April 27
INDONESIA:
Bali 9 member Michael Czugaj moved to remote jail after found with traces of
drug----We speak to 2 prisoners inside Bali's Kerobokan jail about the legacy
of executed Australian Myuran Sukumaran.
Bali 9 member Michael Czugaj is among 66 prisoners who have been transferred to
a remote jail in East Java after prison authorities said they caught him with
traces of the drug ice in Bali's Kerobokan jail.
The shock move comes two days before the 1st anniversary of the execution of 8
drug offenders in Indonesia, including Bali nine co-ordinators Myuran Sukumaran
and Andrew Chan.
The future of rehabilitation projects Sukumaran helped establish in Kerobokan
jail, including art classes and a T-shirt printing business, are in doubt after
the 2 Iranian prisoners he entrusted to take over after his death were also
moved.
The transfer of 66 prisoners to Madiun Prison in East Java at 4am on Wednesday
morning was so sudden that prisoners did not have time to collect clothes or
even cigarettes.
7 foreigners were moved, including Czugaj and 6 Iranians.
The head of Bali's prison division, Nyoman Putra Surya Atmaja, said prison
officers had found traces of used sabu sabu (ice) when they searched Czugaj's
cell.
"He was heavily addicted to drugs. He admitted to using drugs, but we only
found a trace of used drugs," Mr Nyoman said. "Legally we can't charge him with
evidence. He said he got it from a visitor. But he never said who. That's why
we moved him. So he is kept away from his Bali drug network."
Mr Nyoman said the 66 prisoners who had been transferred were those who were
"emotionally easy to provoke and who caused disturbances".
The transfer comes a week after a riot broke out at Kerobokan jail, with fires
lit and prison bars broken after 11 members of the notorious Laskar Bali gang
were admitted to the prison.
Those involved in the jail rehabilitation projects expressed shock, sadness and
anger at the transfer of Iranians Ali Reza Safar Khanloo and Rouhallah Series
Abadi, whom Sukumaran had asked to continue running Kerobokan jail's T-shirt
printing business and the art room.
"In the short term I don't see anyway for the BengKer (prison workshop) to
remain viable. I feel really sad," one insider told Fairfax Media.
"For them to destroy the BengKer is just mean. What a mess. What a waste of
years of effort."
The insider said Rahol and Ali, as they are known, had been a calming influence
on the jail.
Rahol, who helped organise supplies and weekly classes in the art room,
recently spoke of how much he missed Sukumaran and still felt his presence in
Kerobokan.
"His body is dead but still his soul is here," he said.
Ali had been experimenting with producing skateboards and bags, as well as
T-shirts, in the prison workshop.
He had recently designed a T-shirt featuring a striking image of Sukumaran
releasing doves of peace from a map of Australia, which he wanted to send to
Sukumaran's family to commemorate Sukumaran's birthday on April 17.
"They are saying they are transferring the troublemakers - it's just revenge
from the warden and chief of security," one prisoner said.
"With the workshop I have no idea what is going to happen. What they are doing
is totally making me confused. It's like they don't care about the
rehabilitation programs."
"This is the saddest day. Like we are fighting a losing battle," said another
prisoner.
However Mr Nyoman, the head of Bali's prison division, said Rahol and Ali were
not the leaders of the art room and T-shirt printing businesses.
"The leaders are prison guards. Not prisoners.The guards are still there," he
said.
And Dadang Iskandar, the prison officer in charge of the BengKer, said the
programs would continue "just with different members".
He said Indonesia always made decisions in the best interests of prisoners:
"All the prisoners were transferred with good intentions."
April 29 marks the 1st anniversary of the execution of eight drug offenders,
including Chan and Sukumaran, on Nusakambangan island, known as Indonesia's
Alcatraz.
The 2 Australians had been sentenced to death in 2006 for their role in the
foiled attempt to smuggle 8.3 kilograms of heroin from Indonesia to Australia.
Czugaj is serving life imprisonment.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo had refused to grant Chan and Sukumaran
clemency, despite claims the Australians had reformed in prison.
