June 9
IRAQ:
Execution of former Saddam aide raises fears for others
The Iraqi authorities must halt the country's alarming rate of executions,
Amnesty International said after a former aide to Saddam Hussain became the
latest death penalty convict to be executed this year.
Abed Hamid Mahmoud, also known as Abed Hamoud, was executed by hanging on
Thursday, taking the total number of executions in Iraq in the 1st half of 2012
to at least 70.
Abed Hamoud was presidential secretary and bodyguard to the former Iraqi
President Saddam Hussain.
2 other members of Saddam's former cabinet are among those facing imminent
execution.
"The killing of Abed Hamoud is part of an alarming escalation in executions in
Iraq and we fear others may soon face the same fate," said Hassiba Hadj
Sahraoui, Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director at Amnesty
International.
"The Iraqi authorities should refrain from using the death penalty, commute the
sentences of all those on death row, believed to number several hundred, and
declare a moratorium on executions."
Abed Hamoud was number 4 on the US list of most-wanted Iraqi officials
following the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq.
He was arrested in June 2003 by American forces and sentenced to death in
October 2010 by the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal (SICT), together with
former government ministers Tariq Aziz and Sadoun Shakir.
All three were convicted of participating in the crackdown of opposition
political activists under Saddam Hussain, which they denied. Tariq Aziz and
Sadoun Shakir are at risk of imminent execution.
“Saddam Hussain’s rule was synonymous with unlawful killings, torture and other
gross human rights violations, and those who committed such crimes should be
brought to justice,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui.
“But the death penalty, which is the ultimate denial of human rights, should
never be used, whatever the gravity of the crime.
"Instead, the present Iraqi government should demonstrate a clear break with
the past by following the global trend away from the death penalty.”
Amnesty International has repeatedly expressed concern about trials conducted
before the SICT, which has a mandate to prosecute those accused of crimes
committed under Saddam Hussain.
Its independence as a court of law has been undermined by repeated political
interference.
The death penalty was suspended in Iraq after the US-led invasion in 2003 but
restored in August 2004. Since then, hundreds of people have been sentenced to
death and many have been executed. According to Amnesty International
information, in 2011 at least 68 people were executed in Iraq in total.
(source: Amnesty International)
SAUDI ARABIA----execution
Pakistani drug trafficker beheaded in Saudi Arabia
A Pakistani man convicted of drug trafficking has reportedly been beheaded in
Saudi Arabia.
According to the state-run media, Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry said in a
statement that Zohur Hussain Mohammad Sadeq was found guilty of smuggling
heroin into the country.
The latest beheading brings to 31 the total number of executions in the
conservative kingdom so far this year, The Gulf News reports.
According to the report, nearly 76 people were beheaded in 2011, while rights
group Amnesty International put the number of executions last year at 79.
The death penalty in Saudi Arabia applies to a wide range of offences including
rape, apostasy, armed robbery, drug trafficking, and murder.
(source: Zee News)
IRAN----executions
2 prisoners convicted of Moharebeh (War against the God) hanged in Southeastern
Iran this morning
2 prisoners were hanged in the prison of Zahedan this morning June 9.
According to the official site of the Iranian judiciary in the Baluchestan
Province (Southeastern Iran) 2 prisoners identified as Mohammad Mohammad-Hasani
Lotak and Saeid Baluch Shah Bakhsh were hanged in the prison of Zahedan,
capital of the Iranian Baluchestan province this morning.
The prisoners were charged with Moharebeh (war against God) through armed
kidnapping, creating fear in the society and keeping large quantities of
narcotic drugs and illegal arms, said the report.
Iran Human Rights (IHR) can not confirm the charges.
Moharebeh is a charge widely used against the opponents of the Iranian
authorities.
(source: Iran Human Rights)
***************************
Iran publicly hangs 5 drug smugglers: report
Iran has publicly hanged 5 men convicted of drug trafficking in the southern
city of Shiraz, the governmental newspaper IRAN reported on Saturday.
The report said the men sent to the gallows on Thursday were convicted of
smuggling different amounts of narcotics and identified them as Abbas Z., Aref
A., Abolqasem A., Farhang N., Ali Akbar M.
Iran is one of the world’s main practitioners of capital punishment, along with
China, Saudi Arabia and the United States.
London-based Amnesty International said in its annual review of death sentences
and executions worldwide published in March that Iran executed at least 360
people in 2011, 3/4 of them for drugs offences, up from at least 252 in 2010.
