Nov. 26
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES:
Worker could face death sentence over 0.8g of opium; Suspect accused of
intending to promote drug to others
Drugs prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for a worker accused of
possessing 0.8 grams of opium for promotional purposes.
The 35-year-old Iranian worker, S.S., was said to have possessed a green
plastic pouch containing less than one gram of opium, which he intended to
promote to others.
Prosecutors have asked for the implementation of article 48 of the
anti-narcotics law, which stipulates that a suspect who possesses drugs for
promotional purposes could face the death sentence or life imprisonment.
"Yes, I possessed the opium for my personal consumption and not for promotional
purposes or trading," said S.S. before the Dubai Court of First Instance on
Tuesday.
According to the charge sheet the defendant possessed drugs for promotional
purposes and took morphine and codeine.
The defendant confessed to taking drugs.
When asked by presiding judge Mohammad Jamal if he was capable of hiring a
lawyer, S.S. replied: "I cannot do so."
An Emirati anti-narcotics policeman testified that an informant - the suspect's
neighbour - told them that the Iranian suspect possessed drugs that he intended
to promote to others.
"Drugs prosecutors provided us with a search and arrest warrant and allowed us
to arrest the suspect in a sting operation. A police team headed towards the
defendant's home in Naif. The informant was the suspect's neighbour and lived
in the same building. I was present with the informant when he called S.S. and
asked him to meet us in front of the building. When the defendant came the
informant asked him if he had any drugs. The Iranian said he would provide him
with a piece of opium for Dh500 and would provide him with another piece later.
Member of the police squad raided the place and arrested the defendant. Police
seized the opium piece hidden in his pocket," said the policeman.
Prosecution records said the defendant tested positive for drugs.
An Emirati anti-narcotics lieutenant told prosecutors that he committed a human
error when he mistakenly wrote the incorrect time of the suspect's arrest in
the police report.
Presiding judge Jamal said the court will appoint a lawyer to defend S.S. when
it reconvenes on December 17.
****************
Murderers to face firing squad in Dubai----Dubai's highest court upholds death
sentence against duo who killed compatriot
2 Bangladeshi men who killed their compatriot and stole his cigarettes have
lost their appeal and will face a firing squad.
On Monday the 2 defendants, 27-year-old M.G. and 22-year-old R.N., failed to
convince the Dubai Cassation Court to reduce their sentence after contending
they killed the victim in self-defence.
Court records said the defendants planned the murder and lured the victim,
identified as Rahimuldeen, to meet them in a sandy spot behind their labour
accommodation in Al Rashidiya. They then battered his head with a metal rod and
a concrete block. They also kicked and beat him until they were sure he was
dead. The defendants also stole Rahimuldeen's cigarettes, mobile phone and
wallet.
A 3rd Bangladeshi suspect, R.A., was cleared of involvement in the murder.
"I assaulted him but that was in self-defence. I defended myself after we
exchanged blows. He attacked me first and I hit him back," said M.G., who
records said suffered an injury to his left arm.
R.N. pleaded not guilty citing self-defence. R.A. denied any involvement in the
murder or theft.
Financial dispute
According to court records, the victim's brother, S.A., said the murder was
discovered after a financial dispute as M.G. owed his brother Dh3,500.
"Rahimuldeen lent M.G. money that the latter failed to pay back within 2
months. I saw them fighting once when we were in the market. They also fought a
2nd time in the room which we shared. I was worried when my brother did not
return from his night shift. His mobile phone was switched off. M.G. answered
in a suspicious manner when I asked him about my brother's whereabouts. M.G.
didn't participate with us in searching for my brother. Rahimuldeen's body was
discovered behind the accommodation," S.A. said.
Court records said investigations led to the arrest of the 3 defendants.
During prosecution and police questioning, the defendants confessed that they
fought with Rahimuldeen and beat him.
The defendant's court-appointed lawyers contended their clients did not intend
to murder their victim.
They asked the court to modify the charges from murder to assault which led to
Rahimuldeen's death.
(source for both: Gulf News)
JAPAN:
Death penalty to stand in 2005 Hyogo killings
The Supreme Court rejected an appeal Monday by a 47-year-old man who was
sentenced to death for killing 2 women and dismembering their corpses in Hyogo
Prefecture in 2005.
