Oct. 3
BANGLADESH:
Amnesty wants death verdicts overturned
The Amnesty International has called to overturn all the war crimes death
sentences, including the one awarded to BNP leader Salauddin Quader Chowdhury.
The human rights organization made the call on Wednesday a day after the
International Crimes Tribunal-1 sentenced to death BNP Standing Committee
member for his crimes against humanity during the 1971 liberation war.
In a statement Amnesty International's Bangladesh researcher Abbas Faiz said,
"The many victims of horrific abuses during Bangladesh's war of independence
and their families have long deserved justice but the death penalty is not the
answer. One human rights abuse cannot make amends for another.
"Bangladesh must overturn the death sentence against Salahuddin Quader
Chowdhury and all others. The death penalty is the ultimate, cruel and inhuman
punishment and can never be a way to deliver justice," said Abbas Faiz.
The death sentence to a Bangladeshi MP convicted of crimes against humanity is
not the way to deliver justice to the many victims of the country's war of
independence, Amnesty International says.
Salauddin Quader, a 6-time MP, was found guilty of crimes including genocide
and torture committed during Bangladesh's War of Independence in 1971.
His family said that he would appeal against the sentence.
"We urge the Bangladeshi government to ensure that Chowdhury's appeal complies
with international law and standards relating to fair trials, and without
recourse to the death penalty," said Abbas Faiz.
"The Bangladeshi authorities must also impose a moratorium on executions as a
first step towards abolishing the death penalty."
In its statement, Amnesty International has said it opposes the death penalty
in all cases without exception, regardless of the nature or circumstances of
the crime; guilt, innocence or other characteristics of the individual; or the
method used by the state to carry out the execution.
Sheikh Hasina led government set up the ICT in 2010 under national law to try
crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide committed during Bangladesh's
war of independence.
The ICT has so far convicted 7 people. Of them, 5 have been sentenced to death.
They can now appeal to the Supreme Court.
These 5 include Salauddin Quader and 4 members of the opposition
Jamaat-e-Islami.
The 2 others were sentenced to imprisonment. But one of them, Abdul Quader
Mollah, has since had his sentence increased to death by the Supreme Court,
following an appeal by the government. He cannot appeal this death sentence
because there is no higher court to hear it.
(source: bdnews24)
AFGHANISTAN:
Soldier killings suspect faces death penalty
Afghanistan's ambassador has vowed that the alleged turncoat killer of t3
Australian soldiers will face the full force of the law, including a possible
death sentence, if found guilty.
Ambassdor Nasir Ahmad Andisha spoke after it emerged that former Afghan
National Army sergeant, Hekmatullah, had been arrested in Pakistan in February
and transferred to Afghan custody on Tuesday night.
"[The Australians] were there to support the people and the government of
Afghanistan, so we have no doubt that this sergeant Hekmatullah will get the
maximum punishment if he is found guilty under Afghan law. We have the death
penalty as the maximum punishment."
Australian defence and spy agencies hunted the alleged rogue soldier - who
gunned down the 3 Australian soldiers in a so-called "green on blue" attack
last year - after he fled across the border into Pakistan.
Working with Afghan intelligence, they apparently tracked phone data connected
to Hekmatullah and provided information to Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence agency, which made the arrest in February.
But this was followed by months of delicate negotiations amid apparent
political sensitivities between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Relations between
Afghanistan and Pakistan are plagued by mistrust, particularly over how to deal
with the Taliban.
The Chief of the Australian Defence Force, David Hurley, said the capture of
the suspect in the "cowardly" attack drew a line under green-on-blue attacks,
with all 4 suspects in attacks against Australians now either dead or captured.
Sapper James Martin, pictured top, Private Robert Poate, centre, and Lance
Corporal Stjepan "Rick" Milosevic were killed when Hekmatullah opened fire with
a machine gun while they were relaxing at patrol base Wahab in the Baluchi
Valley of Oruzgan province on the evening of August 29, 2012.
2 other Australians were wounded, along with several Afghans.
He is understood to have fled to the Pakistan city of Quetta. Mr Andisha said
he believed Hekmatullah was arrested in the Quetta region.
"I'm sure it was the result of both signals and human intelligence," he said.
General Hurley said it was "a co-operative activity between us and the
Pakistani authorities where we were able to provide some information that they
were able to act on."
Lance Corporal Stjepan Milosevic.
