Nov. 29 CHINA: China Abruptly Executes Convicted Spy----Family Is Denied Chance to Say Goodbye China on Friday executed a man convicted of passing sensitive military and political information to Taiwan a day after notifying his relatives through diplomatic channels that they would have a 2nd chance to visit him, his daughter said. Austrian Deputy Ambassador Stefan Scholz relayed the news of the execution late Friday afternoon to the family of Wo Weihan, 60, according to Wo's daughter Ran Chen. Chen is an Austrian citizen and had been appealing for clemency through diplomatic channels since arriving in Beijing on Monday. She said she had been told her father was executed by gunshot. Wo was put to death even as Chinese and E.U. officials were wrapping up a summit on human rights here in Beijing. The sequence of events raises the question of whether the Chinese government had merely waited until the summit ended to carry out the execution. Capital punishment is at the top of the European Union's human rights agenda with China, Scholz said Friday morning, before he learned of Wo's execution. The news shocked Wo's family members, who at a Thursday afternoon news conference had praised China's willingness to grant them a second visit and said they had not lost hope that Chinese officials would commute Wo's sentence based on what they said were numerous legal flaws in the case against him. Chen said that her father had not been told of his impending execution when she met with him Thursday morning and that she never received written confirmation that his final appeal to the Supreme People's Court had been turned down. "Our father was a Chinese citizen and is subject to Chinese law," Chen wrote in a statement released Friday evening. "But the Chinese law also says that death row prisoners deserve the right to see their families before execution, to say goodbye and to go in peace." Chen said her parents had raised her and her sister to respect Chinese values of gratitude to and love for their parents. "The legal procedures in China, which we experienced in these last traumatic days, show no regard for these values," she said. The family expressed outrage at the breakdown in communication. "We're extremely frustrated," said Chen's husband, Michael Rolufs, after hearing word of the execution from private contacts but before receiving confirmation through official channels. Calls to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Austrian Embassy on Friday night went unanswered. John Kamm, executive director of the Dui Hua Foundation, a human rights group in San Francisco who has worked closely with Chen on the case, reacted with anger and disbelief when reached by phone Friday evening. "I have been doing this work for 19 years, and this is the absolute lowest point of those 19 years," he said. "I am devastated." (source: Washington Post) SAUDI ARABIA: Saudis set poor example for religious tolerance If you are the undisputed monarch of a wealthy nation, you probably think you can say or do most anything without repercussion. But when King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia stood before the United Nations earlier this month to proclaim his opposition to "religious intolerance," anyone listening would have to think: Of all the gall! Abdullah actually sponsored the event: a U.N. conference on interfaith dialogue. The amazing thing is that any Saudi who advocates "interfaith dialog" is likely to be arrested, tried and executed beheaded by sword. President Bush was among the heads of state who attended Abdullah's conference. Oh, the price we have to pay to assure an uninterrupted supply of oil. Abdullahs "interfaith dialogue" is the most compelling recent argument for launching a major new program to achieve energy independence. Abdullah didnt simply wake up one morning and decide to promote religious plurality. Even the conference's origins were cynical. Remember, last spring, when a senior Saudi cleric who is a member of Abdullah's government issued a fatwa calling for the execution of 2 journalists? In their newspaper, they had suggested that religions other than Islam are worthy of respect. They haven't been killed, but not surprisingly the fatwa caused a stir another case when the world happened to notice one of the unconscionable acts in the name of religion that the Saudi government commits day after day. (Remember another one, the court decision a year ago to administer 200 lashes to a woman who had been gang raped? The White House, ignoring the oil for a moment, called the ruling "outrageous.") Abdullah could not easily interfere with a religious edict. So instead he decided to rise above the fray last spring and call for this conference. No one at the United Nations chose to discuss Saudi Arabia's own record of religious bigotry. So allow me. Saudi Arabia, it happens, is the world's most intolerant state on religious matters. Sure, many other nations are guilty of atrocities committed in the name of religion. We humans have a long and sorry history of that. Today, however, only in Saudi Arabia are these rules institutionalized on such a broad scale and enforced. Consider a few recent decisions both amusing and grave. Last summer, the kingdom banned the ownership of cats and dogs. Why on earth? It turns out that the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (a.k.a., the religious police) found that men out walking their dogs were apt to chat with a woman they happened to pass in the park. Othman al-Othman, general manager of the religious police, told