June 11
LEBANON:
Lebanon seeks death penalty in killing of Syrian soldier
3 Lebanese men accused of killing a Syrian solider during a border shootout
last year will face the death penalty.
Military Investigative Judge Imad al-Zein said in his indictment Monday that a
death sentence would be sought against 3 Lebanese men from the Abu Jabal family
in the Aug. 19, 2011 standoff with Syrian border guards in the Bekaa border
area of Mashareeh al-Qaa.
Zein referred the 3 to the military court.
Judicial sources told The Daily Star the 3 suspects were arms smugglers and
that 2 of them were brothers.
(source: The Daily Star)
CANADA:
Prison too good for some, but execution bad for us
Let's agree killing people is wrong.
Surely everyone can get together on that.
After all, it is murder that provokes those Old Testament cries for a return to
the death penalty every time a new and heinous crime is uncovered.
In the wake of a fatal shooting at Toronto's Eaton Centre and the arrest of
accused "body parts" killer Luka Magnotta, a Toronto city councillor is
attempting to spark a national debate on capital punishment.
Recently Conservative Sen. Pierre Hugues-Boisvenu--whose daughter was raped and
murdered in 2002--said serial killers should be given a rope to hang themselves
in prison.
An Angus Reid poll suggested more than half of Canadians favour the death
penalty for the crime of homicide.
Canada's last execution took place in 1962.
The death penalty was abolished here in 1976 and removed from military law 14
years ago.
According to Amnesty International, 97 counties have banned capital punishment
and only 57 governments retain the death penalty in active use.
Last year, China executed the most people, followed by Saudi Arabia, Iran and
Iraq.
Oh yeah. That's a list we want to be on. The arguments on both sides are well
known.
Rednecks shout about the cost of keeping monsters in prison without, oddly,
considering the great expense of executions and the cost of preliminary
judicial appeals. Bleeding hearts note capital punishment is proved to not work
as a deterrent, and they worry an innocent man or woman might be put to death.
It is all mud in the water, because killing people is wrong.
Perhaps this country's blood lust comes less from an eye-for-an-eye ideology
and more from frustration with the perceived quality of life within Canada's
penal system.
It's fair enough to say "prison is too good" for some people. Surely we can
find middle ground between killing a convicted killer and offering him free
Internet and a college education.
Any society can be accurately judged not by how it treats its best members, but
by how it treats its worst.
Canada is better than our demons. We can agree killing people is just wrong.
(source: Andrea DeMeer, QMI Agency, LF Press)
IRAN----executions
2 prisoners were hanged publicly in southern Iran this morning
2 prisoners were hanged publicly in the city of Bushehr (southern Iran) this
morning.
According to the official Iranian news agency 2 prisoners who were not
identified by name, were hanged publicly in the Abpakhsh area of the city.
According to the report the prisoners were convicted of murder that took place
under an armed clash as they wanted to steal a motor bike under a motor rally
in the Abpakhsh area of Bushehr about 6 months ago.
In a statement that was published yesterday, Iran Human Rights warned about the
imminent danger of execution of 8 people among them the 2 who were hanged
today, 5 Ahwazi Arab political prisoners and 1 woman.
IHR urged the international community to react and Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the
spokesperson of IHR said: "international pressure is the only hope these
prisoners have".
(source: Iran Human Rights)
CHINA:
China vows to observe more stringent judicial procedures for death penalty
China will improve the trial procedures and reviews of death penalty cases, a
government action plan released on Monday said.
The National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2012-2015) published by China's
State Council Information Office (SCIO) said that the trial of all death
penalty cases of 2nd instance will be open to the public.
The review of death penalty should include the questioning of the defendant,
and listening to the opinions of his or her attorney if the attorney so
demands, the action plan said.
Legal supervision by the Supreme People's Procuratorate over the review of
death penalty will be strengthened, the plan said, adding that the Supreme
People's Court will publicize typical cases to clarify the norms of application
of death penalty.
The action plan said China will continue to push forward standardized
measurement of penalty, and the people's procuratorates will make suggestions
on penalty measurement to the people's courts when handling criminal cases.
