May 24
YEMEN:
Court sentences killer of college dean to capital punishment
A court in Aden sentenced today the killer of the dean of the Faculty of
Science and University and her son and grandchild in Aden early this month to
capital punishment.
The temporary capital has witnessed for 2 years a wave of crimes and
assassinations that often target government soldiers, mosque preachers and
political activists.
(source: hamrinnews.net)
MALAYSIA:
Australian grandmother sentenced to death by hanging for drug smuggling
An Australian woman has been sentenced to death by hanging after a Malaysian
court overturned an earlier acquittal of drug smuggling charges.
A 3-judge panel unanimously threw out the previous ruling in 54-year-old Maria
Elvira Pinto Exposto's case, her lawyers told CNN.
"An appeal will be filed in the Federal Court -- the final appeal," lawyer
Muhamed Shafee said, who added his client was "a strong person."
The grandmother and mother of four was arrested in December 2014 while
transiting through the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur on a flight from Shanghai
to Melbourne.
She was found in possession of 1.1 kilos (2.4 lb) of crystal methamphetamine
and faced a mandatory death penalty under Malaysia's draconian drugs laws.
Exposto claimed she had no knowledge of the drugs in her bag and had been
scammed by a boyfriend she met online, according to CNN affiliate, SBS News.
According to SBS, Exposto's lawyers said she had gone to Shanghai to file
documents in relation to her boyfriend's retirement from service in the US
army. When she left China, Exposto claimed she was handed a black backpack at
the last minute, which she was led to believe only had clothes inside. The
report did not say who handed her the backpack.
The backpack was flagged as suspicious by Malaysian customs, and a search
discovered a secret compartment stitched into it, which had packages of crystal
methamphetamine inside.
Late last year, she was found not guilty of drug trafficking by the Malaysian
High Court. Prosecutors appealed however, preventing Exposto from leaving
Malaysia and returning to her home in Sydney.
The ruling comes despite changes to Malaysian law last year which made the
death penalty no longer mandatory for drug mules. Exposto still has another
chance to appeal the verdict.
Drug trafficking is among nine classes of crime, including murder and treason,
which still bear the death penalty in Malaysia.
According to the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, the country
carried out 4 executions in 2017, down from 9 the year before.
Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs said it would continue to provide
Exposto "full consular assistance."
"Australia opposes the death penalty in all circumstances for all people,"
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said in a statement.
(source: BBC News)
BELARUS:
Death penalty: Belarus must be accountable to someone
Belarus is the last country in Europe to apply the death penalty. It often does
so in secret.
Very little is known about inmates on death row im Belarus: these were
photographed in Minsk in 2006 in a cell thought to be no longer in use. Source:
Human Rights Centre Viasna. While President Lukashenko claims the death penalty
is the will of the Belarusian people, they surely didn't vote for it to be
carried out arbitrarily and in secret. The ongoing execution of the death
penalty likely has a more political cause. It was recently revealed that Kiryl
Kazachok was executed with six months passing before anyone was informed of his
death. Like all executions in Belarus, this one was carried out in secrecy.
Kazachok was found guilty of killing his 2 children in January 2016. He called
the police following the incident, before attempting to kill himself. He was
sentenced to death in December 2016 and executed in October 2017. His family
only learned about his death early March 2018, as his mother told the Human
Rights Centre Viasna.
Belarus is the last country of Europe and Central Asia to continue to apply the
death penalty. Human Rights Centre Viasna estimates that since Belarus gained
its independence in 1991, more than 400 people have been executed.
We can only talk about estimates due to the secrecy surrounding the execution
of the death penalty. Information is withheld from the public as well as even
from family members. A parcel with the personal belongings of the executed is
sent to the parents, who until that moment - when they understand that the
execution took place - do not know the fate of their children. After that,
nobody knows what happens to the bodies of those killed. They are not given to
the relatives; burial places are also unknown.
Just as families and the public are blinded from what is happening to prisoners
on death row, the international community is also in the dark. Belarus fails to
engage with international mechanisms, and it restricts access to the country by
the UN Special Rapporteur on Belarus - the only international instrument
permanently monitoring the human rights situation in the country. Civil society
in the country is also restricted from fully monitoring the situations of those
detained.
Legal processes are just as questionable. The lack of access to legal counsel
is systematic in Belarus and also concerns prisoners who face charges for
crimes punishable by the death penalty. The right to a fair trial is far from
guaranteed in a judicial system obedient to the executive branch, and judges
systematically follow the prosecution with a ludicrous acquittal rate of 0.02%.
Furthermore, ill-treatment and torture are widely used in detention places in
Belarus.
In these circumstances, it is not surprising that the only international body
able to consider appeals to verdicts of the Belarusian Supreme Court, the
United Nations Human Rights Committee, has found multiple times that executed
individuals faced procedural violations and ill-treatment.
