Oct. 14
INDIA:
TN contractor sentenced to death for setting ablaze 3 workers
A local court today sentenced a contractor from Tamil Nadu to death for killing
6 of his workers by setting them on fire in their room here 6
years ago, holding that it would fall in the category of "rarest of rare" case.
Thomas Alva Edison (28) from Tuticorin district in Tamil Nadu killed 3 of his
workers- Dassi, Vijay and Suresh - in February, 2009 for monetary gain of
avoiding paying wage arrears due to them, according to the prosecution.
Andrews, another person, also from the neighbouring state, survived the murder
attempt.
Awarding the capital punishment, Additional Sessions Judge E M Muhammad Ibrahim
found that the "multiple murder" committed by the convict would come within the
category of "rarest of rare" case which warranted death penalty as argued by
the Additional Public Prosecutor.
The court said that going by materials available on record, "it is clear that
the accused has committed multiple murder with deliberate intention and this is
a gravest case of extreme culpability."
"The accused is a threat to the society as he used to create problem wherever
he works," the judge said.
Though Edison was an young man of 24 years as on the date of offence, the court
said the three deceased persons were younger than him or in the same age group.
They were roasted alive and they succumbed to burn injuries while another young
man, who survived, suffered more than 65 % burns, the court said.
The court said it was clear from the available evidence that the multiple
murder was "premeditated, diabolic and a planned one" and committed in an
extremely brutal manner.
His lawyer K P Madhu said an appeal will be filed against the verdict in the
Kerala High Court soon.
(source: Press Trust of India)
*************
Kochi: Contractor gets death penalty for killing 3
An additional district sessions court in Kochi on Wednesday awarded capital
punishment to a contractor for killing three workers by setting them on fire.
The convict, Thomas Alva Edison, 28, had killed the 3 persons, natives of Tamil
Nadu, in their room in Kochi in February, 2009.
Edison set the migrant workers on fire in their room when they sought wages.
Edison, hailing from Tamil Nadu, too had sustained burns as he was at the room,
where the workers were burned alive.
Edison had got bail in 2012 but went into hiding at the time of trial. He was
arrested in April this year.
(source: Indian Express)
RUSSIA:
Communist MP proposes reintroducing death penalty for terrorists
A key member of the Communist caucus in the State Duma has urged fellow
lawmakers to allow the death penalty for terrorists as an extraordinary measure
and “a supreme measure of social protection.”
“All activities of any terrorists are aimed at murdering innocent people. They
are perfectly aware of the criminal nature of their actions,” MP Vadim Solovyov
said in a parliamentary speech on Tuesday. “These killers must know that we
will apply to them the harshest measure of social protection which is the death
penalty.”
Solovyov suggested that reintroducing the death penalty would help to bring
down the terrorist threat in the country, adding that this threat can increase
in connection with Russia’s active participation in the operation against
Islamic State terrorists in Syria.
“Unfortunately, I fear that the terrorist underground could step up its
activities in connection with the Syria events and civilians would become their
victims. Our government is guided by some Western values that are
incomprehensible to me and they just cannot decide on the cancellation of the
death penalty moratorium. But we need to return to capital punishment, the
sooner the better,” the Moskva news agency quoted Solovyov as saying.
The comment came a few days after Russian security services reported that they
had managed to thwart a major terrorist attack in Moscow, adding that the
plotters had connections with Islamic State (IS, previously known as ISIL and
ISIS).
Russia introduced a moratorium on the death penalty in 1999 as it sought
membership in the Council of Europe. The Constitution still allows it for
especially grave crimes and after a guilty verdict by a jury court.
Many Russian politicians and officials, including the Interior Minister and the
head of the top federal law enforcement agency urged to return to capital
punishment as a measure against terrorists and criminals who target children.
Opinion polls held in 2013 and 2014 showed the majority of people supported the
return of the death penalty as an exception and for especially grave crimes.
In late 2013 an MP from the nationalist-populist LDPR party proposed to execute
convicted terrorists, pedophiles and people who involve children in illegal
drug use. The Lower House rejected the bill without a hearing.
