March 5
IRAQ:
Torture taint hangs over Iraq death sentences; 'Article 4' law under the
spotlight amid allegations of torture to acquire confessions that result in
execution----International human rights groups say they believe 3,000 Iraqis
have been sentenced to death since 2005
For 3 years, Nadiha Hilal has begun each day waiting to hear if she's become a
widow.
Hilal's husband has been awaiting execution since he was sentenced to death in
2009, along with 10 other people in a case that illustrates Iraq's deeply
troubled criminal justice system.
Iraq's Justice Ministry said the number of prisoners given death sentences is
classified. It won't reveal even the specific crimes of which they've been
convicted.
But international human rights groups said they believe 3,000 Iraqis have been
sentenced to death since 2005, when capital punishment was reinstated. The
figure gives Iraq one of the highest rates of death sentences in the world.
Its criminal justice system, meanwhile, is among the least transparent.
Hilal's ordeal began when her husband - a taxi driver with the unfortunate name
of Saddam Hussein - was arrested in Baghdad. The name was common before the
2003 war, but with the fall of the previous regime it now guarantees harsh
treatment by Iraqi authorities.
The day after he was arrested, Hilal said police came for her.
"They put blank papers in front of him and told him to either sign it or they
were going to put me in the women's prison and even arrest his daughters," she
told Al Jazeera in an interview on the outskirts of Fallujah, about 70
kilometres west of the capital Baghdad.
In a room next to her husband, Hilal said she could hear him screaming as he
was tortured.
"They pulled out his fingernails, then they used electricity on him," said
Hilal. "Sometimes they put me in front of him but I couldn't look at him. They
just put me there so he could see me, to let him know they had arrested me."
Hilal, 25, with 3 little girls, said they told him they would torture her the
same way if he didn't sign the papers. A few days after he signed what turned
out to be a confession to involvement in the suicide bombing of the Foreign and
Finance Ministries, she was released.
Lawyer Badea Aref represents Saddam Hussein Hilal and 10 others sentenced to
death in the same case. Al-Qaeda in Iraq operative Munaf al-Rawi admitted that
he had organised the same bombings. Aref said he obtained a statement from
al-Rawi that his clients were not among those involved.
Aref said he has obtained a stay of execution 5 times for his clients since
they were sentenced - the last one 5 months ago after they had been brought to
the execution square, just an hour before they were to be hanged. All 11 showed
signs of torture, he said.
"We are waiting for a re-investigation and a re-trial. It is a race against
time," said Aref.
Torture denial
The Interior Ministry, responsible for the detention facilities in which most
abuses are believed to occur, rejected accusations of systematic torture and
said it investigates any allegations brought to its attention.
The Justice Ministry said torture might happen in isolated incidents, but is
exaggerated by the media.
"The international community has not been fair with the Iraqi people," said
Justice Ministry spokesman Haider al-Sadee. "When there is an explosion in
America the whole world is rocked and countries are invaded as a result. But
when Iraq defends its rights and executes a person after convicting him of a
crime, international organisations condemn it.
"Speaking as an Iraqi citizen...I believe the least that should be done to show
justice to the families of victims is to execute them publicly," al-Sadee said.
Amnesty International and other groups say much of the torture stems from an
almost sole reliance on confessions to obtain convictions. Despite hundreds of
millions of dollars spent in investigative training by the United States and
other countries, cases rarely rely on forensic evidence. The use of secret
informers, lack of legal representation, and widespread corruption also stack
the deck against those accused.
In Aref's office, stacks of hand-written statements from prisoners tell the
same stories that human rights groups say is prevalent among those facing
terrorism charges.
"They began using my wife and children. They threatened to rape my wife in
front of me if I didn't confess," read one statement. The prisoner said even
after he was sentenced to death, his wife and young children were held for five
months without any charges laid.
Another prisoner titles a statement signed on May, 27 2012 "after 1,825 days of
injustice". He named the police officers allegedly involved in torturing him
and asked, "Is there anybody who can support me and remove this injustice from
me and my people?"