Yet the Belarusian government bluntly and repeatedly ignores interim protection
measures set forth by the Committee, when considering appeals of individuals
sentenced to death by the Supreme Court.
These systematic failings were the focus of the UN Committee Against Torture's
(CAT's) recent review of Belarus at the end of April. The Committee found it
"very regrettable" that no progress has been made by Belarus on the issue of
the death penalty, despite numerous recommendations given at its last review.
Belarus argued before the CAT that the Human Rights Committee does not have the
competence to issue interim protection measures and that the body can only make
recommendations with no legal force. One can doubt the validity of the legal
argumentation used by the Belarusian government, which specifically ratified an
international human rights text granting the Human Rights Committee the
competence to review individual complaints after exhaustion of national
remedies.
The government's rationale in any case is cynical to the extreme. The life of
individuals are at stake, yet Belarus argues on the legality of the concerns it
receives. This underscores the very inhumanity of the death penalty and the
risk of killing people are not proven guilty by fair trial. As such, the death
penalty reflects well the Belarusian system. One man alone can decide on the
fate of all Belarusians, because of the lack of independence of the judiciary.
This makes international scrutiny as important as ever. Following the
presidential election of December 2010, and the police violence, arbitrary
detentions, and targeting of opposition and human rights movements in the
aftermath of the election, the United Nations Human Rights Council mandated an
independent expert to monitor Belarus and report annually to the Council and to
the General Assembly on the situation in Belarus.
The European Union is leading calls to renew this mandate, sponsoring a
resolution on this for the June session of the Council. The European Parliament
has called strongly for EU Member States to push for the renewal, and for the
EU to set clear benchmarks in it its engagement with Belarus. One of these
benchmarks must surely be the abolition of the death penalty, or at the very
least for this to be carried out according to the rule of law.
Belarus underlines regularly that it continues to carry out the death penalty
because of public support for it and the favorable referendum in 1996. There is
even talk of holding a 2nd referendum on the death penalty.
President Lukashenko continues to rule with all powers in his own hands. He is
not a man usually swayed by public opinion, as shown by his response to mass
protests against social parasite laws last year, which was not one of listening
to the people, but of silencing them. Belarus has also not had a free and fair
election since he came to power, as underlined by the UN Special Rapporteur in
his report on elections and violations in Belarus.
Yet when Lukashenko was seeking for the EU to drop sanctions between 2013 and
2015, the rate of executions dropped. He may be holding the lives of
Belarusians as his trump card in international negotiations, but he cannot have
it both ways: crushing the voice of the people on the one hand and hiding
behind it on the other.
(source: opendemocracy.net)
CHINA:
Chinese man beaten to death after he tried to flee pyramid scheme----2 killers
given suspended death sentences and a third man was jailed for life
2 men have been given suspended death sentences and one jailed for life for
killing a man who was trying to leave their pyramid scheme in eastern China,
according to a newspaper report.
A 28-year-old named Wang Haitao was beaten to death for trying to escape a
fraudulent scheme in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, in January
2014, The Beijing News reported on Wednesday.
The victim had been locked in a room and not allowed to leave after he phoned
his wife at home in central Hubei, 900km (560 miles) away, to say he had been
tricked into joining the organisation by a friend named Guo Liang.
He was beaten to death by 3 ringleaders of the scheme - Tan Zuai, Chen Fu and
Yang Shengyou - and buried on a mountainside 20km away, where his body was
found 3 years later.
The 3 were found guilty by the People's Court of Hangzhou at a trial in
December but details of the case were only made public in Wednesday's report.
Tan and Zuai were given the death penalty, suspended for 2 years, for homicide,
unlawful detention and organising a pyramid scheme.
Yang was given a life sentence for homicide.
The court also sentenced a 4th man, Wang Xing, for similar offences to Tan and
Chen but the report did not explain his role in the crime or report what
sentence he had been given.
On April 19, Tonglu county public prosecutor ruled that Wang's friend Guo was
responsible for deceiving him, and he was being prosecuted for illegal
detention.
China's facial recognition cameras apprehend 3rd fugitive Jacky Cheung
concertgoer in 2 months
The group had set up a front organisation that purported to sell health food
and products to a company in Tianjin, a megacity on the east coast of China.
In early January 2014 Wang had phoned his wife, Zhang Daoqiong, and told her
about the pyramid organisation.
2 weeks later he called again, for the last time, but did not say anything.
That evening his wife phoned him back, but Wang did not answer.
Wang had a son and a daughter, aged 8 and 6 respectively at the time of his
death.
Guo claimed he had fled the organisation after witnessing the attack on his
friend and contacted Wang's wife in June to tell her about his escape - but did
not mention the attack on her husband.
"At that time, I did not know he had been beaten and still had hope in my
heart," she was quoted as saying in the paper. She added that Guo later told
her about the attack on her husband and she then contacted the police.
