February 19
YEMEN:
Yemen Urges UN Intervention to Save Detainee from Houthi Execution
The legitimate Yemeni government called on the United Nations and its envoy
Martin Griffiths to intervene and halt the execution of a female detainee held
by the Iran-backed Houthi militias.
The Yemeni Human Rights Ministry condemned the sentence against Asmaa
al-Amaisy, who is being held in a Houthi jail.
It deemed as a “farce” the sentence against her, explaining that it was issued
by a judiciary that had lost its legitimacy and that has been transformed into
a tool to be abused by the militia to violate the rights of the people.
It said that the execution violates all red lines and local and international
laws, treaties and agreements.
It added that Amaisy was kidnapped by the Houthis and held in complete
isolation from the world. Along with other prisoners, she was held in appalling
conditions for several months before being put on trial.
The prisoners, revealed the ministry, were subject to extortion and repeated
degradation by the militias. They were deprived of their basic rights,
including contacting an attorney and enjoying family visits.
It stressed that Amaisy’s execution would be considered a war crime according
to international laws and it will deal a blow to an anticipated prisoner
exchange between the government and Houthis.
It therefore, called on the international community to exert pressure on the
Houthis to make them commit to the swap deal that was reached during
consultations in Sweden in December.
For four years, the Houthis have issued death sentences against dozens of their
opponents, including activists. Many have been falsely accused of treason,
backing the legitimate government or belonging to terrorist organizations.
The death sentence against Amaisy is the 1st against a woman.
She is being held on fabricated charges of belonging to terrorist groups in
Sanaa.
(source: aawsat.com)
IRAN:
2 Juvenile Offenders at Risk of Imminent Execution in Iran
1 young Iranian prisoner, who was sentenced to death at just 15, is set to be
executed soon, according to what his family was told by prison officials.
Mohammad Kalhori was sentenced to death even though the medical examiner’s
report says that he was not mentally mature at the time that he allegedly
committed murder, due to a mental disorder, and was suffering from depression.
His attorney, Hassan Aghakhani, said: “Unfortunately, Mohammad’s family were
informed that the verdict will be carried out soon.”
The Criminal Court initially sentenced Kalhori to seven years in prison and
ordered him to pay blood money to the victim’s family, but this was overturned
by the Supreme Court after an appeal and letters from a Government official and
a Member of Parliament.
So, in September 2016, shortly after he turned 18, Kalhori was sentenced to
death for the murder of his teacher in 2014.
Back in June 2018, two UN human rights experts urged Iranian authorities to
halt the execution.
Agnes Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or
arbitrary executions, and Renate Winter, who heads the UN Committee on the
Rights of the Child, wrote: “Iran has committed itself to prohibiting the use
of the death penalty for all those under 18 by its ratification of both the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the
Rights of the Child. As such, this execution is unlawful and arbitrary.”
Another juvenile offender Shayan Saeedpour, who was sentenced to death, has
been transferred to a different prison in Kurdistan Province and the fear is
that he will soon be executed as well.
Saeedpour was convicted of murder at the age of 15 or 16 and has been in jail
since 2015. He has also been under psychiatric care whilst in prison and has
attempted suicide on numerous occasions.
At the time of the murder, Saeedpour was under the influence of alcohol, for
which he was additionally sentenced to 80 lashes, according to his family. He
turned himself in to police 2 days later.
Iran is one of a small number of countries that continues to execute juvenile
offenders. It is illegal to execute someone for crimes committed under the age
of 18, according to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(ICCPR) and Convention on the Rights of the Child, both treaties that Iran is
party to, but the Regime has shown no sign of stopping.
In February 2018, the UN human rights chief called on Iran to halt executions
of juveniles.
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said: “The execution of juvenile offenders is
unequivocally prohibited under international law, regardless of the
circumstances and nature of the crime committed.”
There are believed to be at least 80 juvenile offenders on death row.
(source: ncr-iran.org)
CANADA:
Sentenced to hang in '75, cop killer looking for love
The cop killer says he doesn’t remember a thing.
Really.
So don’t bother asking.
And now, the notorious Richard Ambrose — who has changed his surname to
Bergeron — is looking for love.
On his profile, the 70-year-old double killer boasts: “I survived the death
penalty in Canada.”
But he writes on Prisoner Connect that because of a brain injury he suffered in
an industrial accident, he’s in the dark about those tragic events.
Richard Ambrose in 1974. He and his partner in crime were sentenced to hang in
1975.
“Many women may be curious about my original crime in 1974 but because of my
brain injury [damage] I don’t and can’t remember my crime,” he said.
