Aug. 27
IRAN:
Iran regime continues spate of executions
Iran's fundamentalist regime on Thursday hanged a man in the central prison of
Sanandaj, western Iran.
The man, identified as Jamal Jaafari, had been imprisoned for 4 years. He was
accused of murder.
6 prisoners, including political prisoner Behrouz Alkhani, were hanged in
Orumieh Prison, western Iran on Wednesday.
On Monday, the mullahs' regime hanged a 25-year-old prisoner identified as
Hossein Karimi in Bandar Abbas Prison, southern Iran. He was accused of a drugs
related charge.
The regime's prosecutor in Mazandaran Province, northern Iran, on Monday said a
prisoner, only identified by the initials R.F., was hanged in Sari Prison on
Sunday.
A statement by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human
Rights Zeid Ra???ad Al Hussein on August 5 said: "Iran has reportedly executed
more than 600 individuals so far this year. Last year, at least 753 people were
executed in the country."
(source: NCR-Iran)
INDIA:
HC to hear Baig's death confirmation petition from tomorrow
The Bombay High Court will commence hearing from tomorrow on a petition filed
by Maharashtra government seeking confirmation of the death penalty given to
Himayat Baig, the lone convict in the 2010 German Bakery blast in Pune.
A sessions court in Pune had in April 2013 convicted and sentenced Baig to
death for carrying out the blast at the famous German Bakery in Pune's upmarket
Koregaon Park in February 2010, in which 17 people were killed and and 58
injured, including foreign nationals.
While the death confirmation petition was filed by Maharashtra government in
the High Court, Baig also filed an appeal challenging his conviction and
claiming that he has been implicated by the prosecution.
A division bench of Justices N H Patil and S B Shukre said they will start
hearing the petitions tomorrow. The court directed police authorities to
produce Baig before it tomorrow. Baig is now lodged in a Nagpur prison.
After the petitions were filed in the High Court, former journalist Ashish
Khetan filed a Public Interest Litigation against the conviction.
He claimed that the "ATS deliberately created bogus evidence, extracted false
confessions by the most inhuman torture, planted explosives in the houses of
the accused and thus implicated an innocent Muslim youth.
(source: Press Trust of India)
******************
Divergences in Law panel on retaining death penalty
Sources privy to the development said at least one member and one of the 2 ex
officio members have expressed their reservation. But a final view is likely to
emerge when the final draft report is adopted in the next couple of days.
The Commission, chaired by Justice (Retd) A P Shah is likely to submit its
report to the Supreme Court this week. Justice (retd) S N Kapoor, Justice
(Retd) Usha Mehra and Mool Chand Sharma are the members of the panel.Law
Secretary P K Malhotra and Legislative Secretary Sanjay Singh -- both from the
Law Ministry -- are the ex officio members. A Law Commission consultation
process on the report saw a majority opposing death penalty.
The Law panel will submit its report to the Supreme Court "sometime" next week
on whether India should continue with death penalty or abolish it. A copy will
also be handed over to the Law Minister as any call on changes in penal
provisions will be taken by Parliament. The report assumes significance as it
comes days after a debate was generated over the hanging of Mumbai serial
blasts convict Yakub Memon.The Commission is working overtime to complete the
report as its 3-year term is coming to an end on August 31. The Supreme Court,
in Santosh Kumar Satishbhushan Bariyar vs Maharashtra and Shankar Kisanrao
Khade vs Maharashtra, had suggested that the Law Commission should study the
death penalty in India to "allow for an up-to-date and informed discussion and
debate on the subject".
(source: oneindia.com)
PAKISTAN----execution
Pak hangs man convicted for multiple murders
Pakistan today hanged a death row prisoner convicted for multiple murders,
taking the total number of convicts executed to 212 since the country lifted
its moratorium on the death penalty in March this year.
Maqbool Hussain was hanged early this morning in Multan central jail in Punjab
province.
Hussain was convicted for murdering 6 people in 1996 to avenge the killing of
his brothers and his petitions were already rejected by higher courts.
Pakistan lifted its moratorium on the death penalty in all capital cases on
March 10.
Executions in Pakistan resumed in December last year, ending a 6-year
moratorium, after Taliban fighters gunned down 154 people, most of them
children, at a school in Peshawar.
Hangings were initially reinstated only for those convicted of terrorism
offences, but in March they were extended to all capital offences.
So far 212 convicts have been executed in total despite the criticism from
United Nations, the European Union, Amnesty International and Human Rights
Watch.
More than 8,000 prisoners are on death row in Pakistan and about 160 convicts
have been executed since the Nawaz Sharif government lifted moratorium on death
penalty.
