Nov. 1
IRAN:
Executions continue in Iran under Rouhani's 'moderate' rule
2 more prisoners have been hanged in Iran - bringing the number of executions
under new 'moderate' Hassan Rouhani to more than 300, according to reports from
inside the regime.
One of the pair put to death on October 31 at Dizel Abad Prison in the western
city Kermanshah was named Payman Qaderi, 30, who had been in prison for more
than 8 years.
Among 16 other prisoners hanged in the city of Zahedan earlier this week was
Ayoub Bahram-zehi, 29, who was arrested in the spring of 2010 and spent 14
months in solitary confinement in the intelligence bureau at Zahedan.
Another Arab Iranian political prisoner was tortured to death in the city of
Ahvaz. His family became aware of the cause of his brutal death as they
collected his body from the coroner, and noticed bruising and fractures on his
ribs and a bullet wound in his arm.
*****************
Letter of executed political prisoner Habibollah Golparipour to his parents
Habibollah Golparipour, the Kurdish political prisoner, who was executed on
Friday, October 25, had written a letter to his parents before his execution.
Bellow is the text of the last letter by Habobollah: "It has been 4 years that
I have put a lot of burden on you. I hope you excuse the trouble I have caused
you. I wish the best of luck for you all.
Tell my mother to look for me go to Abider mountain, whenever she misses me. I
am always with her, so do not think of me. I would like her to be happy in the
following days.I will also be happy, with her happiness. Therefore, if she
wants to see me happy, she should be happy too.
My dear father, I thank you for all you have done for me. I hope you excuse me
for not being a good son. I wish best of luck for all my sister and brothers
and I wish you all the best life."
(source for both: NCR-Iran)
CHINA:
In China, public executions still a part of village life
The clip posted on a Chinese video-sharing website was intriguing: "Villagers
watch shooting of death row inmate."
There was no information on the identity of the criminal, the crime or place
and date of the execution. Chinese media did not report on it, either.
I scrutinized the hundreds of comments posted to the site and looked at the
video footage from every angle. It seemed likely the execution took place in a
rural area of eastern Guizhou province.
I contacted local authorities and law enforcement officials there and learned
that a man was executed in a field in September of last year. It was carried
out with a single pistol shot.
The village is in the mountains of Cengong county. It is surrounded by fields
of corn and terraced rice paddies.
The villagers said the sentence was carried out in a field on the bank of a
river.
Wang Tangjun, 61, lives close to the spot where the execution took place.
He recalled it was a gloriously sunny day when "we heard that morning there
would be an execution by firing squad, and a throng of villagers rushed over."
In the video, laborers, women with parasols and mothers and their children can
be seen standing on a hill and the roofs of homes overlooking the field as the
death row inmate was escorted to the spot to be killed.
A dozen or so vehicles marked with the word "justice" show up, sirens blaring.
They stop near thick undergrowth.
According to local law enforcement officials, 27-year-old Pan Yanlong was put
to death for murdering three men, including one with whom his wife had been
having an affair. The crimes were committed in 2010. Pan was born in the
village of Liyuan, also in Cengong county.
He was led by 5 uniformed guards, weaving their way through the weeds. They
pointed to the side of a footpath between two fields and ordered Pan to kneel.
2 seconds later a gunshot rang out. Spectators up on the hill, some laughing,
ask, "Is it over already?" Just over a minute after the group arrived, Pan was
dead.
His body was left where it fell. It was only retrieved later by his relatives.
Liyuan's vice mayor, 58-year-old Pan Zhuqing, said he was contacted by the
authorities at 7 a.m. on the day in question and told that an execution was
scheduled for 3 p.m.
Pan's parents and siblings, who are migrant workers, were not in the village,
so his aunt and a number of acquaintances went to the prison to meet with him.
A neighbor, Pan Shichao, 45, said, "We barely had time to tell Pan that we had
come in his parents' place since they wouldn't be able to make it in time."
"These kinds of public executions have been performed in this area for a long
time," said the vice mayor, recalling that a rapist was put to death locally
some 30 years ago.
A 22-year-old homemaker who lives in Liyuan recalled watching two people shot
to death near a dry riverbed just over a decade ago. "I think when the
government carries out an execution, they just do it wherever they feel like
it. It's really sloppy."
Villagers do not seem bothered that some executions are performed in public.
The condemned man's grandmother, 81-year-old Zhang Yumei, lamenting that she
could not see her grandson one last time, said, "There is no loss of face just
because it happened in public."
STRONG SUPPORT FOR SETTING AN EXAMPLE
Tong Zongjin, an associate professor at China University of Political Science
and Law, points out that "public executions were a very regular occurrence
until the 1980s." As a lingering effect of the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s
and 1970s, the custom of publicly shaming suspects in so-called public trials
continued long afterward in China.
The Supreme People's Court, China's highest court, however, issued a notice in
1986 banning showy public executions as a deterrent. Public executions began to
cease in the 1990s, mostly in major cities like Beijing and Shanghai. The
recently uploaded video drew much criticism from Internet users. One wrote,
"Death row inmates deserve dignity, too."
Lethal injection and execution by firing squad are the prescribed means of
carrying out death sentences in China, but there are no clear rules on where
they should take place. There are also sharp regional differences in levels of
education and awareness among residents of the law.
"In areas where development has been slow to come, judges, prosecutors and
residents have not changed from old ways of thinking about the rule of law,
democracy and human rights," says Liu Renwen, a senior member of the Department
of Criminal Law at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
As villages do not have facilities to execute people, authorities in some areas
continue to perform executions in outdoor locations.