On Dec. 13, 1974, Ambrose and his partner in crime, James Hutchison, kidnapped
a 14-year-old Moncton boy whose father was a wealthy restaurateur.
The distressed dad paid a $15,000 ransom and his son was released unharmed.
Moncton cops Aurele Bourgeois and Michael O’Leary weren’t so lucky.
The last anyone heard from the pair, they were following a suspicious Cadillac.
Their bodies were found in a woods outside the Maritime city 2 days later.
They had been buried in shallow graves — which the officers had been forced to
dig — and both men were shot in the head.
6 children were left fatherless.
And on April Fool’s Day, 1975 Ambrose and Hutchison were sentenced to hang.
Only 4 more men were sentenced to die in Canada.
None of them swung.
Their sentences were commuted when capital punishment was abolished in 1976.
Hutchison remained unrepentant and died in prison in 2011.
Ambrose was released on parole in 2000, but 5 years later, was back in the
joint doing his life sentence on the installment plan.
Ambrose murdered Charlie Bourgeois’ dad back in 1974. He has never forgotten
it.
“I don’t support him receiving parole any time,” Bourgeois told the Moncton
Times & Transcript in 2017. “I lived many years in the U.S. where a life
sentence is actually a life sentence.”
The former defenceman for the Calgary Flames, Hartford Whalers and St. Louis
Blues doesn’t consider 25 years a life sentence.
“My mom [Genevieve] lost her husband and 4 children lost their father,” he
said. “She never remarried and raised 4 children without a dad. She displayed
great courage.”
Ambrose — who now goes by Bergeron — claims he is “spiritual” now.
Bourgeois added: “I still carry a photo of him in my wallet.”
But never mind that ladies.
Ambrose — now Bergeron — describes himself as an “Acadian, Metis, wood
sculptor, pipe carrier, seat lodge conductor and a Sundancer.”
He adds that while he’s spiritual, he doesn’t preach.
“I would like to correspond with any healthy Canadian women, any race, between
25 and 45 years old.”
Now imprisoned at Matsqui Penitentiary in Abbotsford, B.C., Ambrose said he
wants to settle down on the west coast.
In the intervening years since being sent back to prison, Ambrose’s attempts at
freedom have been torpedoed.
Partner in crime Jimmy Hutchison died in prison in 2011.
The Parole Board noted the “’serious spiritualist’s’ “capacity for extreme
violence” last October.
In short, Ambrose thinks he’s ready to be sprung back among the public.
His case management team? Not so much.
In October, the panel heard the man who escaped the noose wanted to set up a
bank account, attend a community residential facility on Vancouver Island and
go to a storage rental facility to have his belongings moved from Alberta to
B.C.
Ambrose got lucky in 1976.
Not this time.
(source: Toronto Sun)
JAPAN:
Death row miscarriage case puts spotlight on Japanese justice----A Japanese man
freed after 48 years on death row lives in fear he will be sent back
Iwao Hakamada (82) spends a lot of time in the neat apartment he shares with
his sister gazing out the window. After 48 years in jail, most of it in
solitary confinement waiting for the hangman, he lives mostly in his own head.
He gives no clue that he has entered the history books as the world’s
longest-serving death row prisoner. Or that he is still under a death sentence.
Hakamada was arrested in 1966 on suspicion of murdering a family of four. After
decades of appeals, a district court in Shizuoka Prefecture freed him, saying
in 2014 that police evidence against him was probably fabricated. The
prosecution disagrees, so he awaits retrial and the possibility he will be
returned to his 5sq m cell.
Last year the Tokyo high court overturned the Shizuoka decision to grant a
retrial, bouncing Japan’s highest-profile legal miscarriage back to the supreme
court. Prosecutors have written to the court demanding that it reject
Hakamada’s appeal.
His sister, Hideko, fears that he will have to serve out his original sentence,
despite his age and fragile mental health. “It’s really unforgivable,” she
says.
Hideko, still a steely presence at 85, has fought for her brother’s innocence
for more than half her life. Last month she helped launch a manga (comic)
series about his life. The title, Split Decision, nods to Hakamada’s old life
as a professional boxer and to his original conviction by 3 judges, 1 of whom,
racked with guilt, later said the conviction was flawed.
Hakamada was questioned for three weeks without a lawyer, says Amnesty
International says. He later retracted his confession, claiming the police had
beaten and threatened him unless he admitted stabbing to death his boss, his
boss’s wife and their 2 teenage children. Yet Shizuoka district court sentenced
him to death in September 1968. The sentence was confirmed in 1980.
