Oct. 28
TAIWAN:
Death penalty policy remains unchanged: justice minister
There has been no change in the government’s policy of minimizing rather than
abolishing capital punishment which was reaffirmed yesterday by Minister of
Justice Tseng Yung-fu.
“Our policy remains unchanged -- the death penalty will be used as little as
possible, but will not be scrapped for the time being,” Tseng said during a
Legislative Yuan session.
While death-row inmates will definitely be executed once all legal proceedings
are completed, prosecutors have been asked to minimize recommendations of
capital punishment, he said.
Tseng’s statements came after the United Daily News (UDN) said in a front-page
story the same day that Taiwan had reversed its policy on capital punishment.
The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) has suggested in its 1st-ever human rights report
that prosecutors refrain from recommending the death sentence for defendants or
criminal suspects, the paper said.
“The suggestion aims to minimize and even avoid death sentencing,” an MOJ
official was quoted as saying.
The newspaper cited the example of a case in Nantou County in which prosecutors
recommended Wednesday either the death penalty or life imprisonment for a man
charged with the death of four people. The man allegedly poisoned the 4 victims
with a toxic industrial solvent in July. Usually, prosecutors would seek only
the death penalty in such a case, the paper said.
Commenting on the newspaper report, Tseng said that even though prosecutors
have been asked to recommend penalties other than capital punishment, the
ministry has consistently respected prosecutors’ decisions.
Asked whether the 51 convicts on death row will be executed, Tseng said the
government’s stance remaines unchanged because majority public opinion is still
in favor of the death penalty, as various polls have shown.
The death row prisoners “will be executed once all the relevant screening
procedures are finalized,” Tseng said.
The execution of five death row inmates in March sparked strong protests at
home and abroad.
Citing MOJ officials, the UDN report said it remains unclear when next
death-row executions would take place. “There is no timetable for the
executions,” an official said.
Although the death penalty remains valid under the current law, the official
said, the MOJ has been working to gradually limit the use of capital
punishment, through measures such as scrapping the regulations that list the
death sentence as the only option for certain types of crime.
(source: Taiwan News)
JAPAN:
Japan Minister Must Not Cave in to Pressure on Death Penalty, says Amnesty
Internatnional
Japan’s justice minister should not sign execution warrants, Amnesty
International and the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network said today, following the
minister’s announcement that he does not intend to end capital punishment,
despite saying last month that he would not approve executions.
Justice Minister Hideo Hiraoka said Friday he would look at each death row case
individually, after a prominent politician reportedly had encouraged him to
exercise his power to authorize executions.
"After showing reluctance to sign execution warrants last month when he first
took office, it is deeply alarming that Minister Hideo Hiraoka now seems to be
under pressure to approve executions despite his own calls for caution," said
Catherine Baber, Amnesty International’s deputy director for Asia and the
Pacific. "The minister must stand by his original commitment which was to
suspend executions until Japan’s application of the death penalty can be more
carefully considered."
Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura reportedly encouraged Minister Hiraoka
at a parliamentary committee on Wednesday to press ahead with executions.
The last executions in Japan were carried out on July 28, 2010, when Ogata
Hidenori and Shinozawa Kazuo were hanged in the Tokyo detention center.
A study group on the death penalty was established by the former Minister of
Justice Keiko Chiba in 2010. The study group is continuing to work under the
current Minister, Hideo Hiraoka, who encouraged discussions on the subject both
in public and within his ministry, taking into account international trends and
opinions.
No date for its report has been announced.
There are currently 126 people on death row in Japan.
Executions in Japan are by hanging and are typically carried out in secret.
Death row inmates are only notified on the morning of their execution and their
families are usually informed only after the execution has taken place.
This means that death row prisoners live in constant fear of execution.
Enduring these conditions for years or even decades has led to depression and
mental illness among many death row inmates.
More than 2/3 of the countries in the world have abolished the death penalty in
law or practice. Out of 41 countries in the Asia-Pacific, 17 have abolished the
death penalty for all crimes, 9 are abolitionist in practice and one – Fiji –
uses the death penalty only for exceptional military crimes.
This means that less than half of the countries in that region still use this
ultimate and irreversible punishment. Of the G8 nations, only Japan and the
United States still use capital punishment.
Amnesty International opposes the death penalty as a violation of the right to
life in all cases, regardless of the nature of the crime, the characteristics
of the offender, or the method used by the state to carry out the execution.
"Japan should immediately commute all death sentences and introduce an official
moratorium on executions as a first step towards abolition of the death
penalty," said Baber.
Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning grassroots activist
organization with more than 3 million supporters, activists and volunteers in
more than 150 countries campaigning for human rights worldwide. The
organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates and mobilizes the public
and works to protect people wherever justice, freedom and dignity are denied.
For more information, please visit www.amnestyusa.org
(source: Amnesty Internatnional USA)
MOROCCO:
Marrakesh cafe bomber Adel Othmani given death sentence----The attack was the
deadliest Morocco has experienced for years
The mastermind of a deadly bomb attack on a Moroccan cafe in April has been
sentenced to death.
The court in Rabat convicted Adel Othmani of organising the attack on the
Argana cafe in Marrakesh, which killed 17 people - most of them tourists.
