May 1
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES:
Alarm over requests for blood money
Lawyers and legal advocates are appalled by families who exploit the killing of
a relative to demand huge sums of blood money from the perpetrator's family.
Although blood money, or diyya, is set at Dh200,000, some bereaved families
have asked for millions of dirhams to overturn a death sentence for the killer.
"When a person has committed a murder and is sentenced to death, the victim's
family is called in and asked 3 questions: Will you pardon the person? Will you
accept Dh200,000 in exchange for a pardon? Do you insist that they be
executed?" said a judge at the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department.
According to judicial officials, any amount above Dh200,000 in blood money that
a family asks for is agreed to outside of court.
"Blood money is strictly set at Dh200,000, anything additional is considered
compensation or reconciliation money so that the death penalty is not
enforced," a judge said.
"It is a personal agreement between the 2 families, so they do not insist on
the death penalty and are encouraged to pardon instead. It does not fall under
the court's jurisdiction."
Lawyer Rashed Al Hajri said it was unacceptable for families to ask for huge
sums of blood money, decrying that as a clear sign of greed.
"You cannot put a price on an individual or use his life as a bargaining tool
to get as much money as possible. [But] it is understandable if the victim left
behind young children and the family calculated the amount they would need to
support these children."
Mr Al Hajri said the civil courts would determine the amount of compensation to
the bereaved familes, "but to use something as big as pardoning a death
sentence is not acceptable".
Lawyer Huda Al Falamarzy said she did not encourage families to ask for
millions of dirhams in exchange for a pardon."Those who pardon will be rewarded
by God and if they do pardon they should follow the legal course and not abuse
the system by asking for millions," she said.
The law should place a limit on the amount of money that families can ask for,
Ms Al???Falamarzy said.
(source: The National)
PAKISTAN:
SHC rejects appeals of 3 death row convicts
3 death convicts who had sought commutation of their sentence into life
imprisonment for being 'young offenders' lost their appeals before the Sindh
High Court (SHC) on Saturday.
An anti-terrorism appellate bench, comprising justices Naimatullah Phulpoto and
Aftab Ahmed Gorar, dismissed their appeals and maintained capital punishment
awarded to them by an anti-terrorism court (ATC) in a kidnapping case.
The bench passed its judgment after re-hearing appeals filed by convicts Qasim
alias Umair, Farhan Khan and Raheel.
An ATC had awarded death sentences 'twice' to them after finding them guilty of
kidnapping a 12-year-old boy for ransom and later murdering him in the limits
of Landhi police station.
In April, 2013, the SHC had commuted the capital punishment handed down to them
on the count of murder 'as the appellants were young boys at the time of
incident' and the 'murder was not caused due to sectarian rivalry'.
However, the high court had maintained the death sentence awarded on the second
count of kidnapping for ransom under the anti-terrorism law.
Later, the state challenged the commutation of their sentences from death to
life imprisonment in the murder case before the Supreme Court (SC), which set
aside the high court's judgment and directed the SHC bench to decide the
'quantum of sentence' of the appellants.
Advocate Abdul Rasheed Nizamani argued that the young age of the appellants
constituted extenuating circumstances for lesser penalty for them. He claimed
that Qasim was 21, Raheel 18 and Farhan 25 at the time they recorded their
statements before the court.
The state prosecutor opposed the argument, saying 'the young age of the accused
is not mitigating circumstance to convert the death to life imprisonment'.
"There is no iota of reliable piece of evidence available on record of exact
ages of the appellants," he added.
During the re-hearing, the appellants' lawyer did not press the merits of the
appeals after the SC had already maintained conviction of the appellants, but
pleaded that the court commute their capital punishment into life imprisonment,
considering their young age.
Re-hearing the case on the apex court's directives, the SHC judges observed
that the appellants had failed to produce any documentary evidence regarding
their exact age.
The judges observed that the young age of Raheel and Qasim was not mitigating
circumstance, while Farhan had himself mentioned his age in his statement as 25
years.
"We have given our anxious consideration for the determination of quantum of
sentence to be awarded to the appellant in [the] present case, in which a boy
of 12 year[s] has been murdered for ransom," the judges wrote in the 11-page
judgment, in which they also relied upon the judgments given by the SC, which
had dismissed appeals of death convicts requesting for converting their capital
punishment into life terms.
The bench ruled that no benefit can be extended in favour of the appellants for
their young ages, which does not constitute a mitigating circumstance in this
case. The judges said that according to the prosecution, the appellants had
kidnapped a boy for ransom and committed murder.
"Hence, [the] appellants do not deserve any leniency in sentence," they wrote
in the judgment, upholding the ATC's death sentence and dismissing the appeals.