Their legal team argued that Chan had become a pastor in prison and both men
helped establish rehabilitation programs behind bars, including art, yoga,
computer and cooking classes.
(source: smh.com.au)
PAKISTAN----executions
2 murder convicts hanged
2 murder convicts were hanged at the Faisalabad Central Jail on Tuesday. A
spokesperson for the Prisons Department said Imran alias Hayat Ali, son of
Nawaz, and Tahir, son of Rafiq, residents of Chak 55, had killed 4 of their
rivals on February 5, 2005. Jaranwala police had registered a case against them
and had presented the challan in an anti-terrorism court. The trial court had
sentenced them to death and the apex court upheld the decision.
(source: The Express Tribune)
IRAN----executions
10 prisoners hanged in Iran in new wave of executions
Iran's fundamentalist regime has hanged at least 10 people in prisons since the
weekend, in what has been described as a new wave of executions.
Earlier on Wednesday at least 6 other death-row prisoners in Ghezelhesar Prison
in Karaj, north-west of Tehran, were transferred to solitary confinement for
their imminent execution.
The regime's judiciary in Mazandaran Province announced that a 27-year-old
prisoner identified by the initials Z. Ch. was hanged in a prison in Sari,
northern Iran, on Sunday, April 24. Earlier in the week, the judiciary had
announced that a 2nd 27-year-old prisoner, identified only by the initials H.
H., was also hanged in prison in Sari on Sunday.
Elsewhere, the regime's judiciary in Qazvin Province announced that an unnamed
man was hanged in Qazvin Central Prison, north-west of Tehran, on Tuesday.
At least 5 prisoners were hanged on Saturday in Zahedan Central Prison,
south-east Iran. Another 3 prisoners were hanged in the same prison on Tuesday.
3 of those executed in Zahedan were identified as: Jamshid Dehvari, 30; Sadeq
Rigi, 35; and Mohammad Sanchouli, who is believed to have been 22 years old.
Mr. Sanchouli had been behind bars for the past 5 years including time he
served in the prison's ward for juveniles. He is believed to have been under 18
at the time of his arrest.
The hangings bring to at least 46 the number of people executed in Iran since
April 10. 3 of those executed were women and 1 is believed to have been a
juvenile offender.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) said in a statement on April
13 that the increasing trend of executions "aimed at intensifying the climate
of terror to rein in expanding protests by various strata of the society,
especially at a time of visits by high-ranking European officials, demonstrates
that the claim of moderation is nothing but an illusion for this medieval
regime."
Ms. Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the European Union for
Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, was in Tehran on April 16 along with 7 EU
commissioners for discussions with the regime's officials on trade and other
areas of cooperation.
Her trip was strongly criticized by Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of the
Foreign Affairs Committee of the NCRI who said: "This trip which takes place in
the midst of mass executions, brutal human rights violations and the regime's
unbridled warmongering in the region tramples on the values upon which the EU
has been founded and which Ms. Mogherini should be defending and propagating."
Amnesty International in its April 6 annual Death Penalty report covering the
2015 period wrote: "Iran put at least 977 people to death in 2015, compared to
at least 743 the year before."
"Iran alone accounted for 82% of all executions recorded" in the Middle East
and North Africa, the human rights group said.
There have been more than 2,300 executions during Hassan Rouhani's tenure as
President. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation
in Iran in March announced that the number of executions in Iran in 2015 was
greater than any year in the last 25 years. Rouhani has explicitly endorsed the
executions as examples of "God's commandments" and "laws of the parliament that
belong to the people."
The NCRI in a separate statement on Sunday warned that 10 death-row prisoners,
transferred to solitary confinement in Gohardasht (Rajai-Shahr) Prison in Karaj
and Zahedan Prison, are at imminent risk of execution. It called on
international human rights organizations to take urgent action to save their
lives.
(source: NCR-Iran)
SAUDI ARABIA:
These Are the Juvenile 'Offenders' Saudi Arabia Executed in January
This is the 2nd in a 3-part VICE News series on the execution of juveniles in
Saudi Arabia, in which we examine the arbitrary and sinister processes which
constitute the Saudi justice system and its "counterterrorism" strategy, and
reveal previously unreported examples of children caught up in its net.