8 of his associates were given jail sentences for their roles.
8 French nationals died in the attack, along with 2 Moroccans and people from
Britain, Canada, Portugal, Switzerland and the Netherlands.
It was the deadliest attack in the North African kingdom since bombings in the
coastal city of Casablanca in 2003 killed 45 people, including suicide
attackers.
Othmani was convicted of making explosives and committing murder. His lawyers
said they would lodge an appeal.
Protests in court
Prosecutors told the court that Othmani disguised himself as a guitar-carrying
hippie, and planted two bombs in a cafe in Djemaa El-Fna, the tourist heart of
Marrakesh.
He then detonated the explosives using a mobile phone.
The motive for the attack was unclear.
The authorities had suggested that Othmani and his accomplices were "admirers
of al-Qaeda".
The BBC's Nora Fakim in Rabat says family members of the accused men protested
in court, and there was a tense atmosphere.
Othmani had denied the charges throughout the trial, claiming that he had been
set up.
In his final statement to the judges, he said the whole case was baseless.
"There is so much injustice in this country. Innocent people find themselves
embroiled in cases like this while they are actually being used in political
ploys," he said, according to Reuters news agency.
There are more than 100 people on death row in Morocco, where the death penalty
is often handed out, but there have been no executions for almost 20 years.
(source: BBC News)
ISRAEL:
Israeli party ponders capital punishment bill to prevent another prisoner swap
The recent prisoner swap that saw Israel release several hundred Palestinian
prisoners in exchange for the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit brought
joy to many Israelis, but consternation to many others.
How could prisoners be released who had “blood on their hands” they demanded,
referring to the fact that a large proportion of the Palestinians freed were
serving life sentences (some of them multiple life sentences) for their role in
terror attacks that killed Israeli civilians.
Since the exchange, several efforts have been mounted to try to ensure that
such releases never take place again. One effort involves an attempt to draft a
set of rules by which any future Israeli government must operate in the event
an Israeli citizen is held hostage.
Another effort has been taken by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) to try to
ensure that no Israeli soldier is ever taken prisoner. The new directive is to
the effect that Israeli soldiers must fire upon any enemy forces attempting to
abduct a fellow Israeli soldier, even if such fire jeopardizes the life of the
soldier being taken captive.
This week, Shas, one of the parties in the governing coalition announced it
would put forward another formula for ensuring no prisoners with blood on their
hands are ever released – a bill to be introduced in the Knesset that would
impose a death penalty on terrorists who seek to destroy the state of Israel.
Not since 1962, when former Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann was executed for his
role in the mass extermination of Jews in Europe, has capital punishment been
carried out in Israel. Indeed the action is not one of the legal punishments
set out in almost all criminal statutes administered by civil authorities.
Such a bill as Shas has championed has a few problems to overcome, not the
least of which is the fact that most Palestinians in Israeli prisons have been
convicted by military courts. While Israel’s civil justice system is
internationally praised for its independence, impartiality and the quality of
the judiciary, the same cannot be said of the country’s military courts (nor
almost any country’s military courts).
Capital punishment, still permitted in certain military court cases, has only
been carried out once, in 1948, in the early days of the state.
By its very nature, a military court operating in occupied territory and trying
civilians from the occupied population is hardly independent or impartial. The
officers of the court are also uniformed military officers in an armed force
that largely views the prisoners as the enemy.
Until 2004, when legal minimums were introduced, many of those sitting in
judgment even in trials of capital offences need not have had legal training.
Not surprisingly perhaps, Israeli studies have shown that in some recent years
more than 99 % of the accused have been convicted.
The practice of military courts trying civilians (as opposed to trying its own
soldiers accused of breaching military laws) is widely discredited in
international legal circles, and neither Israeli society, nor the international
community would tolerate a situation where such a court system meted out the
death penalty.
This would mean that, if the Shas or a similar bill is passed into law, a large
number of the hundreds of serious Palestinian cases would have to be tried in
Israeli civilian courts where processes would take far longer than the often
brief, summary-style justice of the military courts. It might also result in a
far lower rate of conviction.
That alone would probably guarantee that a bill introducing new terms for
capital punishment will not be passed.
It is noteworthy that it is Shas that is bringing a capital-punishment proposal
forward. Created in the 1980s, Shas is an ultra-Orthodox religious party that
represents mostly Sephardi Jews, those descended from Jewish communities of the
Middle East and North Africa, as opposed to Northern Europe.
Capital punishment is widely condemned in Jewish religious circles and Shas is
breaking from that religious position, not an insignificant matter.
It’s also worth noting what happened in that early Israeli military case of
capital punishment.
An Israeli officer named Meir Tobianski was charged with treason for allegedly
having passed information to Jordanian forces that allowed their artillery to
hit sensitive targets during Israel’s War of Independence. Capt.Tobianski was
tried by a makeshift military court in June 1948, found guilty based on
evidence provided by the fledgling state’s head of military intelligence, and
executed by firing squad.
A year later, an investigation determined that Capt. Tobianski had not been
guilty. He was posthumously acquitted of all charges.
(source: The Toronto Globe and Mail)
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