The discretion in penalty measurement will be institutionalized. Guidelines on
penalty measurement by the people's courts will be worked out, so will
regulations of the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate
and the Ministry of Public Security on standardizing procedures of penalty
measurement to guarantee openness and fairness in penalty measurement, it said.
China will further improve the system to have witnesses and expert witnesses
appear in court and the system of protecting the witnesses, and improve the
system of eliminating illegal evidence, the plan said.
All confessions by suspects and defendants extorted by torture or other illegal
methods, as well as testimonies and statements of witnesses or victims
collected by violence, threat or other illegal means will be eliminated and not
used in working out the verdict, it said.
In addition, the stipulations on evidences used to examine and decide cases of
death penalty will be strictly observed, and more strict standards will be
adopted in this regard, it said.
The action plan also pledged to implement the Decisions of the Supreme People's
Court on Audio-Visual Recordings of Court Trials, and the system of producing
audio-visual recordings of the whole process of suspect interrogating in major
cases will be established.
(sources: Xinhua & ANI)
INDONESIA:
'I am so frightened, I could die here': Coke-in-the-case mum Lindsay tells of
Bali nightmare
A British woman facing the possibility of death by firing squad in Bali for
importing cocaine claims she had no idea what was in her suitcase and says
Indonesian police tied her to a chair for two days and pointed a gun at her
head.
Lindsay Sandiford, 55, was arrested in Bali last month along with three other
Britons when customs officials alleged they found 4.7kg of cocaine hidden
behind a panel in her suitcase. The drugs had a value of $AUD2.5 million.
In an interview with Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper, Ms Sandiford said she
agreed to travel from Bangkok to Bali with unknown goods in her suitcase
because she believed it would help her 21-year-old son Elliot, who she claims
had been threatened by drug dealers in England.
The mother-of-2 who has lived in the Himalayan region of India with her second
husband for the past 5 years says became aware of her younger son’s predicament
on a trip back to England in March. She told the newspaper she travelled back
to England to help Elliot move flats and to greet her older son Louis as he
finished a stint in prison for robbery.
Ms Sandiford said a drugs gang believed Elliot was a police informer.
‘‘I got a call from someone — I don’t know who — telling me my boy was a snitch
and they would kill him if I didn’t put things right.’’
‘‘Elliot told me he was on the run because he had had death threats. He said,
‘Mum you’ve got to help me’.’’
Ms Sandiford claimed she was contacted by phone by a male acquaintance she knew
20 years ago who told her to meet him in a McDonald’s restaurant. She said the
man told her she should start checking out flights to Australia. Ms Sandiford
returned to India and was then contacted by the man in April who told her to
travel to Bangkok and book into a hotel for 7 days.
Ms Sandiford claimed she was met in Bangkok by the man’s girlfriend and the
pair spent time shopping together before a man called ‘‘Chubby’’ turned up at
Ms Sandiford’s hotel room and put something in her suitcase and told her to fly
to Bali.
‘‘I knew what they were asking me to do was something dodgy,’’ she said. ‘‘They
weren’t asking me to bring in tulips or balls of cheese but I didn’t know if it
was money, gold, jewellery, guns, marijuana or heroin. I had no idea.’’
Ms Sandiford claims she did not know the man had hidden cocaine in her luggage
until her arrest after touching down in Bali.
She said that after her arrest she was interrogated by Indonesian police who
forced her to participate in a sting operation to capture other drug smugglers.
Ms Sandiford said police tied her to a chair for two days, pointed a pistol at
her head and forced her to stay awake by screaming every time she started to
fall asleep.
She says she began to name people after the ordeal and agreed to help police
trap those she implicated. Ms Sandiford said she was taken by police to the
arranged pick-up point where she handed over a fake parcel of drugs to a man in
a car.
‘‘Police promised me they would intercept me before I got in the car,’’ she
said in a tearful interview. ‘‘I thought if something goes wrong they will kill
me or police will get out their guns and shoot us.’’ Police stopped the car
further up the road and arrested the man.
Ms Sandiford, who claims she lives in a mud brick home in India and makes a
living selling jewellery and cashmere, said she now feared for her son’s life
and her own. She said she could not afford to pay her legal bills, which her
defence lawyer told her would cost about £32,000.
‘‘I could get the death penalty... I am so frightened. I could die here.’’
(source: The Advocate)
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