The arrest of Carlos Ghosn, Nissan’s former chairman who has been held in a
detention cell for three months, suggests little has changed since. Police and
prosecutors have enormous discretionary powers over criminal suspects, who are
nearly always convicted once indicted. Bias can affect police procedure:
Hakamada was poor and his boxer’s face and lack of formal education made him
appear thuggish.
Japan puts far fewer people in prison than most developed countries: 41 per
100,000 people, compared with 80 in Ireland, 139 in the United Kingdom and 655
in the United States. But the entire system would collapse without confessions,
said David Johnson, a judicial expert on Japan at the University of Hawaii.
Confessions underpin 89 % of criminal cases.
“The police believe that expression of remorse is a key part of the system,”
says Kana Sasakura, a professor of law at Konan University. Nobody knows how
many innocent people are in Japanese prisons, but many of the more than 100
people on death row are challenging their convictions.
The heavy use of confessions made under duress has been widely condemned by
lawyers and campaigners inside Japan, which is the only G7 developed country
apart from the US that executes its citizens. The ministry of justice says the
death penalty is popular with the public. In practice, the gallows are usually
reserved for multiple murderers.
Opposed to debate
Hanging has survived the tenure of conscience-stricken justice ministers, such
as the devoutly Buddhist Seiken Sugiura, who declined to sign execution orders
throughout 2006. Judicial officials always reimpose the status quo, says
Yoshihiro Yasuda, a lawyer who opposes the death penalty. “The prosecution and
judges have not accepted they did anything wrong [in the Hakamada case],” he
says. They are “absolutely opposed to starting a debate on the death penalty.”
In prison Hakamada initially kept up the training regime that carried him
through 29 professional featherweight bouts. Fellow inmates used to watch him
shadow-box and punch the walls of his cell until his knuckles turned bloody. He
gradually became uncommunicative, at one point refusing all visits from his
closest relatives, including his sister, for well over a decade.
Now, he just wants to be left alone to live out his remaining time, says his
sister. “He has finally found some peace here.”
(source: irishtimes.com)
PAKISTAN:
SC acquits murder suspect on ‘benefit of doubt’
The Supreme Court on Monday acquitted a man who was awarded capital punishment
for allegedly murdering a citizen in Rawalpindi back in 2011, ARY News
reported.
A 3-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Asif Saeed Khosa
overturned the Lahore High Court (LHC) verdict that had upheld the death
sentence handed to Muhammad Zaman.
It exonerated the accused from murder charges on the benefit of doubt.
Zaman along with 2 other suspects, Muhammad Azad and Muhammad Shehzad were
handed death penalty for murdering a citizen and injuring his son in a
Rawalpindi neighbourhood in 2011.
However, the high court acquitted Shehzad while upheld the conviction of the 2
other accused. Subsequently, they approached the apex court requesting it to
set aside their conviction.
It is important to mention here that accused Muhammad Azad had died inside
prison.
Earlier, on Feb 13, a Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Asif Saeed
Khosa upheld death sentence awarded to the killer of 5 people in Peshawar.
The court heard a plea of the man, convicted for killing a woman and 4 children
in Peshawar, seeking his acquittal or commuting death sentence into life term.
The bench turned down the plea of murder convict Faisal.
Chief Justice Khosa remarked that the woman and 4 children were murdered to
steal gold ornaments. The children were killed only to avoid them to become
witnesses, the top judge remarked. The house was set on fire to hide the murder
crime.
(source: arynews.tv)
INDIA:
Gujarat High Court spares 2 child killers the gallows
The Gujarat High Court on Monday saved 2 persons—Akshay Patel and Kuldip
Panchal—who had brutally murdered a four-and-a-half-year-old kid for ransom,
from the gallows, and converted the death sentence awarded to them by a
Visnagar court to 30 years of life imprisonment without remission.
The court, while setting aside the death sentence, remarked that the duo had
committed a heinous crime of murdering an innocent, helpless, and a defenceless
boy aged four-years-and-five-months, and they are liable to be punished
severely. However, it clarified that it is not a case which falls within the
category of the rarest of the rare cases.
As per the case details, the duo had abducted the child on March 17, 2012,
while he was playing outside his house in Visnagar town of Mehsana district and
demanded a ransom of Rs 50 lakh from his father. The father, a businessman,
told them that he can't arrange the amount at such short notice, and can
provide them Rs 12 lakh at the earliest. However, the duo refused to accept the
same and threatened to kill the child, if the entire amount is not paid. They
had also threatened the man to refrain from involving the police.