The Supreme Court's No. 1 Petty Bench effectively finalized the death sentence
for Kazuya Takayanagi, ruling that capital punishment is unavoidable because
the accused "committed violent and brutal crimes with a strong murderous
intention."
Presiding Justice Seishi Kanetsuki said Takayanagi's act was "inhumane" as he
thoroughly dismembered the bodies of the women and dumped them to prevent
identification of the victims.
According to lower court rulings, Takayanagi killed his girlfriend, Mika
Hatafuji, and her friend, Yoshimi Tanigawa, both 23, at his home in Aioi, Hyogo
Prefecture, in January 2005 with a hammer and then dumped their remains in the
mountains and at a port in the prefecture. The girlfriend was slain over money
problems, the lower courts had ruled.
(source: Japan Times)
AFGHANISTAN:
Afghan Draft Text Raises Fears Of Shari'a-Fueled Return To Stoning
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has appealed to the Afghan authorities to nix a
legislative effort to instate execution by stoning for "moral crimes" that
involve adultery.
The group says it has seen draft provisions from "a working group led by the
Justice Ministry" that include the stoning provision, and it seeks to enlist
the help of lame-duck President Hamid Karzai to defeat the text.
The draft legislation sets the punishment for extramarital sex between
unmarried individuals at 100 lashes. Sex outside marriage is punished by
"[s]toning to death if the adulterer or adulteress is married," with the
execution to take place "in public in a predetermined location," according to
HRW.
Such a scenario is chillingly reminiscent of Afghanistan's hard-line Islamist
Taliban regime in the mid- and late-1990s, when stonings were carried out in
front of huge crowds at Kabul's Ghazi Stadium.
In its statement, issued on the International Day for the Elimination of
Violence Against Women on November 25, HRW urges the international donors of
billions of dollars to Afghanistan to "send a clear message to President Hamid
Karzai that inclusion of stoning in the new penal code would have an immediate
adverse effect on funding for the government."
Karzai, whose final term ends after an election in April, is a relative liberal
but has generally tread carefully when it comes to opposing or overriding
Afghanistan's most conservative religious and cultural forces.
As the United States and its allies try to hand over greater security
responsibilities to Kabul, women's rights are one of the major areas of
concern. (The nature of the U.S. relationship with Afghanistan after 2014 is
still up in the air, highlighted by the weekend confusion over a so-called
Bilateral Security Agreement.)
Brad Adams, HRW's Asia director, is quoted as saying that "[i]t is absolutely
shocking that 12 years after the fall of the Taliban government, the Karzai
administration might bring back stoning as a punishment.... President Karzai
needs to demonstrate at least a basic commitment to human rights and reject
this proposal out of hand."
HRW goes on to say:
Stoning was used as a punishment for adultery during the Taliban government, in
power from the mid-1990s to 2001. The fall of the Taliban government led to the
establishment of a new government that quickly signed on to international human
rights conventions and pledged to protect human rights in Afghanistan,
especially women???s rights. The penal code currently in force in Afghanistan,
which was passed in 1976, makes no provision for the use of stoning as a
punishment. While there have been isolated reports of executions by stoning in
Afghanistan since 2001, there is no indication that any instances were condoned
by the government.
The penalty of death by stoning violates international human rights standards,
including prohibitions on torture and cruel and inhuman punishment. The
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Afghanistan has
ratified, allows countries that continue to impose the death penalty - a
dwindling minority ??? to do so only for the most serious offenses, which
precludes such a sentence for adultery. Human Rights Watch opposes the death
penalty in all circumstances because of its inherent cruelty.
As if a fresh reminder were needed of Afghan hard-liners' appetite for stoning,
two young people in a province north of Kabul were gunned down his weekend
after fleeing a stoning sentence handed down by village elders for trying to
elope.
Reuters offered details of the incident:
"While they were fleeing, suddenly their car crashed and locals arrested them.
People wanted to stone them on the spot but some elders disagreed," the
provincial head of women's affairs, Khadija Yaqeen, told Reuters on Monday.
"The next day they decided and shot both of them dead in public. Our findings
show that the woman's father had ordered to shoot both man and woman."
The public execution was confirmed by the provincial police chief's spokesman,
who said the killings were unlawful.