Fallujah, where anti-government protests started in December against the broad
anti-terrorism law many are imprisoned under, has borne much of the brunt of
mass arrests. The law, known as Article 4, allows the death penalty for a wide
range of offences broadly categorised as terrorism.
Before Sunni tribes turned against al-Qaeda, Fallujah was a stronghold of the
organisation and counter-terrorism operations, not known for their precision,
are still focused on Al Anbar province.
Coerced confessions
In a house on the outskirts of Fallujah, Mohammad Abbas Ferhan laid out tiny
identification photos of his dead sons, the only photos he has. Youssef and
Omar were 14 and 17, respectively, in June, 2007 when they were taken by police
for questioning. Ferhan said he was told they were at the local police station.
The next time he saw them was to identify their bodies. They had been killed
and dumped in the desert, he told Al Jazeera, then taken to the morgue by
American soldiers.
2 of his other sons, Ishaq and Mustafa, were sentenced to death in 2009 and are
waiting to be executed.
"I'm not sure of the details of their case," he said. "I just know there were
explosions in Baghdad and they were accused of doing them."
A phone call with one death row prisoner painted a picture in which a charge of
terrorism warrants beatings and torture from the moment the suspect is
admitted, to long after they have been convicted.
The prisoner, who said he would be tortured further if his name was used, said
he had been beaten with cables and plastic hoses, and tortured with electricity
charges on his tongue and genitals.
He said in 1 prison up to 20 people were kept in a small bathroom. "They put us
in this bathroom handcuffed and every three hours they call for investigation
and then the torture session starts," he said.
Those who could pay $40,000 to $100,000 were allowed to go free, he said. Those
who couldn't pay were forced to implicate people they didn't know in crimes if
they wanted their own wives and children to be freed, he added.
"I've been in 5 prisons so far and I've seen mostly young people or elderly
ones, all of them held under Article 4," he said. "Some of them were arrested
in place of their cousins, or brothers or relatives ... Even now whenever they
take us to any prison once they know we are kept under Article 4 terrorism,
they start beating or torturing us or putting us in solitary confinement."
None of them, he said, know when they will be executed.
(source: Al Jazeera)
YEMEN:
Juveniles executed in Yemen though law forbids it
Yemen is accused of jailing and executing people who were still children when
they committed their crimes. Some of the executions are due to lack of birth
certificates but others are due to failures in the justice system.
A sample case is described in an Al Jazeera report. Mariam al-Batah is one of
22 known death row juveniles in Yemen. She was sentenced to death for murder at
15. She comes from a rural illiterate background and her parents failed to
register her birth. She is now 19 and has spent the years since her sentence in
squalid conditions at Hodeida Central Prison.
Al-Batah's father married her off as a second wife to an older man when she was
only 12 years old. Al-Batah claims that her husband beat her, starved her, and
locked her in a room for weeks at a time. One day when the child of her
husband's 1st wife unlocked the door where she was locked in, she recalls
rushing out in a disoriented state and she violently hurled the child to the
ground, killing it on the spot.
Since she had no birth certificate to prove she was under 18 she was tried for
murder as an adult. Under Yemen law, children who are 15 years or older can be
tried as adults but the maximum sentence if convicted of murder can not be more
than 10 years.. Al-Batah bore a stillborn child in prison. Her husband's 1st
wife forgave her but her own family has disowned her.
Priyanka Motaparthy, a Human Rights Watch( HRW) researcher said that proving
age was a huge issue in these cases. However, Motaparthy points to another
problem:
"But there is a 2nd issue: even in cases when juvenile offenders and lawyers
were able to produce strong evidence suggesting they were under 18 for their
alleged crime, judges and prosecutors have disregarded Yemeni law and called
for death sentences."