As to the delay in extraditing him, General Hurley said: "If you look at the
relationships that exist in the region, I think there was a number of issues
being played through in Pakistan as well. They had elections. Other activities
[were] going on with the Afghan government."
Hugh Poate, the father of Robert, welcomed the news and thanked Australian
intelligence officials for what he said "must have been a very difficult"
process of getting Hekmatullah transferred.
(source: Sydney Morning Herald)
INDIA:
Why capital punishment must go----When a death sentence is given to satisfy the
"collective conscience of the community," it raises troubling questions about
the fairness of the trial
The verdict of death for the bestial gang rape in Delhi last December is based
on Supreme Court judgments, which stipulate that capital punishment will be
imposed in "the rarest of rare" cases, where the community's "collective
conscience is so shocked that it will expect the holders of the judicial power
centre to inflict death penalty" because of the abhorrent nature of the crime,
which would include "the manner of the commission of the murder," for instance,
"if it was committed in an extremely brutal, grotesque, diabolical, revolting
or dastardly manner," or where the victim was "subjected to inhuman acts of
torture or cruelty in order to bring about his or her death."
Dangerous
There are several dangers in a process in which a life is taken because that is
what the community wants, as in the Roman amphitheatre, where the mob decided
if the defeated gladiator should die. Apart from turning the judiciary into a
khap panchayat, how does this august fraternity commune with the community, or
divine that its conscience wants blood? In the 21st century, flooded as it is
with 24-hour television and social media on tap, outrage can be manufactured,
reality distorted. Even when, as after the Delhi crime, the revulsion was real
and widespread, how does the judiciary determine that those who were shocked
would only recover with the deaths of those who had shocked them? Diplomats,
who must assess the mood of the country they are posted in, take it as given
that the media only partially reflects it, since the strident few drown out the
diffident majority. An Embassy spreads its tentacles wide, speaking to and
gauging the mood of people in different sectors, levels and locations, to
understand what they really want. No judge can do this. What a judge takes as
the collective conscience of the community can only be the slant carried by the
media. To base decisions on life and death on this is injudicious.
Secondly, what is the community whose conscience the judge must tap into and
channel into a pronouncement of death? For a sessions judge, it will presumably
be that of the local community. If that judgment is overturned on appeal, it
can either mean that the judge had misread that conscience, or that the High
Court felt that the conscience of the larger community of the State did not
want blood. If the Supreme Court reinstated the death sentence, this would
presumably mean that the national conscience was at one with the local, but
that of the State concerned was out of step with both. Which is the segment of
the community to whose conscience judges must defer? Logically, it should be
the one most affected, which would imply that no sentence of death from a
sessions court should be overturned. How does a judge in the State or Central
capital determine that the local community had not been galvanised into
bloodlust?
But what would happen, for instance, in the cases that should shortly come to
trial for the murders in the recent communal violence in U.P.? The most
appalling cruelty is committed during communal riots. One of the criteria
invoked in the Delhi judgment to justify the death sentence, the barbaric and
revolting nature of the murder, would apply. In these cases, however there
would be no collective conscience to consult, since the community is split in
2. Each half would demand the death sentence for the murderers from the other
community, but mourn its own murderers as martyrs if they were hanged. In these
cases, therefore, where one of the criteria laid down by the Supreme Court
conflicts with the other, which will prevail?
Nor should we forget that, while the use of torture to bring about death is
rare in crimes committed by individuals, it is routinely practised by the army
and the paramilitary in States wracked by political violence. Unaccounted
numbers of Kashmiris disappeared into the maws of Papa-II, the infamous torture
chamber run by the paramilitary in Srinagar. Those bodies that were recovered
bore marks of the most terrible torture. Very large numbers disappeared
forever. To say that the collective conscience of the Kashmiri Muslim community
is merely shocked would be an insult. It has lived with rage, pain and a
searing sense of injustice for 2 decades; its tormenters have escaped with
impunity, because the collective conscience of the rest of the country has not
even been stirred.
Across our subcontinent, in Manipur, similar cases abound, including that of
Thangjam Manorama, taken from her home in Imphal late at night by a unit of the
Assam Rifles, led by two Majors, tortured with a knife, forced into her
genitals in the presence of her family, tortured even more brutally later,
raped and shot. Her body was not received by dignitaries, it was found lying in
a ditch. There have been many other killings like this, but this one, like the
gang rape case in Delhi, set off a storm, leading to a "naked protest" by
Manipuri women in front of the paramilitary camp. If any crime matched both the
criteria invoked in the Delhi judgment, the bestiality of the murder and the
collective indignation it produced, this one did. However, the officers and men
responsible are immune because the army???s Court of Enquiry held they were all
innocent.