A member of the Afghan committee drafting the legislation to revive the
practice of stoning, Rohullah Qarizada, defended the move, telling Reuters, "We
are working on the draft of a Shari'a penal code where the punishment for
adultery, if there are 4 eyewitnesses, is stoning." He added, "The judge asks
each witness many questions, and if one answer differs from other witnesses
then the court will reject the claim."
Qarizada is head of the Afghan Independent Bar Association.
The list of countries where the punishment is still invoked is surprisingly
long. It includes places where such executions are enshrined in law and may be
ordered by courts -- Indonesia (Aceh), Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and northern
Nigeria -- as well as areas where more makeshift proceedings have resulted in
stoning sentences -- in Pakistan, Iraq, Mali, and Somalia, and indeed
Afghanistan.
In Iran, stoning remains on the books although authorities claim it is no
longer carried out as a result of a decade-old moratorium. That has not stopped
the trickle of occasional, unconfirmed reports of executions by stoning in
Iran, the latest just last month (when a foreign-based rights group claimed
that the bodies of four women turned up in Tehran that appeared to have been
stoned to death, one year after a similar report). What's worse, the powerful
Guardians Council in April was said to have rebuffed a legislative effort to
remove stoning from Iranian law.
Alarmingly, the list of countries that prescribe death by stoning is growing.
Just last month, Brunei's sultan, Hassanal Bolkiah, ordered that "amputation
and death by stoning...be added to Brunei's penal code next year as the
oil-rich and increasingly conservative Islamic kingdom applies the strictures
of Sharia," according to "The Australian."
(source: Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty)
INDIA:
Indian couple convicted of double murder
An Indian dentist couple could face the death penalty after a judge on Monday
convicted them of murdering their teenage daughter and a servant in a
sensational trial that riveted the country.
Rajesh and Nupur Talwar are due to be sentenced on Tuesday after being found
guilty of slitting the throats of Aarushi, 14, and their Nepalese live-in help
Hemraj Banjade, with "clinical precision" at their home in an affluent New
Delhi suburb in May 2008.
"The penalty is life imprisonment or death -- there are only 2 sentences,"
prosecutor R.K. Saini told a horde of reporters at the decrepit court complex
in Ghaziabad, a satellite city of the Indian capital.
Saini, who declared he had "done his duty", said he would reveal on Tuesday
whether he would argue for the death penalty for the Talwars, who were
immediately taken into custody.
Investigators alleged that the Talwars killed Aarushi in a fit of rage when
they found her with the 45-year-old servant in an "objectionable" situation,
while the couple insist they are victims of a bungled police probe and a media
witch-hunt.
Police suggested the double murder was a so-called "honour killing".
The trial came as India increasingly focuses on violent crimes against women
following the fatal gang rape of a student in Delhi last year that sparked
national outrage.
The case has spawned a nation of armchair detectives debating every twist in
the investigation, turned the Talwars into household names and polarised public
opinion.
The prosecution conceded there was no forensic or material evidence against the
couple, and based its case on the "last-seen theory" -- which holds that the
victims were last seen with the accused.
"We only have truth on our side, the facts and evidence as we knew them,"
Vandana Talwar, Rajesh's sister-in-law, told reporters.
"But we're pitched against an organisation (the Central Bureau of
Investigation) that believes and deals with fabrications, manipulations, with
suppressing and hiding all the facts showing the parents are innocent," she
said.
(source: Agence France-Presse)
MALAYSIA:
Customs thwart Indian national's attempt to smuggle 45kg drug at KLIA
It was no 'Chennai express' for the man from Tamil Nadu who was 'derailed' by
Malaysian customs officers when they saw through his bid to smuggle 45kg of
methamphetamine hidden within henna hair dye packages to hoodwink the
authorities.
The drug, also known as 'ice', was worth about RM8.54 million and its seizure
is the largest this year, by the Royal Malaysian Customs Department.
The suspect, in his 30s, was nabbed about 7.30pm last Thursday, at the KL
International Airport when customs enforcement officers stumbled on 5 parcels
containing the drug in his baggage.
Customs director-general Datuk Seri Khazali Ahmad said the man had packed the
drugs in black plastic before concealing it under packages of henna hair dye to
throw the authorities off-guard.
He said the man was remanded for seven days to facilitate investigations under
Section 39 (B) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952. The foreigner faces the
mandatory death penalty upon conviction.
"This year alone, the suspect who had posed as an electrical goods dealer had
been in and out of the country for 16 times, having stayed here for 2 to 3 days
on each trip," he told reporters at his office here yesterday.
