Aug. 15
IRAN:
At least 32 prisoners executed in past few weeks
The machinery of execution and torture in clerical regime is running non-stop
and claims victims from people of different cities. In addition to the brutal
execution of Sirvan Najavi, the Kurdish political prisoner who was hanged on
August 9 by the regime's henchmen in Tabriz, the streets and lanes and various
prisons in the country were the scene of the hanging of prisoners.
On August 9 2 young men, 24 and 25 years old, were executed in Hafez Circle in
the city of Mashhad. On August 3, a prisoner was executed in public in Eghlid
in Fars province.
On August 10 a female prisoner named Fatemeh Haddadi, 39, mother of an 8 year
old girl, was hanged in Gohardasht Prison in Karaj. Earlier, Paridokht Mowlaee,
43, mother of a child, had been hanged on July 29 in Ghezel Hesar Prison after
having been transferred from the consultation hall of Varamin's Gharechak
Prison.
Execution of 3 prisoners, on August 12 in Gohardasht Prison in Karaj, execution
of a Kurdish 20-year-old prisoner in the central prison of Sanandaj and the
hanging of a 27-year-old prisoner, Hossein Bozorgnejad, in the central prison
of Esfahan on August 4, the hanging of seven prisoners in prisons of Rafsanjan
and Yazd August 4, the execution of Mansour Yousefi, a Kurd prisoner on August
3 in Orumiyeh prison, and the execution of 3 prisoners at the central prison in
Rasht on August 1, and mass execution of 10 prisoners on July 28 in the central
prison of Qom, are among the crimes that have been published in recent days
passing through the wall of repression and censorship of the regime.
In the meantime the cruel punishment of amputation of hand and foot of 2
prisoners in the central prison of Mashhad was carried out. (State media,
August 3).
Amnesty International, referring to the shocking statistics of 700 executions
in the 1st 6 months of the year, in a statement on July 23 said: "Iran's
staggering execution toll for the 1st half of this year paints a sinister
picture of the machinery of the state carrying out premeditated,
judicially-sanctioned killings on a mass scale."
Religious fascism ruling Iran that the Iranian people call "The Godfather of
ISIS", in the face of rising public discontent and hatred, continually
increases the dimensions of execution and torture and suppression.
(source: Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran)
EGYPT:
Egypt's deposed president Mursi appeals death sentence: lawyer.
The court-appointed legal team representing deposed Egyptian president Mohamed
Mursi filed an appeal on Saturday at the country's highest court challenging
sentences of life imprisonment and death handed down in June, Mursi's lawyer
said.
The Cairo criminal court sentenced Mursi to death over a mass jail break during
the 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak as well as life imprisonment for giving
state secrets to Qatar. It also issued sweeping punishments against the
leadership of the Musim Brotherhood, Egypt's oldest Islamic group.
The general guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Badie, and 4 other leaders
were also handed the death penalty. More than 90 others, including influential
cleric Youssef al-Qaradawi, were sentenced to death in absentia.
The sentences were part of a crackdown launched after an army takeover stripped
Mursi of power in 2013 following protests against his rule. Hundreds of
Islamists have been killed and thousands arrested.
The government has declared the Brotherhood a terrorist group and has accused
it of fomenting an Islamist insurgency since Mursi's removal, but the group has
said it is committed to political change through peaceful means only.
Mursi has not appointed a lawyer to defend himself and has refused to recognize
the legitimacy of the court proceedings, saying he remains the legitimate
president of the country.
The government has said the judiciary is independent and it never intervenes in
its work.
(source: Reuters)
INDIA:
A hanging in India
Yakub Memon, a chartered accountant and the brother of a notorious gangster now
living in self-imposed exile, was hanged for complicity in the planning and
execution of serial bomb blasts that killed 257 people in Mumbai in 1993. The
hanging, India's 1st in 3 years, has prompted reactions ranging from dismay to
scarcely concealed bloodlust. And it has intensified the domestic debate over
the death penalty.
To be sure, no one suggests that India's judicial system did not function
properly in Memon's case. He was convicted according to due process of law, and
his punishment was in accordance with valid statutes. During his 21 years
behind bars, Memon exhausted every possible appeal available to him, including
one for presidential clemency. The Supreme Court even held an emergency hearing
at 2:30 in the morning, just hours before the execution was set to occur,
before deciding to allow it to proceed. But the question remains: Should
capital punishment be on the books at all?