(source: Press Trust of India)
BURKINA FASO:
Opportunity to abolish the death penalty must be seized
Burkina Faso must seize the opportunity to abolish the death penalty, Amnesty
International said on the eve of parliamentary sessions which will culminate in
an historic vote.
Tomorrow the national transitional parliament will start a series of
discussions with organisations and interested parties regarding the abolition
of the death penalty before putting a bill to the vote on 6 September. The
government has already approved the text of the bill which has been sent back
to the transitional parliament.
"This is a critical moment for Burkina Faso to put itself on the right side of
history by acknowledging the inviolable nature of the right to life"----Alioune
Tine, Amnesty International West Africa director.
"The eyes of the world will be on the country's parliamentarians to see whether
they will join the steady global movement away from the use of the death
penalty and abolish this cruel punishment once and for all."
The last known execution was carried out in Burkina Faso in 1988. If the law is
adopted, Burkina Faso will join the 17 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa which
have abolished the death penalty.
Progress in the region has been good. Over the course of the last 20 years,
Cote d'Ivoire, Senegal and Togo in West Africa, alongside Burundi, Gabon,
Mauritius and Rwanda, have all abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
Earlier in the year Madagascar became the latest country in Africa to abolish
the death penalty for all crimes.
Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception,
regardless of the nature or circumstances of the crime, the guilt, innocence or
other characteristics of the offender or the method used by the state to carry
out the execution.
The death penalty violates the right to life as proclaimed in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights; it is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading
punishment. There is no convincing evidence to support the idea that the death
penalty works as a deterrent to crime, or that it is more effective than other
forms of punishment. This has been confirmed in many United Nations studies
across different countries and regions.
Background
The parliamentary discussions will start tomorrow with the hearing of human
rights organisations that have been campaigning against the death penalty in
Burkina Faso. This will be followed on 4 September by the Report hearing. The
plenary session for the parliament's vote will take place on 6 September.
"The 1st article of the draft bill confirms that the country is an abolitionist
in practice, the second introduces a reference to life sentence in respect of
all texts applicable before the entry into force of the law."----Amnesty
International
The 3rd article states that death sentences already imposed are commuted into
life imprisonment. The 4th article indicates that the law shall be enforced as
a law of the State.
Burkina Faso's laws currently provide for the use of the death penalty in the
penal code, the military code of justice and article 4 of the railways police
law.
(source: Amnesty International)
MALAYSIA:
IGP: Cops back death sentence review, but total scrapping a 'step backward'
The police force backs a review of the mandatory death sentence for
drug-related offences, but abolishing it would be equivalent to taking a "step
backward" in the war against drugs, Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid
Abu Bakar has said.
Khalid said the police would prefer the death sentence to be kept as an option
in the courts, noting that the scrapping of the penalty would give off the
wrong signal to drug dealers, The Star daily reported today.
"We would support the proposed review but we'd prefer the death sentence to
still be made available to the courts," he was quoted saying when asked to
weigh in on calls for the penalty's review.
"The anti-drug war is ongoing as drugs continue to be a major menace
threatening the young people of this country.
"Abolishing the death sentence would be a step backward," he was quoted saying
in the interview.
Tun Hanif Omar, a former Inspector-General of Police, was quoted backing the
complete review of death penalty for drug offences, noting that the mandatory
sentencing in multiple cases had not deterred people taking the risk to make
money.
Hanif said long jail terms can be considered instead, but questioned if
Malaysia is ready to take up the US model where drug traffickers are isolated
in dark prison cells.
On June 11, minister Datuk Paul Low said Putrajaya should review the mandatory
death sentence for drug offences as it is unfair to drug mules who are caught
and hanged, while the kingpins escape
In his speech at the Asian Regional Congress on Death Penalty, the minister in
the Prime Minister's department said he was prepared to do what was necessary
to change the law on drug penalties.
But Malaysian Bar president Steven Thiru has said on the same day that the
government has repeatedly promised a review of the death penalty in the past
few years but there have been no developments since 2009.
Steven urged the government to make current data on death penalty available to
the public, as the information available dates back to November 2013.
In Amnesty International's Death Sentences and Executions Report 2014 in April,
the human rights watchdog noted that at least 38 people in Malaysia were
sentenced to death and 2 executed last year.
It added that 70 % of these convictions were for drug-related offences.