"[Those arrested in the raid] were kids, to the extent that some we arrested
thought the matter was over and they would return to their families."
Speaking directly into the camera in a documentary released last year, Saudi
Arabian Special Forces General Major Sultan al-Maliki was very clear. A group
of alleged terrorists rounded up by the authorities in 2003 were far away from
their adult years.
The scene cuts to footage from the arrest, honing in on the face of one boy who
looks scared, confused, and disorientated.
The boy was one of a group of youngsters from the African country of Chad who
had been deceived into thinking they were coming to Mecca to study the Quran,
according to the documentary - released by the Saudi government-funded news
outlet Al Arabiya - and subsequent reports in Saudi press.
Instead, the Quran course "turned out to be a terrorist, criminal course, with
disastrous results for those [juveniles] who were deceived," General Said
al-Qahtani, Director of Police for Mecca, tells the viewer. "One of them hadn't
reached 14 years old," he notes.
Al-Qaeda targets "vulnerable people" who "don't have the capacity to act or
reject," explains Brigadier General Mudief al-Talhi. "They bring misguided
children over and brainwash them," says an unnamed Major General.
In most parts in the world, children who are recruited, groomed, and deceived
by terrorist organizations are seen as victims. Not in Saudi Arabia. These boys
never went home to their families. Instead, at least 1 is known to have spent
the next 12 years languishing in jail - and on January 2 this year he was
executed.
The official Interior Ministry list of 47 people killed in a mass execution
that day, combined with reports in Saudi press, which is all controlled by the
state, identifies one of the dead as Mustafa Abkar, a Chadian reportedly born
in 1987 who was arrested during a raid in June 2003. The major operation
targeted a terrorist cell in Mecca thought to be responsible for a string of
bombings in Riyadh in May 2003, and was the same raid depicted in the Al
Arabiya film.
The birth year of 1987, reported by newspaper Okaz, means Abkar could not have
been any older than 16 when he was detained - but Saudi activists believe Abkar
was the 13-year-old described by General al-Qahtani, and that he was the young
boy the camera zooms in on.
According to a source who spoke to the Middle East Eye, Abkar had no access to
a lawyer and did not even get a court hearing until 2014, a single appearance
in front of a judge at the end of which he was sentenced to death.
Abkar was not the only juvenile so-called offender to be capitally punished on
January 2. While the mass execution was widely reported, what went largely by
the wayside was the detail that at least three of those were prisoners whose
alleged crimes are believed to have taken place when they were children.
Information about any prisoner or judicial proceeding in Saudi Arabia is hard
to come by - the justice system is notoriously arbitrary and secretive, and the
media often offers only sparse or fragmented details. But alongside Abkar, on
the official list of those executed on January 2 were two names recognized by
activists as men who were arrested as minors, which can confirmed by piecing
together multiple press reports.
One was also arrested in the June 2003 operations targeting the Mecca terrorist
cell that Abkar was charged with being part of. Amin Mohammed Aqla al-Ghamidi
was arrested as he walked along a street in the city with a school friend,
according to his father. According to a birth date reported by Okaz, he was 17
when he was detained while the European Saudi Organization of Human Rights
reported he was 14.
Saudi Arabian authorities picked him up after raiding a nearby apartment that
they said was being used to plot an "imminent terrorist act." He was an "expert
in making explosives," reported Okaz following his execution.
"My young boy wouldn't be able to fathom let alone undertake such huge and
Islamically-forbidden act alone," Amin's father Mohammed Al-Ghamidi told
Al-Riyadh newspaper a week after his arrest. "It's clearly the work of older
men preparing to commit criminal acts." His son loved studying, was one of the
best students in his class, and had just had a university application accepted,
he said.
Abkar and al-Ghamidi were not the only minors arrested in the June 2003
operation, according to leading Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. "Half of
those arrested at the apartment were children," it reported shortly after the
raid. Recruiting children was a deliberate tactic of al-Qaeda, it pointed out,
referring to a comment once reportedly made by Osama bin Laden: "We're keen on
young recruits between 15 and 20 as they are the most adaptable to the concept
of Jihad for the sake of God."