Officers raided the group's headquarters but they had fled.
3 years later, in circumstances that remain mysterious, they started looking
for Wang's body.
(source: South China Morning Post)
IRAQ:
Dozens of foreign ISIS brides sentenced to death in Iraq
Dozens of foreign ISIS brides are being sentenced to death in Iraq as the
country exacts its revenge after 3 years of jihadi occupation.
Pleading that they themselves are victims, the women were given 10 minutes to
beg for their lives before judges decide their sentence.
Many of them find little sympathy with the Iraqi judiciary and locals and are
despised for their support of their militant husbands, who tore the country
apart between 2014 and 2017.
French citizen Djamila Boutoutao, 29, appeared in court last month and claimed:
"I thought I had married a rapper. It was only when we arrived in Turkey for a
week-long ???holiday??? that I discovered my husband was a jihadist."
"I'm a victim. My husband beat me and locked me up in a cave with my children
when I refused to follow him (to Iraq)."
She reappeared in court again last week alongside 14 other women, The Guardian
reported, where she begged to keep her daughter.
She is among an estimated 1,900 French citizens and 40,000 foreigners who
traveled to join ISIS's so-called caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
She said: "I'm going mad here. I'm facing a death sentence or life in prison.
No one tells me anything, not the ambassador, not people in prison."
"Don't let them take my daughter away. I am willing to offer money if you can
contact my parents. Please get me out of here."
According to the paper, at least 40 women have been sentenced to death, while
it's believed around 300 people in total with links to ISIS have so far been
executed.
Now more than 1,000 people have been placed in Baghdad jails after being
identified as either members of the group or relatives of fighters.
Most of the women are widowed and many are the only caregiver left for the
small children born to terrorist dads.
Last month, a court in Baghdad handed 19 Russian women life sentences for
"joining and supporting" the terror group.
Al Jazeera reported many of them claimed they were misled into making the trip
to Iraq.
One said: "I did not know we were in Iraq. I went with my husband and my
children to Turkey to live there and then I suddenly discovered I was actually
in Iraq."
The broadcaster reports that more than 20,000 have been detained on suspicion
of ties to the group.
(source: New York Post)
IRAN:
Amnesty International Once Again Highlights Shocking Justice System in Iran
The Iran that exists today is vastly different to the Iran that the history
books tell us about. A country with such a colourful and spectacular history is
currently being destroyed by the corrupt leadership that is torturing and
executing its people for arbitrary reasons.
Amnesty International has published a report detailing some of the horrifying
statistics that make Iran one of the most horrific in terms of its brutal
leadership.
During the course of 2016, there were more than 500 registered executions. The
emphasis is on "registered" because there were without a doubt many that were
not officially recorded. More than 1/2 of the executions that take place in the
world are in Iran.
Amnesty international gives statistics for 4 prisons in Iran: Rajaie Shahr
(Gohardasht Karaj) Prison; Qezel Hessar Prison; Urmia Prison; and Zahedan
Prison.
In ward 10 of Gohardasht Karaj Prison there are currently more than 260
prisoners - 86 of which are on death row. Ward 3 of the prison also houses
approximately 180 prisoners aged 25 or under. Half of these young people are on
death row for "retribution in kind". Many of these young people were also
arrested before they turned 18.
In unit 2 of Qezel Hessar Prison there are approximately 1,000 prisoners, some
of whom are there on drug related offences.
In Urmia Prison there are over 100 prisoners on death row in wards 1, 2, 3 and
4. 8 of the prisoners are on death row despite being mentally disturbed. There
are another 3 prisoners on death row in ward 12 and 6 prisoners are awaiting
the death penalty on ward 12. The prison also has a ward specifically for young
people where there are 6 people on death row. Another 6 people are awaiting
execution on ward 15 which houses the prisoners who were arrested for
drugs-related charges.
In Zahedan Prison there are at least 136 prisoners on death row, many of whom
have been there for many years. Some of the prisoners awaiting execution are
being held on charges related to drugs and there are a number of political
prisoners. Ward 4 of the prison has 4 individuals on death row for affiliation
to political groups, murder and drugs charges.
Amnesty International's report only provides details about 4 prisons, but the
cases in many other prisons across the country are similar.
The Iranian regime is notorious for executing political prisoners and members
of the opposition. There are also many Iranians being held in prison because of
their participation in the recent protests that swept across the country.
In 1988, more than 30,000 political prisoners were executed in what has become
known as the 1988 massacre. This is a crime against humanity that has never
been forgotten by the people of Iran, yet one that the Iranian regime has never
been held accountable for.
Nor has the Iranian regime been held accountable for its arbitrary executions
that take place almost daily. It is time the international community stood
behind the people of Iran and protected them from the murderous and torturous
regime that is mismanaging the country and its resources.
(source: ncr-iran.org)
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