(source: rt.com)
SRI LANKA:
A little light administrative duty for Sri Lanka's new hangmen
Sri Lanka said on Wednesday it has hired 2 new executioners to replace
the previous hangman, who quit soon after seeing the gallows for the
1st time, even though capital punishment has not been carried out there for
almost 40 years.
No one has been executed in the tropical South Asian nation since 1976 and the
role of executioner is described as "light administrative work only", even
though there are 1,116 convicts on death row.
"It doesn't matter whether the government wants to execute or not," said
Prisons Commissioner General Rohana Pushpakumara.
"In the event the government wants to carry out executions, we should be
prepared," he told Reuters.
Death sentences have been routinely commuted to life in jail since 1976, even
though Sri Lanka only officially acknowledged last month it was no longer
carrying out capital punishment.
More than 1/2 of those who are on death row have lodged appeals against their
sentences, Pushpakumara said.
The predominantly Buddhist Indian Ocean nation has witnessed a sharp rise in
child abuse, rape, murder and drug trafficking since the end of a 26-year civil
war with Tamil Tiger separatists in 2009, political analysts have said.
That has prompted some lawyers and politicians to call for the reinstatement of
the death penalty.
The position of executioner fell vacant in March 2014 when the previous hangman
quit weeks after he was hired, citing stress, soon after he saw the gallows in
the capital, Colombo, for the 1st time.
2 other hangmen hired in 2013 failed to show up for work.
(source: channelnewsasia.com)
BANGLADESH:
Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami chief challenges death penalty
Head of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami group asks supreme court to review death
penalty handed down against him
Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, secretary-general of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami
group, has asked the country’s supreme court to review a death penalty handed
down against him earlier, which was upheld by the court on Wednesday.
Along with Mujahid, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader Salahuddin Quader
Chowdhury, who has also been slapped with a death sentence, also has only one
day left to file a petition against the sentence before the court.
The supreme court’s appellate division upheld the sentences against both men on
June 16 and July 29 respectively.
Both of them had 15 days to file their petitions beginning from the day that
the court delivered the sentences.
The International Crimes Tribunal, a special domestic court, had found Mujahid
guilty of 5 out of the 7 charges leveled against him and sentenced him to death
in July of 2013.
Two top Jamaat-e-Islami leaders, Abdul Qader Molla and Mohammad Kamaruzzaman,
were also convicted — and subsequently hanged — in 2013 and in April of this
year respectively.
The 2 had served in various government posts in Bangladesh at different times.
Mujahid had served with the BNP’s coalition and Chowdhury was the parliamentary
affairs advisor for Khaleda Zia when she was in power from 2001 to 2006.
Chowdhury hails from a political family in the port city of Chittagng. His
father, Fazlul Quader Chowdhury, had opposed Bangladesh’s independence from
Pakistan when he had served as speaker of Pakistan’s parliament.
The International Crimes Tribunal was established in 2009 to investigate war
crimes committed in 1971.
Bangladeshi opposition parties and international organizations such as Human
Rights Watch have criticized the recent death sentences and expressed concerns
about the accused not getting a fair trial.
Bangladesh accuses the Pakistani army along with local collaborators of killing
up to 3 million people during its 1971 war for independence.
(source: videonews.us)
IRAN:
Execution of 2 juvenile offenders in just a few days makes a mockery of Iran’s
juvenile justice system
Reports have emerged of a 2nd execution of a juvenile offender in Iran in just
a few days Amnesty International said today, which reveal the full horror of
the country’s deeply flawed juvenile justice system.
Fatemeh Salbehi, a 23-year-old woman, was hanged yesterday for a crime she
allegedly committed when she was 17, only a few days after another juvenile
offender, Samad Zahabi, was hanged for a crime he also allegedly committed at
17.
Fatemeh Salbehi was hanged in Shiraz’s prison in Fars Province despite Iran
being bound by an absolute international legal ban on juvenile executions, and
severe flaws in her trial and appeal. She had been sentenced to death in May
2010 for the murder of her 30- year- old husband, Hamed Sadeghi, whom she had
been forced to marry at the age of 16.