As an opposition legislator, I attracted considerable opprobrium for voicing my
opinion, on the morning of Memon's hanging, that it should not be. I expressed
my sadness that our government has killed a human being, whatever his crimes
may have been. State-sponsored killing diminishes us all, I added, by reducing
us to murderers, just like those we are punishing.
My view is not popular in India, and my own party disclaimed my statement. But
my position is based on ample evidence that the death penalty does not actually
deter the crimes it punishes. Data collected by the Death Penalty Project at
Delhi's National Law University demonstrate conclusively that there is no
statistical correlation between applying the death penalty and preventing
murder. This evidence echoes similar findings in other countries.
My statements were also motivated by problems with the way capital punishment
is imposed in India. The Supreme Court has declared that the death penalty
should be applied only in the "rarest of the rare" cases. And, indeed, the last
3 executions in the country stemmed from terrorist offenses that threatened or
took a large number of lives.
But the decision to impose capital punishment remains highly subjective.
Indeed, whether the death penalty is meted out depends on a number of
variables, beginning with judicial and social biases. Public outrage,
potentially fueled by inflammatory media coverage, can push for a harsher
sentence, especially in cases relating to terrorism or crimes against women.
Economic status also comes into play, with poor criminals being executed much
more often than wealthy ones, not least because they cannot afford high-quality
legal representation. And the president's decision to commute a sentence is
subjective.
A 1983 case held that one way to determine whether a crime meets the "rarest of
the rare" requirement is whether the community's "collective conscience" has
been "so shocked" that it expects those wielding judicial power to inflict the
death penalty, regardless of their personal opinions. This leaves much room for
the arbitrary and disproportionate application of capital punishment.
From 2010 to 2013, 436 death sentences were handed down by lower courts. Of
those, 280 were commuted to life imprisonment, with many of the other cases
likely to remain in limbo for decades. As for the death sentences that have
already been carried out - 2 in that 4-year period - it is impossible to
ascertain the objective criteria that made the crimes in question more heinous
or "rarer" than those that did not merit execution. Ambiguity and subjectivity
have no place in matters of life and death. Yet, when it comes to the
imposition of capital punishment, both are prominent. That makes it all the
more difficult to justify the practice.
Just a couple of weeks before Memon's execution, India's Law Commission, a
government body composed of retired judges and legal experts that works for
legal reform, organized consultations to assess the effectiveness of the
provisions governing the death penalty in India and the purpose of the penalty
itself. Unsurprisingly, based on the evidence and the opinions presented at the
Law Commission's hearings, there was a general consensus that the courts are
unable to adopt a fair and non-discriminatory approach to the death penalty,
and support for its abolition was overwhelming. That will not happen any time
soon. The Indian public overwhelmingly supports the death penalty, especially
for convicted terrorists. The debate over Memon's hanging was often emotional,
with media interviewing survivors of the Mumbai blasts. Globally, India is part
of a dwindling minority. More than 130 countries have abolished the death
penalty. 25 countries have it on the books, but have not executed anyone for
decades. That leaves roughly 30 countries that still apply it.
India's membership in this group has international repercussions; for example,
European Union countries will not extradite criminals to countries where they
may face execution. But the real problem is deeper: Capital punishment is, at
its core, about nothing more than retribution.
It may be tempting to declare that anyone who kills (or participates in
killing) innocent people does not deserve to live. But is revenge a worthy
motive for a state's actions, especially toward its own citizens? One day, I am
sure, it will see the light. Until then, the lonely battle for its abolition
must continue.
(source: Column, Sashi Tharoor----Arab News)
**************
Man sentenced to death for rape and murder of 2 year old girl
The sessions court here sentenced a man to death for rape and murder of a 2-
year-old girl.
Additional District and Sessions judge A C Chaphale also sentenced Shatrughan
Baban Mashram (21) to death on 2 counts (for murder under section 302 of IPC
and for fatal injuries inflicted during a rape which may cause death under a
sub-section of section 376).
The incident had taken place at Jatala village in Ghataji tehsil of Yavatmal
district of Maharashtra on February 11, 2013.
According to the police, Mashram told the victim, who was playing outside a
temple where a community feast had been organized, that her father had asked
her to return home and she should come with him.
He took her to an under-construction school building where he raped her. The
girl's body was later found by the parents; she had 10 bite marks on her body
with the flesh bitten off in some places.
Mashram was subsequently arrested.
Public prosecutor P V Gadbaile demanded death sentence for the accused,
considering the brutality of the crime.
The court upheld his argument that it was a crime of the "rarest of rare"
category case and awarded Mashram death penalty.
(source: abplive.in)
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