(source: The Express Tribune)
INDONESIA:
Indonesian police, troops tighten security for next executions
Indonesian police and troops are tightening security on Nusakambangan prison
island in Cilacap, Central Java ahead of the next round of drug convict
executions.
An exact time and date have yet to be announced, but Central Java Police chief
Insp. Gen.Condro Kirono said on Saturday that police were ready to carry out
the executions.
"It's just a matter of time; the executors are ready. What I am doing is making
sure that everything is well prepared," Condro said after inspecting the venue
and readiness of police executors on the prison island.
The Central Java Police headquarters has also provided doctors and
spiritualists to check the physical and mental health conditions of the
convicts, Condro said.
The law and human rights minister has confirmed the next batch of executions
will be carried out, adding that all technical preparations, including the
venue of the executions had been prepared.
"We are waiting for the order to do so," Mulyanto, the custodial division head
of the Central Java office of the Law and Human Rights Ministry, told The
Jakarta Post.
Attorney General HM Prasetyo said earlier that a list of the convicts to be
executed had been made, but has not released the list.
Filipino excluded
Philippines national Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso has been excluded from the list of
the 3rd round of executions prepared by the Attorney General's Office ( AGO ),
as legal procedures continue in a separate but related case in her country.
Amid outrage from human rights activists worldwide and governments, Indonesia
executed 14 drugs convicts last year.
Veloso was on the execution list last year but was granted a stay of execution
because her alleged boss had been arrested in the Philippines, and the
authorities there requested Indonesian assistance in pursuing the case.
According to the AGO, there were 64 drug convicts on death row as of 2015. To
date, 14 drug criminals were executed in separate rounds on Jan 18 and April 29
last year, with s6 and 8 people in each batch, respectively.
Nusakambangan island is located in the Indian Ocean, separated by a narrow
strait off the southern coast of Java. The island is notorious for its maximum
security prisons, home to convicted murderers, terrorists, drug traffickers and
those convicted in high-profile corruption cases. It is also known as execution
island because the island is the central location for carrying out capital
punishment around Java
(source: The Jakarta Post)
PHILIPPINES:
Crime and punishment
Convicted rapist Leo Echegaray woke up on the morning of Friday, Feb. 5, 1999
feeling anxious yet defiant. It was, after all, his last day on Earth as he was
to be executed through lethal injection in the afternoon, as shown in the front
page of The STAR the following day.
The STAR wrote: He took his last meal of prawns, bulalo (beef stew) and grilled
fish, smoked several cigarettes and wrote a number of letters. A radio station
aired the taped message he had given his wife during her final visit on
Thursday.
In the tape, he repeatedly expressed his love for his wife and talked about his
dreams of them having a house, a business and a family together.
Dressed in orange prison uniform, clutching a maroon Bible and wearing a
crucifix around his neck, Echegaray was escorted to the lethal injection
chamber by guards after being roused from his rubber-padded cell at dawn.
His hair close-cropped and graying, Echegaray looked tired and emaciated as he
was escorted to the execution chamber one kilometer from his cell in the
Maximum Security Compound.
Accompanied by a priest and surrounded by prison guards holding his arms, he
wore a button on his chest that read, "Execute Justice not People."
The execution was carried out in front of 27 witnesses, who included
Echegaray's wife and relatives, Sen. Renato Cayetano, Justice Secretary Serafin
Cuevas, other government officials and 11 media representatives.
22-year-old reporter Grace Amargo, from The STAR's sister publication Pilipino
STAR Ngayon, described to The STAR's Joanne Rae Ramirez how the execution went
through: "3 minutes after the process began, Echegaray even started snoring. It
was a loud, guttural snore."
Amargo was 1 of the 11 media representatives who got the rare chance to witness
the first public execution of a convicted criminal in the Philippines in 2
decades (as well as the 1st execution using lethal injection). The 1987
Constitution had banned capital punishment until 1993 when President Fidel
Ramos signed Republic Act 7659 reinstating it.
What Amargo initially thought would be a bloody execution, with Echegaray
convulsing and foaming at the mouth, turned out to be different. Instead,
Amargo recalled, "He just closed his eyes. It was as if he just went to sleep.
He did not look scared or remorseful. He just looked sad."
According to Amargo, Echegaray closed his eyes at 3:01 p.m. They heard him
snore at 3:03 p.m. A minute later, they saw his left foot twitch. At 3:06 p.m.
they noticed his chest had stopped heaving. From that point onward until 3:18
p.m., prison officials closely observed his body. The prison doctors finally
pronounced him dead at 3:19 p.m.
Outside the viewing room, Echegaray's widow Zenaida Javier started railing at
the public and the media for their alleged unfair treatment of her husband.
In Malacanang, meanwhile, President Joseph Estrada hailed the execution as
proof that crime does not pay.
