wonder whether he has read the constitution?" a Western official in
Kabul said after the President's statement appeared to interfere with the
supposedly independent judiciary.

Canada has remained silent on the issue, however, and the only major
groups to criticize the executions have been the United Nations, the
European Union - and, strangely, the Taliban.

"Earlier this month, 3 captive mujahedeen were barbarically martyred,"
said a statement on the Taliban's official website, referring to 3
insurgents who were hanged for killing female election workers.

It's unusual for the Taliban to make public appeals on the basis of
international law; a study earlier this year found that the insurgents
kill more civilians than any other party in the conflict. But the
insurgents said the men were only prisoners of war, calling them
"steadfast mujahedeen who had been arrested on charges of fighting for the
emancipation of Afghanistan and the re-establishment of a viable Islamic
state on Afghan soil."

The evidence against the executed men was, in fact, clear and undeniable,
according to Nader Nadery, a commissioner for the Afghan Independent Human
Rights Commission. A Kabul newspaper approvingly quoted Mr. Nadery earlier
this month saying he supports the executions, but in a subsequent
interview the commissioner said his position is more nuanced. The AIHRC,
the largest human-rights organization in Afghanistan and a recipient of
aid money from countries such as Canada that forbid capital punishment,
has previously called for a moratorium on executions. Afghans are loudly
criticizing the commission for that stand, Mr. Nadery said, because they
mistakenly believe the AIHRC is supporting the criminals' side of the
argument.

"It's a very challenging line to walk," he said.

"On the one hand, we have to stick by some principles, but ... on the
other hand, we see a sharp increase in the level of crime in Afghanistan,
related or unrelated to the conflict," he said. "The public wants harsher
and harsher responses."

Mr. Nadery refused to voice any criticism of the recent hangings, but said
he still does not favour capital punishment as a 1st option for dealing
with rising crime. "We would not very much advise going massively for
executions," he said.

Canada's position is even more opaque. Asked for comment about Mr.
Karzai's stand on the death penalty, the Department of Foreign Affairs
offered a written statement with no mention of the issue. "Canada strongly
supports efforts by the government of Afghanistan to promote and protect
human rights and to meet its obligations under international law," the
statement said.

People speak more clearly on the streets of Kandahar city. Ahmad Shah, a
shopkeeper, said he heard that police had recently arrested some
kidnappers and wondered aloud why he hadn't yet seen them executed.

"Why are they waiting?" Mr. Shah asked. "They should hang them in public,
leave their bodies on every street corner." The shopkeeper added: "During
the Taliban regimes, they always executed people properly, without bribes
or nepotism, and they controlled the Afghan people. But as you know
nowadays, robbers, thieves, muggers, kidnappers do all sorts of crimes and
they're released very easily from the jails because of corruption."

A 58-year-old retired army colonel, who gave his name as Bashir, also
complained of bribery in the system. "Karzai is very soft, and people take
advantage of him," the former colonel said. "So in our country now, the
result is zero security."

(source: Toronto Globe and Mail)