Justice not blind
These communities, and the tribals in the naxal belt, will argue bitterly that
justice is not blind; it sees who you are and where you come from and, in its
scales, the collective conscience of the community only registers when it has
political weight. If you are a Kashmiri or a Manipuri, your shock is gossamer.
One of the crimes that the Supreme Court has laid down as likely to shock the
collective conscience of the community is a "murder committed in the course of
betrayal of the motherland." It appears murders committed in its ostensible
defence do not shock. Patriotism is the last refuge of the serial torturer. If
he walks free, though, why should others hang?
There is a further danger. Because public opinion is manipulated with modern
technology, the outrage which the judiciary will interpret as an indignation
that must be assuaged with blood can only be provoked by the technically adept,
or those with the money to influence the media. The men sentenced to death in
Delhi, and those hanged over the last year, were mostly from the poorest and
most vulnerable sections of society. Neither they nor their families had the
financial or technical means to harness the media or the social media in their
defence. There is, therefore, an inevitable class bias built into a process
where a judge pronounces the verdict of death on the basis of a public
outpouring of rage, which the accused have no means of contesting.
The brutality that brings their crimes into the ambit of the rarest of rare is
bred into their lives. They have gone to bed hungry as children, suffered
illnesses without medicine, defecated in the open, been savaged on the whims of
adults, treated like dirt. Compassion has never touched them. Life has beaten
sensitivity out of them. Men forced to live like brutes will kill like brutes.
When these men, society???s victims, find a victim, they take a lifetime's
frustrations out on him or her. Their murders and rapes are unlikely to be
refined. Their brutality might appal a court and nauseate the middle class, by
whose standards they are judged, but it is a product of what the community has
made of them. This is what should shock the collective conscience of the
community.
Lastly, and most troublingly, if a man is to be hanged because the judge feels
that the collective conscience is so shocked that it will expect him to inflict
the death penalty, can a trial be fair, with the accused presumed to be
innocent until he is proven guilty? If, before the trial starts, society has
already made up its mind, in the judge's view, that it will only be satisfied
with the death penalty, it has also determined who the guilty are. It is hard
to believe that a judge can hear a case entirely on merits, and take popular
sentiment into account only at the verdict. On the contrary, if it is now the
law that a judge must impose the death penalty in cases where he has concluded
that the community demands it, he would be shirking his duty if he were to
absolve the men on trial, denying the community, whose servant he is, the
satisfaction of a human sacrifice.
When the Supreme Court decreed that the death penalty should be imposed only in
the rarest of rare cases, it tried, humanely and honourably, to prevent a rash
of judicial killings, but the criteria it has laid down inherently lead to
decisions that are, in every sense, fatally subjective. The road to the gallows
might be paved with its good intentions, but on matters of life and death, the
law cannot be so cruelly flawed.
Tarquin, Auden famously wrote, was ravished by his post-coital sadness. Is the
"community" in India ever choked by a post-garroting remorse? Conscience is the
uncomfortable reminder that we have done something wrong.
In a nation that aspires to be a modern democracy and claims to be a modern
incarnation of the most ancient living civilisation, the death penalty is a
barbaric anomaly. It is time the collective conscience of the community
repudiated it.
(source: Opinion; Satyabrata Pal is a Member of the National Human Rights
Commission. These views are personal----The Hindu)
*********************
Capital punishment
It has become common for intellectuals to question the relevance of the death
sentence, whenever the court awards it ("Why capital punishment must go," Oct.
3). Their main argument is that the death penalty has failed to deter people
from committing heinous crimes. Just because a punishment does not prevent some
perverted criminals from committing brutal crimes, should we stop punishing
them?
P.V.R. Reddy, Bangalore
There is nothing in the Delhi gang rape case verdict to suggest that the judge
awarded the death penalty only to satisfy the collective conscience of the
community. I agree we need to amend age-old laws, develop scientific methods of
investigation and speed up the justice system. But when someone is proved
guilty on the basis of strong evidence, he should be awarded the maximum
punishment under the law.