Let Mr. Echegaray's death serve as a strong warning against criminal elements,"
Estrada said 4 hours before Echegaray's execution. The death penalty and
Echegaray's execution were all part of his tough stance against crime that
propelled him to the presidency in the previous year's elections. Throughout
1999, he ordered 6 more convicted criminals executed as part of his anti-crime
campaign.
But, in a 2007 study conducted about the impact of the death penalty on
criminality in the Philippines, the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) found out
that crime in the country even went up despite the series of executions under
the Estrada administration.
"1999 was a bumper year for executions which were intended to abate
criminality. Instead, using the same year as baseline, criminality increased by
15.3 % as a total of 82,538 (from 71,527 crimes in the previous year)," the
study noted.
Eventually, before he was deposed in 2001, Estrada gave in to pressure from the
Catholic Church and human rights groups and issued a moratorium on executions.
Convicted criminals would have their executions deferred and carried over to
the next administration.
By 2006, capital punishment was scrapped once more after the staunchly pro-life
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed Republic Act 9346.
The issue of capital punishment comes to the fore once more at a time when
presidential candidates are resorting to saber rattling about criminality and
promoting capital punishment to propel themselves to public office.
Let history be a reminder to us all that capital punishment never truly
deterred crime. It is the fear of hunger, poverty and powerlessness that drive
criminals to commit crime. Unless we address these fears, no punishment will
scare criminals from being on the wrong side of the law. Like Echegaray, they
will only face death defiantly.
(source: Philippine Star)
INDIA:
CPI(M) is not against punishing afsal; oppose against death penalty: Yechuri
Making it clear that the CPI(M) had never said that Afsal Guru, a Kashmiri
separatist, who was convicted for his role in the 2001 Indian Parliament attack
and received a death sentence for his involvement, should not have been
punished, Party General Secretary Sitaram Yechuri today said that his party had
opposed only the death penalty imposed on him.
Talking to newspersons here, Mr Yechuri said, ''We never said Afsal Guru should
not get punished. CPI(M) as a party has taken a position saying that we opposed
death penalty.''
Stating that over 100 countries in the world had already opposed death penalty,
the Marxist leader said, the UN was also thinking that the death penalty was an
anachronic issue when human civilisation reach this stage, and the death
penalty should be abolished by discussing globally.
Pointing out that majority of the world moved to the abolition of death
penalty, Mr Yachuri said that the CPM) has taken a stance that death penalty in
India should also be abolished. "That does not mean that the party is
supporting whatever Afsal Guru did,'' he reasoned.
Replying to a question, Mr Yechuri said that his party had a clear vision that
the terrorism has no religion, has no cast or has no region. Mahatma Gandhi was
assassinated by the bullet of a Hindu fanatic, Indira Gandhi was killed by the
bullet of a Sikh fanatic and Rajiv Gandhi was killed by the bullet of an LTTE
fanatic.
Unfortunately, many people were being killed in the North-East owing to various
groups, which have no religious affiliation, he said, adding, ''therefore,
understand terrorism is something that simply anti-national. Wherever it comes
from and from where the terrorism emanates, they must dealt with it sternly and
without resorting to any sort of compromise.
(source: webindia123.com)
AFGHANISTAN:
MoI urges capital punishment as 10 arrested over brutal killing of Abasin
The Ministry of Interior (MoI) urged the judiciary institutions to award
capital punishment for the perpetrators involved in the brutal murder of a
14-year-old boy who was kidnapped by a group in capital Kabul.
Gen. Abdul Rahman Rahman, senior deputy minister for security, told reporters
that the security forces have arrested at least 10 suspects in connection to
the brutal killing of Abasin.
He was speaking during a news briefing in capital Kabul to provide updates
regarding the security situation of the country.
According to Gen. Rahman, the suspects are currently in custody of the security
forces to undergo investigations process and will be introduced to the
judiciary institutions to face trial for their horrific crime.
Gen. Shaheem further added that the security institutions will respect the
verdict by judiciary institutions but urged to award death penalty to the
perpetrators for their crime which shocked the country.
Meanwhile, Faizullah Zaki, deputy to national security council internal
affairs, told reporters that the brutal murder case of Abasin will be closely
monitored from the start till the perpetrators are sentenced for their horrific
crime.
This comes as the National Directorate of Security said the Afghan intelligence
operatives have arrested a group of 5 kidnappers involved in the brutal murder
of Abasin.
The brutal murder of Abasin sparked anger among the Afghan people amid concerns
that kidnap for ransom cases have increased during the recent months.
According to reports, the kidnappers had initially cut a finger of Abasin and
demanded 100,000 US Dollars for his release.
(source: Khaama Press)
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