Children are indeed ideal targets for terrorist groups, said Dan Collison,
program director at War Child, because they can be so easily influenced.
"Children haven't yet formed the confidence and the critical thinking skills to
differentiate between an adult that's helping them and an adult exploiting
them," he said. "Their choices and decisions are very susceptible to those
around them - those influences can be very positive, but they can also be
utterly malign."
While it was clear that some children committed very serious, violent crimes,
acknowledged Collison, one thing was very clear: "A child should not be
convicted of terrorism. A terrorist act is a political act, and a child doesn't
have the capacity to act in that way. They have been neglected and let down by
people who are supposed to be looking after them, but they are not terrorists.
Whether a child is recruited by al-Qaeda, or an armed group in Sierra Leone,
they are victims of armed conflict."
To convict a child of terrorism was a terrible breach of their rights, he said
- to execute them was "unthinkable."
The final juvenile offender killed by Saudi Arabia on January 2 was not an
alleged terrorist. His crime was protesting. Ali Said al-Ribh was detained on
February 12, 2012, when he was 18 years and 2 months old. He was charged with
participating in protests which took place throughout 2011 and early 2012
during the Saudi Arabian response to the Arab Spring.
Thousands of Shia Muslims - a religious minority which faces systemic
discrimination inside the kingdom - took to the streets in the country's
Eastern Province to demand better treatment and the release of political
prisoners. Hundreds were rounded up and thrown in jail, including multiple
juveniles.
Around 200 "laughable" trials have taken place, said Human Rights Watch (HRW)
Saudi Arabia researcher Adam Coogle, most of them based on confessions which in
court the defendants withdrew saying they were tortured into making them or
didn't know what they were signing. Around 15 people were sentenced to death,
including al-Ribh and 3 other juveniles whose cases have received international
attention - Ali al-Nimr, Dawood al-Marhoon, and Abdullah al-Zaher - who are
still alive.
Al-Ribh was tortured while in custody, according to information gathered by
anti-death penalty NGO Reprieve. After 5 hearings, he was sentenced to death
for crimes including using weapons against security forces during a protest and
using his Blackberry to help organize demonstrations. He always denied any use
of violence. The Saudi authorities did not inform his family of the execution
and have kept the location of his burial secret, said Reprieve.
'Prosecutors and judges are free to criminalize any act in accordance with
their own interpretation of precepts of Islamic law'
All the young men discussed in this article were tried in Saudi Arabia's
Specialized Criminal Court (SCC), a secretive tribunal set up in 2008 to try
terrorism suspects but which has been increasingly used to try dissidents and
peaceful activists. It has no laws or statutes specifying its jurisdiction that
have been made public, and anyway, Saudi Arabia has no written law.
"Prosecutors and judges are free to criminalize any act in accordance with
their own interpretation of precepts of Islamic law," notes HRW.
Aside from the fact the SCC and the wider Saudi justice system violate basic
principles of due process, executing people for crimes they committed when they
were juveniles is a clear and egregious violation of international law -
including the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights - to both of which Saudi Arabia is a
signatory.
Treating children recruited by terrorist organizations as criminals rather than
victims, and sentencing people to death for protesting, would also be regarded
as morally and legally indefensible in much of the world.
Despite this - and despite Saudi Arabia brutally crushing political dissent,
practicing torture, and executing more people per capita than any other country
except Iran - those who could potentially hold sway over the kingdom remain
loath to condemn or sanction it in any substantial way.
The oil-rich state remains a close ally of the West, lauded for its role in the
so-called war on terror, and enjoying a status as the number 1 buyer of
American and British-made arms. The US has sold arms worth $47.8 billion to
Saudi Arabia under President Barack Obama - nearly triple the $16 billion under
George W. Bush - while under Prime Minister David Cameron the UK has sold $9.68
billion-worth.