Meanwhile, Khazali noted that most international drug trafficking cases this
year involved Indian nationals who used various modus operandi while using the
KLIA as transit point before taking a 'connecting flight' to other airports in
the country, using domestic flights.
"They assume that when changing flights at KLIA, we will not check their
luggage at other airports," he said.
He said, between January and last month, the customs department had thwarted
120 different attempts to smuggle/traffic drugs worth about RM114 million
nationwide.
Of the total, 61 cases involving seizures worth about RM44.39 million occurred
at the KLIA, added Khazali.
(source: The Borneo Post)
************************
Malaysia adjourns hearing on 2 death-row RI brothers
The panel of judges at the Appeal Court in Putrajaya, Malaysia, has decided to
adjourn the hearing on the appeal petition of 2 Indonesian brothers found
guilty of murder and sentenced to death by a lower court.
The judges decided to adjourn the hearing until Jan. 28, 2014 because they said
they had not yet thoroughly studied the appellants' petition, even though it
was sent to the court on Aug. 1, according to a statement by the Indonesian
Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, made available to The Jakarta Post on Monday.
The appellants' lawyers urged the judges to allow the hearing to proceed with
verbal explanations by the legal team of the appeal petition but the judges
rejected this saying they were afraid the hearing could be "unjust and unfair"
if all the judges had not read the whole petition thoroughly beforehand, added
the statement.
On Oct. 18, 2012, the Shah Alam High Court declared Frans Hiu, 22, and his
brother Dharry Frully, 20, guilty of the murder of Malaysian citizen Kharti
Raja on Dec. 3, 2010 and sentenced both to death. "The embassy and the retained
legal team are confident the appellants can avoid the death penalty because
many facts were ignored by the judges in the high court," the statement said.
The brothers denied they killed Kharti. They told the court that Kharti died
after the 2 Indonesians and a Malaysian co-worker were woken by Kharti's sudden
arrival in their lodgings in the shop-house where they worked.
Kharti, a suspected burglar, had failed to gain entry through the back door and
instead attempted to enter through the ceiling and woke the inhabitants when he
fell through it.
The 2 brothers tied Kharti up and dragged him outside and waited for the police
to arrive. They said Kharti was under the influence of drugs or alcohol
allowing them to apprehend him easily.
Frans claimed Kharti was already dying when they dragged him out of the
premises. However, the indictment stated that the two killed the victim through
blunt force trauma.
Manpower and Transmigration Minister Muhaimin Iskandar previously said that the
legal proceedings had been unjust. "The Malaysian co-worker who also faced the
same murder charge was acquitted. It is discriminatory," he said.
Lawyers from the Gooi & Azura law firm, who have been appointed by the
Indonesian Embassy to provide legal assistance to the brothers, said that the
appeal court must grant the appeal for at least 2 reasons.
"The judges in the lower court failed to disclose the specific cause of
Kharti's death," said lawyer Gooi Song Seng, as quoted by Antara. Secondly a
forensic examination had confirmed a substantial presence of methamphetamine in
the victim's body, sufficient to cause a heart attack.
Meanwhile, the government has begun the repatriation from Malaysia of an
Indonesian jailed for 31 years for armed robbery. Shamsuddin bin Yaakob, 59,
will be returned to his hometown in Sumbawa, West Nusa Tenggara, according to a
statement from the Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur made available to the
Post on Monday.
Shamsuddin was arrested in 1982 and subsequently found guilty and sentenced to
life imprisonment on June 26, 1989.
(source: Jakarta Post)
IRAQ----executions
Iraq executes 11 prisoners over terror charges
The Iraqi Ministry of Justice on Tuesday said it executed 11 convicted
prisoners 2 days ago over terror charges, despite international calls on
Baghdad to end the death penalty in the country.
A statement issued by the ministry said that the convicts were all Iraqi men,
adding the executions were carried out on Sunday after the presidency approved
their penalties according to the Iraqi law.
The increasing of executions in Iraq sparked calls to stop use of capital
punishment by the UN mission in Iraq, the European Union and some international
human rights groups, which have criticized the lack of transparency in the
proceedings of the Iraqi courts.
Death penalty in Iraq was suspended on June 10, 2003, but was reinstated on
Aug. 8, 2004.
(source: Xinhua news)
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