An expert opinion from the State Medicine Organization provided at the trial
had found she had had severe depression and suicidal thoughts around the time
of her husband’s death. However the death sentence was upheld by Iran’s Supreme
Court later that year.
“The use of the death penalty is cruel, and inhumane and degrading in any
circumstances, but it is utterly sickening when meted out as a punishment for a
crime committed by a person who was under 18 years of age, and after legal
proceedings that make a mockery of juvenile justice,” said Said Boumedouha,
Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa
Programme.
“With these executions the Iranian judiciary has yet again put on display its
brazen contempt for the human rights of children, including their right to
life. There are simply no words to adequately condemn Iran’s continued use of
the death penalty against juvenile offenders.”
The adoption of a new Islamic Penal Code in May 2013 sparked hopes that Fatemeh
Salbehi and other juvenile offenders on death row may have their death
sentences quashed and their cases re-examined. Article 91 of the Code allows
judges to replace the death penalty with an alternative punishment if they
determine that the juvenile offender did not comprehend the nature of the crime
or its consequences or his or her “mental growth and maturity” are in doubt.
The re-examination hearing that Fatemeh Salbehi was granted in relation to
Article 91 proved to be deeply flawed. It lasted only three hours and focused
mostly on whether she prayed, studied religious textbooks at school and
understood that killing another human being was “religiously forbidden.”
On this basis, the Provincial Criminal Court of Fars Province had ruled in May
2014 that she had the maturity of an adult and therefore deserved the death
sentence. In reaching this outrageous conclusion the judges failed to seek
expert opinion, even though they lacked adequate knowledge and expertise on
issues of child psychology.
This underlines the importance of the clear provision in the UN Convention on
the Rights of the Child (CRC), which is binding on Iran, that no death
sentences may be imposed for offences committed by individuals under the age of
18.
In another appalling case eight days ago, another juvenile offender Samad
Zahabi was secretly hanged in Kermanshah’s Dizel Abad Prison in Kermanshah
province for shooting a fellow shepherd during a row over who should graze
their sheep.
This execution was also carried out without a 48 hour notice period being given
to Zahabi's lawyer, as is required by law. Horrifically his family said they
only learned of his fate after his mother visited the prison on 5 October 2015.
Samad Zahabi had been sentenced to death by the Provincial Criminal Court of
Kermanshah Province in March 2013, even though he had said both during the
investigations and at the trial that the shooting was unintentional and in
self-defence, and resulted from a fight that he was drawn into against his
will.
Branch six of the Supreme Court upheld his death sentence in February 2014,
despite a written submission from the Office of the Prosecution that had asked
for it to be quashed in light of the provisions of the 2013 revised Penal Code.
In December 2014, the general board of Iran’s Supreme Court issued a pilot
judgement which entitled all juvenile offenders to seek judicial review of
their cases based on Article 91 of the Penal Code. Samad Zahabi was never
however informed of this legal development which may have spared his life.
“These latest juvenile executions cast a huge doubt over the commitment of the
Iranian authorities to implement the provisions of the 2013 Islamic Penal Code
with a view to abolishing their use of the death penalty against juvenile
offenders,” Said Boumedouha said.
“The Iranian authorities should be under no illusion that they can avoid
international scrutiny until they introduce a new law banning the use of the
death penalty on any offender under 18 years of age.”
Background:
Iran is scheduled to be reviewed by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child
(CRC) in January 2016. The Committe of the Right of the Child oversees the
implementation of the CRC, which Iran ratified in July 1994. As a state party
to the CRC, Iran has pledged to ensure that all persons under 18 years of age
are treated as children and never subjected to the same punishments as adults.
However, the age of adult criminal responsibility remains nine lunar years for
girls and 15 lunar years for boys.
Between 2005 and 2015, Amnesty International has received reports of least 75
executions of juvenile offenders, including at least three juvenile offenders
in 2015. More than 160 juvenile offenders are believed to be currently on death
row in prisons across the country.
(source: Amnesty International)
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