Adultery, murder, rape, drug trafficking, apostasy and armed robbery are all
punishable by death under the Iran’s Islamic sharia law since the country’s
1979 Islamic revolution.
Iran says the death penalty is essential to maintain law and order, and that it
is applied only after exhaustive judicial proceedings.
(source: Al Arabiya News)
JAPAN:
Death penalty foes gather in Tokyo to push for abolition
While the global trend is toward abolishing or putting a moratorium on capital
punishment, Japan remains a stalwart practitioner, leaving it and the United
States the only two countries in the Group of Seven major industrialized
nations where executions still take place.
With international pressure growing against Japan to scrap the system,
abolitionists, scholars, lawmakers and law enforcement officers from Japan,
Norway and the U.S. recently gathered in Tokyo to spread their message that
capital punishment neither prevents crime nor comforts the victimized.
Executions instead violate the most basic of human rights, as the death penalty
is fundamentally murder by the state that removes any chance for exoneration,
the abolitionists said.
At the international symposium May 29 organized by Aoyama Gakuin University,
the panelists, including ex-justice ministers from Japan and Norway, reviewed
and compared the judicial and social responses to violent crimes in their
countries.
Both have low crime rates and both have suffered indiscriminate terrorism.
Japan in March 1995 saw the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway by Aum
Shinrikyo that left 13 people dead and thousands injured. Norway last July
suffered its worst crime spree since World War II when Anders Behring Breivik
detonated a bomb within Regjeringskvartalet, the executive government quarter,
and two hours later went on rampage at a youth camp, gunning down 77 people.
Even though these crimes were both brutal, the panelists said each nation's
public and judicial systems reacted to and handled them in almost completely
opposite fashions.
Aum founder Shoko Asahara and 12 senior cultists have been sentenced to hang
for the cult's heinous crimes and the Supreme Court has finalized the verdicts.
In Norway, the most Breivik will likely get is 21 years in prison with the
possibility of indefinite extension for as long as he is seen as a danger to
society. Norway ended capital punishment for civilian crimes in 1902 and banned
the practice completely in 1979 after briefly executing World War II Nazi
collaborators.
While Breivik himself has called for reintroduction of the death penalty at his
ongoing trial, Norwegian experts said there is little debate about reinstating
the system as capital punishment is not an issue for most Norwegians, including
his surviving victims and the families of the slain.
"The debates have centered on how we could have prevented such an act in the
first place and what went wrong," said Knut Storbeget, who was Norway's
minister of justice and police at the time of the massacre.
In comparison, experts pointed out that the Aum attacks pushed Japan toward
more punitive actions and accelerated the execution of death sentences rather
than providing an opportunity to review the effectiveness of severe measures
for such destructive crimes.
Despite a decreasing crime rate and international calls to abolish capital
punishment, 85.6 % of Japanese respondents in a 2010 survey by the Cabinet
Office said they want to keep capital punishment.
Former Japanese justice ministers who participated in the discussion expressed
concern how the society has yet to engage in serious debate on the matter.
"Capital punishment contradicts the notion by the government that citizens must
not kill anybody," said lawyer Seiken Sugiura, a former Liberal Democratic
Party lawmaker who did not sign off on any executions during his time as
justice minister in the Junichiro Koizumi administration, saying it went
against his religious beliefs.
"But I am worried that Japan is going to be the last country to abolish it,"
said Sugiura, who came under fire by critics who said he should not have
accepted the Cabinet position if he didn't intend to fulfill his responsibility
of signing death warrants.
Some panelists pointed out that part of the reason behind the lack of
discussion in Japan is a lack of information and understanding about capital
punishment itself. The government is notorious for withholding information on
executions as officials believe too much disclosure would lead to more scrutiny
of the system, and therefore more criticism and less public support to keep it
going, they said.
"We need an extensive debate on this issue, but there is little information
available," said Hideo Hiraoka, a Democratic Party of Japan lawmaker who served
as justice minister under Yoshihiko Noda and also did not send death-row
inmates to the gallows. "Japanese people have no way to know what kind of
condition Asahara is in. They do not know the global trend of abolishing
capital punishment."
David Johnson, a professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa who is
currently researching Japan's capital punishment system, cited a lack of
leadership.
"It is a failure of leadership and failure to consider publicly," he said.
"Japanese have to think about what capital punishment does to them rather than
what it does for them."
Hanging the 13 Aum members without clearly understanding why the cult committed
such crimes may not prevent similar crimes, Johnson said.
(source: The Japan Times)
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