the Saudi paper Al-Hayat that he wanted to staunch "the rising phenomenon of men using cats and dogs to make passes at women." Imagine! At least violations of this new rule are not punishable by execution. Satellite-television operators are not so fortunate. In September, the state's Supreme Judiciary Council called for death by sword for satellite TV operators who air "shows that contain obvious heresy and promote licentiousness and wantonness," as one of the clerics put it. The programs that so offended the sheiks, it seemed, were Turkish soap operas quite popular in Saudi Arabia. So far, no satellite television programmers have fallen under the sword not because of any reticence in Saudi Arabia to use capital punishment for religious "crimes." The kingdom, in fact, holds a lust for the death penalty (much like Texas and some other states). Amnesty International, in a report published last month, found that Saudi Arabia has one of the world's highest rates of execution, as measured per capita at least 158 last year. Many of the condemned are found guilty of religious crimes. Amnesty cited several cases, among them: Mustafa Ibrahim, an Egyptian working as a pharmacist in Arar, who was arrested and beheaded because he had been observed carrying a copy of the Quran to read in the bathroom. Sabri Bogday, a Turkish owner of a barbershop in Jeddah, who was overheard "swearing at the Lord in public." The court sentenced him to death. An unnamed Indian woman, a mother of 4, who was convicted of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning for getting pregnant after her husband died. In his address to the U.N. conference, Abdullah implored: "We say today with a single voice that the religions through which Almighty God sought to bring happiness to mankind should not be turned into instruments to cause misery." If only the king would follow his own advice. (source: Joel Brinkley is a former Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for The New York Times and now a professor of journalism at Stanford University; McClatchy-Tribune News Service) IRAN: Iran court upholds stoning death sentence Iran's Supreme Court upheld a stoning death sentence for a woman convicted of adultery in the southern city of Shiraz, an independent newspaper reported Saturday. The daily Etemad Melli, or National Confidence, reported that the court also upheld another death sentence, this one by hanging, against the woman, who was also convicted of killing her husband with the help of a male accomplice. The man was sentenced to 15 years in prison after he was convicted of being an accomplice in the murder. He was also sentenced to 100 lashes for adultery, but was not given the death penalty because he was married. Judiciary officials were not immediately available for comment. It was not known when the slaying took place or when the 2 were convicted. While the ruling is final, Iran's judiciary chief or the country's supreme leader are authorized to stop death sentences from being carried out. Under Iran's Islamic laws, adultery is the only capital offense punishable by stoning. A man is usually buried up to his waist, while a woman is buried up to her neck. Those carrying out the verdict then throw stones until the condemned dies. In July, Iran stoned a man convicted of adultery to death. Stoning was widely imposed in the early years after Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, but it has seldom been applied in recent years, though the government rarely confirms when it carries out stoning sentences. Reformist legislators have demanded an end to death by stoning as a punishment for adultery, but opposition from hard-line clerics has sidelined their efforts. (source: Associated Press) *********************** Iranian Court Finds Mosque Bombers 'Corrupt on Earth,' Sentences Them to Death Iran's Revolutionary Court says it has convicted three men for involvement in an explosion in a mosque that killed 14 people in April and sentenced them to death. The court says in a statement that the three, Mohsen Eslamian, Ali Asghar Pashtar and Roozbeh Yahyazadeh, have been found to be "corrupt on earth" and sentenced to be hanged. A copy of the statement was made available to the AP Saturday. Defense lawyers have protested the ruling and the case is now at the Supreme Court for a final decision. The court says the three are also charged with membership in a monarchist group seeking to overthrow the government. The April 12 bombing in a mosque in Shiraz, southern Iran, killed 14 people and injured more than 200. (source: Fox News) MEXICO: Mexican governor calls for restoring death penalty A state governor from northern Mexico has proposed restoring the death penalty to execute kidnappers who kill their victims. Gov. Humberto Moreira of Coahuila state sent the proposal to the state legislature Friday amid public outrage over a recent series of bloody kidnap-killings. Because it involves changes to the federal Constitution, the bill would only serve as a recommendation for the federal congress to take up the issue. Any changes to the Constitution require a 2/3 majority in the federal Congress and approval by a majority of Mexico's 31 state legislatures. Mexico amended the Constitution to formally outlaw capital punishment in 2005, but abandoned it in practice decades ago. (source: Associated Press)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
Rick Halperin Sat, 29 Nov 2008 12:28:22 -0600 (Central Standard Time)
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide Rick Halperin