(source: themalaymailonline.com)
GLOBAL:
The death penalty is in its final throes, but too many are still being executed
History may be susceptible to few inexorable predictions. But we are on safe
ground if we say that sacrificing a human being to the false god of deterrence,
or for pure revenge, is not going to look civilised when we peer back from the
22nd century, any more than our own history books laud the Salem witch trials 3
centuries ago.
At one time or another, essentially every country has used capital punishment.
Yet today, of the 195 states recognised by the United Nations, only 37 killer
countries remain: just one in five. Of the rest, 102 have formally abolished,
and 56 have either not executed for more than 10 years, or have imposed a
formal moratorium. The death penalty is in its death throes.
However, just as a wild animal may be most dangerous when cornered, so the
renegade states lash out. Pakistan is an example of this. Nine months ago, the
moratorium imposed by the Pakistan People???s Party (PPP) six years earlier
held firm. In 1979, the then PPP leader, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was hanged by the
military regime; in other words, they had experienced the caprice of capital
punishment first-hand.
However, the current PMLN government, led by Nawaz Sharif, has vowed to execute
everyone on death row - which, at 8261 people, is more than in any other
country. This is meant to deter the terrorists who had carried out the hideous
Peshawar school massacre in December 2014. (All the "jihadis" had willingly
died in the attack, so the deterrent value of executions seemed questionable
even then.)
Yet Pakistan is an example of a country where deterrence works - for
politicians at least. For months, the PMLN government had been discouraged from
carrying out executions, by an EU threat to take away favourable trading
status, which is said to be worth some $1.3bn dollars a year. They have also
been deterred by the terrorists themselves. While those who were said to be
extremists made up at least 13 of the 25 hanged in the first 7 weeks of the
gallows, on 11 February this year the terrorists apparently issued their own
secretive threat of retribution: if any more of their number should be hanged,
they would target the politicians and their families personally.
Iran has doubled the rate at which it hangs people for narcotics violations,
overwhelmingly small-time mules
Naturally, the politicians did not admit anything publicly, but they stopped
executions for a month. The 189 executions since 13 March have included not a
single member of these proscribed groups. In other words, the pretext for
execution is simply false, and yet Pakistan is executing a flood of those with
nothing to do with terrorism - from schizophrenics, paraplegics and juveniles,
many of whom seem to be innocent.
Iran is another country where a recent bloodbath on the gallows may be subject
to western influence. Iran has recently doubled the rate at which it hangs
people for narcotics violations and these are, overwhelmingly, small-time
mules. Iinvestigations by Reprieve show that UK support for Iranian drug police
directly enabled 2,917 hangings, and a western-funded UN drugs programme has
helped to put the necks of more than 2 drug mules in the noose each day this
year.
Another pretext for using the death chamber is common to conservative
Christians and Muslims alike - that the death penalty is somehow mandated by
God. Their take on the lex talionis ("an eye for an eye") is itself dubious, as
such countries impose death for many crimes, including drugs and blasphemy. In
Saudi Arabia the new ruler, King Salman, has more than doubled the number of
prisoners beheaded this year, and more than 1/2 have been foreigners who
generally do not speak Arabic and have little chance of defending themselves.
The United States still has more than 3,000 people on death row, but only five
states have managed to conduct 19 executions between them this year, down more
than 2/3 on 1999, with public support waning. However, the battle is far from
over. The US is less susceptible to international pressure, and the
conservatives take their shibboleths seriously. Recently, some states have had
trouble obtaining lethal injection drugs, for the simple reason that
pharmaceutical companies do not want their product used to kill people. In a
recent supreme court challenge, the conservative 5-justice majority voted to
uphold the lethal execution process, insisting that a prisoner who objects to a
particularly gruesome and painful method of execution must help the state by
suggesting an alternative way to execute him.
China may be the ultimate challenge for abolitionists. Like the US, the regime
is not impressed by international pressure. Despite this, Chinese officials
have stated that abolition will come sometime in the future, when the time is
right. Yet, ironically, they have created the conditions for the internal
backlash they fear from the Chinese people: the population remains strongly
(95%) in favour of the death penalty for the simple reason that official
propaganda says that executions deter crime, and the regime stifles dissent.
When the regime allows meaningful discourse, the facts will inevitably create
the moment for abolition.
For those of us in the trenches of this battle, it is cold comfort that history
will place us on the correct side of the argument. I have watched while 6 of my
clients die: 2 in the gas chamber, 2 in the electric chair, and 2 on the
gurney. Each time, I have come out of the chamber, and looked up at the stars,
wondering how such barbarism has made the world a safer or more civilised
place. For today, there are just too many individual, living human beings
systematically killed, all for no good reason.
(source: The Guardian)
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