Pardeep Kansal, Bhiwadi
Satyabrata Pal claims that people who are victims of society's inequities are
bound to be brutal in their behaviour. Are there not millions who face similar
inequities? Are they all taking out "a lifetime???s frustrations" on their
victims? To claim that such brutality nauseates only the middle class is
unacceptable. I am fairly sure every woman and man on the streets was just as
nauseated over the Delhi gang rape.
Pavithra Srinivasan, Oxford
This refers to the contention that the brutality that brings a crime into the
ambit of the "rarest of rare" is bred into the offenders' lives. The justice
system cannot give a verdict based on the past life of the accused and their
societal rejection. Courts cannot be lenient to some offenders because
compassion has never touched their lives.
Muralidharan Raju Iyer, Chennai
The author agrees that the gang rape was bestial but says "men forced to live
like brutes will kill like brutes." Do all poor people have a tendency to be
brutal? Are we going to take a lenient view of heinous crimes on the basis of
the socio-economic conditions of culprits?
P. Saseendran, Koyilandy
I agree the Delhi gang rape convicts were products of our community and did not
have a decent life. But under no circumstances can the crime they committed be
explained. If it was true that judges tend to be influenced by the "collective
conscience of the community," the juvenile accused would also have got the
death penalty. If the death penalty is a barbaric anomaly, the crime and the
way it was committed weren't civilised either.
Shubhda Sharma, Delhi
By arguing that the Delhi gang rape culprits lived in difficult circumstances
and therefore they were brutal, the author has overlooked many poor people who
live with human values and morals in similar circumstances.
Arathy S. Nair, Kottayam
I loathe violence. I consider vengeance a crude biological instinct. That said,
there is a distinction between provoked and unprovoked violence - between
communal riots and what happened in Delhi last year.
Srikant Sekhar Iyer, Bangalore
A person who is guilty of taking another person's life has no right to live.
This simple fact ought to rule both governance and law. Intellectuals whose
hearts bleed for murderers perhaps deserve a special place in heaven. On earth,
we must uphold order and justice.
S.R. Madhu, Chennai
Death is not the answer for a crime committed by a person. Most European
nations have realised this. India should take steps to amend Section 302 of the
Indian Penal Code by abolishing the death penalty and incorporating "life
imprisonment till death in prison" for those convicted for heinous crimes.
K.V. Ramana Murthy, Secunderabad
I am a supporter of capital punishment in the rarest of rare crimes but the way
India implements it is wrong. Of late, media driven trials/ justice are gaining
importance. In Hyderabad, we saw the elite, educated class gathering last
December with candles to protest the Delhi gang rape. But when a 5-year-old
badly injured rape victim was brought in to Niloufar hospital, no candlelight
vigil group came out to support her as there was no TV coverage. This is India.
Judish Raj, Hyderabad
(source: Letters to the Editor, The Hindu)
LEBANON:
Policeman arrested for smuggling chemical-filled sandwiches
Roumieh prison wardens arrested a Lebanese police officer Thursday for trying
to smuggle sandwiches filled with a chemical substance destined for a Fatah
al-Islam prisoner into the detention center.
A security source told The Daily Star that the policeman, a member of a police
unit in charge of Roumieh, was searched at Lebanon's biggest prison north of
Beirut after drawing suspicion.
The source added that when the sandwiches were opened, the wardens were
surprised to find a chemical substance which the source identified by its
French name "carbure."
The police officer told investigators he was going to deliver the sandwiches to
prisoner Charbel Shalitta, who faces the death penalty for killing a young
Lebanese man in Halat, north of Beirut, last year.
When summoned by investigators, Shalitta admitted he was smuggling the
substance to a leader of Fatah al-Islam prisoners at Roumieh.
But Shalitta claimed that he only carried out the leader's order to protect
himself given that he is a Christian imprisoned among the Islamists of Fatah
al-Islam.
The chemical Carbure is used in welding and sometimes as a fuel for heating
homes. It may also be used as a component in making explosives.
(source: The Daily Star)
UNITED KINGDOM/INDONESIA:
EX-PCSO hooded in trial to face death penalty charges
FORMER PCSO Andrea Waldeck was led hooded into an Indonesian court to face
trial for alleged drug smuggling.
Andrea Waldeck used to work as a PCSO in Cheltenham, but she was in a court
room thousands of miles away to face charges of smuggling nearly 1.5kg of
crystal methamphetamine into Indonesia.
When detectives searched her hotel room, they say they found the drug, worth
???3,000, taped to her stomach in 4 plastic packages inside her underwear and
in her bra.