Yemen banned juvenile execution as of 1994 but a total of 186 are being tried
for murder and could receive the death penalty. In spite of the law Yemen's
presidents have signed orders to execute 15 juveniles over the past 5 years. On
December 3, 2012 a government firing squad in Sanaa executed Hind al-Barti who
was convicted of murder even though her birth certficate indicates she was just
15 at the time of her alleged crime. In March 2012, Barti told HRW that she had
made a false confession after police officers beat her and threatened her with
rape. Government authorities only gave her family a few hours' notice before
her execution.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called on president Mansour Hadi to halt all
executions of juveniles. The group also asked the president to review execution
orders for 3 juveniles on death row whose appeals have run out.
(source: digitaljournal.com)
IRAN:
Concern over executions and crackdown on dissent in Iran
Iran's human rights record has deteriorated over the past year with a rise in
the number of public executions coupled with ever-shrinking space for political
dissent, a UN special investigator has said during a visit to Dublin.
Last month Ahmed Shaheed, who was appointed UN special rapporteur on human
rights in Iran in 2011, published his most recent report. It claimed that the
Islamic republic had failed to investigate "widespread, systemic and systematic
violations" of human rights.
The report also raised concerns about Iran's high rate of executions and stated
that Iranian authorities should stop imposing the death penalty on juveniles, a
practice banned under international law.
"Because of the very high number of people being executed, the number of public
executions, and the very poor trials that precede them, this issue is my
number-one concern," Shaheed told The Irish Times.
"I have counted almost 500 executions over the past 12 months. In 2011, it was
some 600. If you look at the past 6 or 7 years, there has been a rise [each
year] except for this year. Even with [this year's] decrease, it is still an
exceptionally high figure, coupled with the fact that 80 per cent of executions
are for drug offences, which under international law do not warrant the death
penalty."
Shaheed said his office had recorded 57 public executions over the past year in
Iran. Most took place at dawn in front of crowds. He said the practice
constituted a "serious violation" of human rights norms.
"I am hoping that countries will move towards the abolition of the death
penalty but even where they are implementing it, they should at least meet
basic safeguards."
Shaheed, a former foreign minister of the Maldives, has not been permitted to
visit Iran since he took up the UN post. His latest report was based on 169
interviews conducted electronically with people in Iran and in person with
those who had recently left. "I believe I have a bigger reach by allowing
people to speak to me confidentially rather than going into the country and
meeting them out in the open."
Political prisoners
Shaheed is concerned the situation in Iran could worsen ahead of presidential
elections scheduled for June.
Opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who are currently
detained, are among hundreds of dissidents arrested during protests over the
disputed re-election of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009. Last
month Shaheed called for the immediate release of Mousavi, Karroubi and the
other political prisoners.
According to Shaheed, dozens of journalists, bloggers and activists have been
arrested in recent months. Lawyers representing such figures had been targeted,
including Abdolfatah Soltani who was arrested in 2011 and is now serving a
13-year sentence.
In a high-profile case, blogger Sattar Beheshti was arrested last October after
receiving death threats and died shortly afterwards in prison.
Decline in rights
"I have been observing Iran for 2 years now and I have seen in that time a
sharp decline in the space for political dissent and opposition and political
rights," Shaheed said.
"If you look at statements being made by senior functionaries in the
government, there are always references to what happened [in 2009] and the need
to prevent that from happening again."
Tehran has dismissed the UN's recent report. A series of Iranian officials have
described Shaheed's work as unsubstantiated and biased.
"I am the 4th rapporteur on Iran and I have seen how they have dealt with
previous rapporteurs - there is a similar pattern," Shaheed said.
"They first go through a phase of denying the legality of the mandate, saying
the mandate is politicised and Iran is being unfairly singled out. Then they
attack the mandate holder as not being neutral or competent, and then they go
through a 3rd phase in which they try to block the mandate altogether."
Shaheed will raise Iran's human rights record in meetings with officials and
NGOs during his visit to Ireland. He said he hoped Ireland, which took up a
seat on the UN Human Rights Council this year, would take a "very active
stance" on the council regarding the reports on Iran. "I am urging all
countries to talk to Iran and highlight their concerns."
(source: The Irish Times)
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