Worried about his son's safety, the man informed the police about the abduction
and ransom threat. The duo somehow came to know about the same and told the
father that now they do not want any money and he will have to pay the price
for informing the police. On the next day, they purchased blades, took the
child underneath a bridge near Rakhav village, and slit his throat to kill him.
Thereafter, they buried the blood-soaked body while the child was still alive.
The duo got arrested by the police and the Visnagar sessions court after a
thorough trial awarded them a death sentence in March 2016. While the state
government moved the high court for confirmation of the death sentence, the duo
appealed against the verdict. The high court on Monday rejected the appeals
while commuting the death sentence awarded by the lower court to minimum 30
years of imprisonment.
WHAT COURT SAID
HC SAID that it is not the rarest of the rare cases
Why the death sentence was commuted?
The accused were aged 20 years, respectively, while committing the crime and
had just attained majority.
Panchal has no criminal antecedent and hails from a poor strata of the society.
No evidence on record to indicate that the duo cannot be reformed.
The child was abducted for money and the duo had no intention to kill him until
the situation went out of control.
Criminals are not born, but made
Quoting Justice VR Krishna Iyer, the court said: "Criminals are not born but
made. The human potential in everyone is good and so, never write off any
criminal as beyond redemption. Indeed, every saint has a past and every sinner
a future".
Death penalty should remain on the statute book
While adjudicating the case, the court opined that death penalty should remain
in the statute books and should not be wholly abolished. It held that the
presence of death penalty act as a deterrent for criminals. The court also held
that if people get away after committing serious crimes by being awarded
nominal punishments, it may induce people to resort to personal vengeance,
which will affect peace and order in the society.
(source: dnaindia.com)
SRI LANKA:
13 inmates definitely in line for the death penalty
The Ministry of Justice and Prison Reforms claims that the death penalty will
definitely be carried out on 13 inmates who are on death row and convicted of
drug-related offences. A senior official of the Ministry noted that of the
total 17 inmates who are on death row that 4 are foreign nationals. Thereby the
death penalty can only be carried out definitely on the rest of the inmates.
This matter has been notified to the Presidential Secretariat as well. The 4
foreign inmates on death row in Sri Lanka are Pakistani nationals and it is
reported that the Pakistan government had made several requests for the release
of these inmates.
The senior official further claimed that a total of 48 persons convicted of
drug-related offences are currently on death row, however, 30 of them have
filed appeals against their verdicts and thus death penalty cannot be imposed
on them as of yet.
The list comprising the names of the 17 individuals, whom the death penalty can
be imposed upon was handed over to the President recently with the
recommendation of the Attorney General. All inmates on this list are said to be
below the age of 50.
(source: newsfirst.lk)
*******************
The Death Penalty – Hanging and its alternatives
Killing enemies of the State (the Sentence of Death) is a hallowed tradition
and its moral standing has been mostly ignored by both priests and politicians.
Nevertheless, in this age of compassion – when even the slaughter of domestic
animals for food and sustenance is viewed by some as a moral outrage – the
suggestion that inveterate criminals should be painfully and publicly
asphixiated (by hanging) not only to remove a social danger but also to fill
terror in would-be wrongdoers seems a gross anachronism in a so-called
civilized state. Suppose it is argued that the end justifies the means – that a
greater good results from the spectacular use of violence by rulers and
governors in exceptional circumstances.
The contentious issue is this – can the same taming or eradication of the
pathologically unfit be attained by other – and more humane – methods? There is
an alternative based on our scientific knowledge of the roots of violence not
only in our species but in our animal kin as well. With hardly an exception,
all vicious and specular crime is committed by males in their prime. The
hormone Testosterone – secreted by the male generative organs is the culprit
and this ‘truth’ was known to rulers down the ages. Not only political elites
but also common animal breeders and pet owners knew that by ‘castrating’ a
ferocious male there ia a wondrous transformation – the fighting bull becomes
the placid ox .
Let us refocus on the the issue of male criminal behaviour. Is not radical
emasculation by removing the hormone producing testicles (castration) a more
humane and cost-effective way of dealing with male criminality and violence? A
serial killer, a child molester or a dangerous drug-dealer can be very
effectively ‘removed’ from circulation’ by a trifling operation – emasculation.
If it is argued that such ‘punishment’ does not have the horrors and spectacle
of a public hanging , let it be noted that a ‘macho male’ values his
masculinity above all else and its ‘removal’ is a devastating blow to his
identity and power-base. He is a much diminished male and his glory days are
over. It is true that the ‘joy in punishing’ and the delight in seeing a public
enemy tortured are lost – but these are base passions that have little to do
with social justice.
(source: R Chandrasoma, lankaweb.com)
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