When asked to comment on the January 2 execution, Britain's Foreign Secretary
Philip Hammond told BBC Radio: "Let us be clear, first of all, that these
people were convicted terrorists." Such a comment suggested Hammond was
alarmingly misinformed, said Reprieve, and came "dangerously close to condoning
Saudi Arabia's approach."
In a statement on January 3 UK Minister for the Middle East Tobias Ellwood said
the country is "firmly opposed to the death penalty" and had "expressed [its]
disappointment at the mass executions." He said the government expected that
"Ali al-Nimr and others who were convicted as juveniles will not be executed,"
but he did not say anything about those convicted as juveniles who had been
killed the previous day.
The US State Department produced similarly insubstantial comments. "We have
previously expressed our concerns about the legal process in Saudi Arabia and
have frequently raised these concerns at high levels of the Saudi Government,"
said John Kirby, spokesperson for the Bureau of Public Affairs on January 2.
"We reaffirm our calls on the Government of Saudi Arabia to respect and protect
human rights, and to ensure fair and transparent judicial proceedings in all
cases."
Obama visited Saudi Arabia last week, meeting King Salman in Riyadh to discuss
bilateral relations.
Reprieve urged the US president to raise the cases of al-Nimr, al-Marhoon, and
al-Zaher, whose families still wake up every day not knowing if they will be
alive at the end of it. The young men, who were aged 17, 17, and 15 when they
committed their so-called criminal acts of attending protests, are sentenced to
die by beheading. Al-Nimr and al-Zaher were also sentenced to crucifixion - the
displaying of their beheaded bodies in a public place.
No such overtures were made. At a press briefing in Riyadh on Friday White
House Press Secretary Ben Rhodes was asked whether the president had discussed
human rights, and whether he had raised certain cases that had received
attention in the US. While there had been been a "very candid discussion" about
human rights, Obama "did not raise individual cases," said Rhodes.
It is "absolutely shocking" that the US and the UK are standing by while
juvenile offenders are executed by their ally, said Reprieve. "It is appalling
to see [from watching the Al Arabiya documentary] that Saudi officials were
well aware that they were executing several juvenile [offenders] on January 2,"
said Maya Foa, director of the organization's death penalty team. "Any Saudi
concerns over the 'vulnerability' of juvenile prisoners, mentioned in the film,
were entirely absent when they executed Mustafa Abkar and Ali Al Ribh on the
basis of forced 'confessions.'... Now more than ever, the international
community must call on Saudi Arabia to halt juvenile executions, once and for
all."
(source: vice.com)
KENYA:
Court upholds death penalty for former MP Betty Tett's son
The High Court yesterday upheld a death sentence handed to former Assistant
Minister Betty Tett's son.
David Tett was sentenced to death in 2013 for robbery with violence.
High Court judge James Wakiaga said there was enough evidence to show that
actual violence occurred against the victims.
"I agree with the trial court's findings and dismiss this application," said
Justice Wakiaga, adding that the prosecution's case was proved beyond
reasonable doubt.
Wakiaga said that upon evaluation of the evidence before him, he agreed with
the trial court's finding that the prosecution had proven all the elements of
the offence.
He added that Mr Tett's conduct at the scene and thereafter pointed to his
participation in the commission of the offence he was charged with.
In 2013, Magistrate Kiarie Waweru handed Tett the death penalty after he found
him guilty of violently robbing his father, William Tett of Sh1,000, credit
cards and a mobile phone all valued at Sh157,000 at their Karen home on
September 6, 2011.
David committed the offence jointly with others who were not before the court
while armed with a revolver and a knife. The prosecution said the accused went
to their house accompanied by two other men and ordered his father to give them
money. They tied him with ropes and robbed him before escaping.
David had pleaded for leniency, saying he was remorseful and wanted to
reconcile with his family. However, the magistrate said the only sentence
provided for by the law for the capital offence was death.
When he appealed the judgement in 2013, David, said he was suffering from an
ailment which could not be treated in prison.
He wanted the court to order that he be taken to Kenyatta National Hospital. He
was expected to file a medical report from the prison department.
David also filed an application for bail pending the determination of his
appeal.
(source: standardmedia.co.ke)
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