Prosecutors said she was part of "an evil conspiracy" with Indonesian gangsters
and that she carried the drugs into the country through Juanda Airport when she
flew from China, where she is believed to have been living in Dongguan.
She was later arrested by police in Surabaya, Indonesia's 2nd largest city. It
is alleged that the swoop by officers followed a call by Waldeck to an
associate in China to arrange a pick-up for the drugs.
Waldeck is expected to address the court on Monday.
If the 43-year-old is found guilty of the crime, prosecutors said that she
could face the death penalty by firing squad because of the quantity of drugs
and the likelihood of trafficking.
Last month, Indonesia's Supreme Court upheld a death sentence passed on
Cheltenham woman Lindsay Sandiford for smuggling 4.8 kg of cocaine into the
Indonesian island of Bali.
Waldeck's brother, Mark, who lives Wales told reporters that the family was not
prepared to speak until the trial was over and that legal charity Reprieve was
assisting his sister.
Waldeck worked for Gloucestershire police until February last year. She was a
community support officer in Up Hatherley where she worked tirelessly for young
people, according to parish council chairman Stuart Fowler.
Waldeck said in an interview at the weekend that she had tried to keep her
arrest secret from friends in Britain because she could not come to terms with
her situation.
The British consular in Indonesia is providing assistance to Waldeck.
(source: Gloucestershire Echo)
*******************
Britain asks Indonesia not to press for death penalty for ex-PCSO accused of
drug trafficking even before the verdict
Britain has asked Indonesia not to press for the death penalty in the case of
an ex-PCSO accused of trafficking crystal meth just days after the start of her
trial.
Andrea Ruth Waldeck was hooded as she was brought into court to face charges of
possessing 12,000 pounds worth of crystal methamphetamine, from which the drug
Ice is made.
She is alleged to have passed through the city airport after a flight from
China with 1.4 kilograms of drugs hidden in her underwear and strapped to her
body. Waldeck, 43, was arrested by detectives who said they searched her hotel
room and found crystal methamphetamine worth 3,000 pounds taped to her stomach.
Police allege they found the drugs when they raided her hotel room.
In a letter to Miss Waldeck's lawyer, which has also been passed to
prosecutors, the embassy asked for leniency.
'We have received an official letter from the British Embassy in Jakarta
requesting prosecutors reconsider the death penalty request for Andrea.
Further, in order to strengthen the argument, the embassy will send an official
to testify in Andrea's favour,' her lawyer Mr Oktavianto Prasongko told The
Jakarta Post.
He said the embassy would present the facts regarding Miss Waldeck's role as a
community police officer and social worker who dealt with drug addicts while
serving in the UK.
'Most important is the fact she has never been involved with any crime while
serving and living in her country,' said Mr Oktavianto.
Prosecutor Mr Deddy Agus Oktavianto has already asked the court for a mandatory
death sentence for the British woman.
Police are still hunting for an Indonesian man and Miss Waldeck's Nigerian
boyfriend, identified only as Joe.
She told authorities that she was ordered to deliver 3lb (1.47kg) of the highly
addictive drug, known as crystal meth, by her boyfriend.
She was arrested in April after tip off to police.
Until February last year, she worked for Gloucestershire Police.
After leaving her job, Waldeck crossed the globe to become part of what
prosecutors alleged to be an 'evil conspiracy' involving an Indonesian
drug-smuggling gang.
If convicted, she will become the 2nd British woman facing the firing squad in
Indonesia for drug-smuggling.
Grandmother Lindsay Sandiford was sentenced to death in January after cocaine
worth an estimated 1.6millon pounds was found in the lining of her suitcase.
She was arrested in April at her hotel room in Surabaya, Indonesia's 2nd
largest city, after police received a tip-off.
Officers raided her room after she rang an associate in China to arrange for
someone to pick up the crystal meth, it is alleged.
Her trial began this week at Surabaya district court and Waldeck is expected to
give a statement next Monday.
Last month Indonesia's Supreme Court upheld the death sentence for grandmother
Lindsay Sandiford.
Her brother Mark Waldeck, of Brecon, Powys, said yesterday: 'We don't want to
talk about it until the trial is over.'
He said his sister is being assisted by London-based legal charity Reprieve.
The British Embassy has been aware of Waldeck's case since shortly after her
arrest and has provided consular assistance.
(source: Daily Mail)
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