The Chinese government, meanwhile, has been trying to reduce the number of
executions carried out. In 2011 it abolished the death penalty for 13
non-violent economic crimes such as theft of cultural properties and smuggling.
The actual number of executions carried out in China is not made public as this
is considered a "state secret."
According to estimates by the Dui Hua Foundation, a privately run organization
in the United States that monitors human rights in China, there were
approximately 3,000 executions in China last year. While that is less than the
10,000-plus executions carried out annually in the 1990s, it is still far more
than the 682 executions in 20 countries across the globe confirmed in 2012 by
international human rights group Amnesty International.
Liu, of the Department of Criminal Law, admits that abolishing the death
penalty is unrealistic for now, but he argues that "the Party Central Committee
should instruct officials to at least try not to execute people in front of the
masses and should, from a humanitarian perspective, conduct all executions via
lethal injection, which causes little pain."
(source: Asahi Shimbun)
BAHAMAS:
Execution of justice is top priority of Bahamas Government says Attorney
General
Attorney-General and Minister of Legal Affairs Senator Allyson Maynard Gibson
said the Government of The Bahamas is committed to conducting the most
aggressive anti-crime programme that The Bahamas has ever seen. "The execution
of justice is our top priority for this Government," she said. "Swift Justice
is dramatically reducing the time it takes to bring criminal matters to court.
All of our resources are deployed. All stops are out."
The Attorney General recalled that the death penalty was handed down in the
Supreme Court in the matter of Anthony Clarke a few weeks ago and confirmed
that the death penalty is being sought in the matter of Stephen "Die" Stubbs.
"We intend to fight any delays or any abuse of process with all the resources
of the office," she stated.
Referring to the conviction of Kofhe Goodman, given the death penalty for the
murder of Marco Archer, the Attorney General said "justice was served in the
Bahamas". She addressed the media at a press briefing Tuesday, October 29
shortly after Justice Bernard Turner handed down the ruling in the Supreme
Court. Vinette Graham Allen, Director of Public Prosecutions, Cleopatra
Christie, Consultant, Cynthia Gibbs, Undersecretary and Garvin Gaskin,
Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions attended the briefing. 11-year-old
Archer was last seen alive on Sept. 23, 2011.
She asked the public to support the judges, police and prosecutors in their
prayers.
The Attorney General said the result of 10 courts operating simultaneously in
2014 would be that routinely serious matters are brought to trial within a
constitutionally mandated reasonable period of time of 12 months, no longer
than 18 months. She pointed out that another goal of the establishment of the
10 courts is to break the backlog of cases and routinely bring matters on
within a reasonable period of time.
"We hope that when people see how serious we are about prosecuting serious
crime that they would continue to be the positive impact on reducing crime that
we have already seen we believe will be the result of Swift Justice," the
Attorney General noted.
Ms. Graham Allen said the Swift Justice initiative including working closer
with the police from the initial stages of an investigation is "bearing fruit".
"We intend with the honourable AG's support, directives and guidance to improve
on what we have started. We cannot say we are at the maximum level where we
wish to be but we are working towards where we perfect that scenario. Best
practices show that once the prosecutor gets in the mix from a report is made
to the police then you will see the result that the cases are well prepared,
they are well prosecuted and then the jury will speak. I always maintain the
accused persons will have 1 of 2 choices either plead guilty or you're found
guilty," she added.
(source: Bahama Islands Info)
MALAYSIA:
Sultan's son faces death penalty----Sabah trial set for intruders
The son of the newly crowned sultan of Sulu and 26 other Filipinos who are
facing the death penalty in Sabah will stand trial before a Malaysian court on
January 6, 2014 for their alleged intrusion into Malaysian territory last
February.
High Court Justice Stephen Chung, who set a Nov. 1 hearing, has moved the
proceedings next year, following another appeal for postponement filed by the
Malaysian lawyer of the 27 Filipino suspects, according to Malaysian news
agency Bernama.
The hearings on January 6-10, 15-17, 27-30 and Feb 10-14 will be held at the
Sabah Prisons Department, which will be designated an open court.
Datu Amilbahar Hussin Kiram, the Sabah-based son of new Sultan Esmail Kiram II
of the Sulu Sultanate, along with 26 alleged followers, had pleaded not guilty
to charges of Waging War against Malaysian King Yang di-Pertuan Agong and
sheltering or recruiting individuals to become members of a terrorist group
during their arraignment on June 27.
The young Kiram was said to have the rank of "general" in the Sulu Sultanate's
Royal Security Forces, and was charged with taking an active part in the
intrusion.
In Taguig City, sultanate spokesman, Abraham Idjirani, said the new sultan is
set to announce next week his 1st royal decree on the Sabah claim.
Kiram II has succeeded his elder brother Jamalul Kiram III who died on Oct. 23,
2013.
"The matters on the January 2014 trial will be part of the new decrees and the
Kingdom's policies," Idjirani told Manila Standard.
The sultanate earlier called on the Philippine government to assist the
detained Filipinos.
On May 15, 8 Filipinos were sentenced to life imprisonment by the Malaysian
court for allegedly taking part in the intrusion.
The Sabah conflict started on February 9 when 235 followers of Kiram III sailed
to Lahad Datu, Sabah, to revive the sultanate's claim over the disputed
territory.
The so-called Sulu Royal Security Force was led by the sultan's brother, Raja
Muda Agbimuddin Kiram.
The Malaysian government gave the Sulu gunmen until March 1 to surrender
despite President Aquino's appeal for "maximum tolerance".
The next day, the Malaysian armed forces launched an offensive resulting in the
death of 68 Filipinos and 10 Malaysian soldiers and policemen.
(source: Manila Standard Today)
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