Aug. 10
CHINA:
Former Senior Officer Gets Death Penalty with Reprieve
A military court on Monday sentenced Gu Junshan, former deputy head of the
General Logistics Department of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, to death
with a 2-year reprieve for corruption.
Gu was found guilty of embezzlement, accepting bribes, misuse of state funds,
bribery and abuse of power. He has been deprived of his political rights for
life and had all his personal assets confiscated, according to a statement from
the court.
Gu was also stripped of his rank of lieutenant general, and all the illicit
funds and materials involved will be confiscated, the statement said, adding
that the military procuratorate had added the charge of bribery during the
trial.
(source: English CRI)
UNITED KINGDOM:
We May Have Abolished the Death Penalty Here Long Ago, Yet We Remain Involved
in Its Continuing Use Worldwide
To mark 100 days of the 1st Conservative government in nearly 20 years,
HuffPost UK is running 100 Days of Dave, a special series of blog posts from
grassroots campaigners to government ministers, single parents to 1st-year
students, reflecting on what's worked and what hasn't, whilst looking for
solutions to the problems we still face.
Earlier this month, 4 August, Pakistan hanged Shafqat Hussain, who was
sentenced to death while he was still a child. Depressingly, this is not an
isolated event. In June, Aftab Bahadur went to the gallows, even though he was
just 15 when he was convicted. And in May, Faisal Mehmood was executed - even
though the prosecutor in his case had argued against a death sentence as he was
underage.
This might seem like an issue that is very distant from the human rights record
of the British government. Yet it comes at a time when the Foreign Office has
quietly scrapped its death penalty strategy; when the Home Office continues to
support the efforts of Pakistan and other countries to send people to the
hangman's noose; and while an unknown number of British citizens continue to
languish in death row cells in Pakistan and around the world.
The government's widely-praised strategy for ending the death penalty had been
in place since 2010, and the timing of the decision to scrap it is deeply
unfortunate. Around the world - with a few happy exceptions, notably the US -
the death penalty is seeing a resurgence: at the time of writing, Pakistan had
executed over 200 people so far this year, while both Saudi Arabia - now at 110
- and Iran are set to exceed the substantial totals they reached in 2014. China
hides its death penalty behind a wall of secrecy, but the numbers of victims
each year are thought to be in the thousands. Egypt continues to sentence
people to death by the hundreds in appalling mass-trials.
At the same time as dropping the strategy, the FCO admitted that it would be
scrapping the term 'human rights countries of concern' - a label which had
previously caused annoyance to countries such as China, Iran, Pakistan and
Saudi Arabia.
The depressing conclusion is that the government made these changes in order to
have a quieter life when it came to human rights issues. Ministers were often
questioned by MPs and others on how Saudi Arabia, for example, could be both a
human rights country of concern - according to the FCO - and a priority market
for British weapons - according to the Department for Business.
Similarly, a loosening of the government's obligations on the death penalty and
human rights may make it easier - and less embarrassing - for the Home Office
to continue with policies which contribute to the death penalty overseas. This
is the result of an ill-thought-out counter-narcotics strategy, which sees
millions of pounds of UK public money lavished on security forces in countries
such as Pakistan - funding which then helps send non-violent, alleged drug
offenders to the hangman's noose.
In short, a lack of safeguards on who we are prepared to fund, and on what
conditions, means that UK cash is contributing to hangings overseas. The
victims of those executions are, at worst, exploited drug mules. But all too
often, due to the fondness of the police in Pakistan for extracting confessions
through torture, they are likely innocent.
To add insult to injury, among those victims are a number of British citizens.
It is hard to say how many - Pakistan's government has said five Britons are on
death row for drugs offences, while the UK has said it is aware of none, and is
disturbingly incurious about the discrepancy. Britain is now in the crazy
position of having one department - the Home Office - helping sentence its
citizens to death, while another - the FCO - tries with varying success to stop
them from being executed. Joined-up government it is not.
These are knotty problems, but as so often a bit more openness would help us
towards a solution. Yet, while the prime minister is fond of the clich??? that
"sunlight is the best disinfectant", his government appears to be heading in
the opposite direction.
The Home Office is so tight-lipped about its counter-narcotics programmes that
Reprieve is having to fight a court case to extract the most minimal
information about what measures it takes on human rights abuses - possibly
because they know that such measures are inadequate to the point of being
non-existent. Meanwhile, a renewed push against Freedom of Information - a
cause which all too often is favoured by the government of the day, whatever
its stripe - is taking place.
But no amount of censorship can conceal the fundamental point: that while we
may have abolished the death penalty in this country long ago, we remain
involved in its continuing use around the world - and therefore responsible for
doing what we can to bring it to an end. As a start, we need to see the Home
Office open up a bit more - and the FCO think again about whether the best way
to react to the abuses of our allies it to tip-toe around them.
(source: Clare Algar is the executive director of Reprieve----Huffington Post)
EGYPT:
Egyptian court issues 10 preliminary death sentences in 'El-Zawahiri cell'
case----The brother of Al Qaeda leader Ayman El-Zawahiri will be sentenced
along with 58 remaining defendants on 27 December
Cairo Criminal Court issued preliminary death penalty sentences to 10
defendants convicted of running a terrorist organisation connected with
Al-Qaeda.
Another 58 defendants charged in the case, including Mohamed El-Zawahiri, the
brother of Al-Qaeda chief Ayman El-Zawahiri, did not receive sentences on
Monday.
The court will issue its verdict on the remainder of the defendants on 27
December.
The defendants were charged with operating a terrorist organisation which aims
use force in order to oust the regime, attack police personnel, attack Egyptian
Christians, and commit terrorist attacks to spread chaos.
52 of the defendants are in custody, 13 are being tried in absentia, and 3 have
died.
In 1999, Mohamed El-Zawahiri was sentenced to death in absentia for a handful
of terrorist attacks in Egypt, including the 1997 killing of 62 foreign
tourists in the Upper Egyptian city of Luxor.
In June 2011, a military court accepted El-Zawahiri's appeal against the death
verdict and the case was closed. He subsequently returned to Egypt.
El-Zawahiri is currently behind bars.
(source: Ahram Online)
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