May 26
CHINA:
Drug dealers sentenced to death in Shanxi
5 people were sentenced to death for drug dealing, according to a court in
north China's Shanxi Province.
Of the 23 people involved in the case, 3 received death sentences with a
reprieve, and 1 received a life sentence. The rest were sentenced to 3 to 16
years imprisonment, according to the ruling of intermediate people's court in
the city of Jincheng on Friday.
Their personal properties were confiscated.
The drug gang was involved in selling drugs weighing more than 84 kilograms
between September 2016 to January 2017. They were busted in January 2017.
Drug trafficking is a felony offense in China. The maximum sentence for anyone
convicted of selling or producing more than 50 grams of heroin is the death
penalty.
(source: xinhuanet.com)
MALAYSIA:
Liew denies interfering with Singapore court decision to stay execution of
Malaysian death row prisoner
De facto law minister Datuk Liew Vui Keong has denied interfering with the
Singapore Court of Appeal's decision to stay the execution of P. Pannir Selvam,
a Malaysian citizen convicted on a drug charge.
Liew, who is Minister in the Prime Minister's Department, said that "a certain
quarter" in Singapore – whom he did not identify – had made serious allegations
against him about the matter in the past few days.
"The allegation that I have interfered with their judicial system is totally
unfounded and baseless. It's purely a figment of an imagination on someone's
part," Liew said in a statement Sunday (May 26).
Liew said he wanted to place the narrative of events in a correct perspective
to avoid further confusion and unnecessary innuendos from some people.
Pannir, 32, was convicted in 2017 of trafficking 51.84g of diamorphine or
heroin at the Woodlands Checkpoint on Sept 3, 2014, and was sentenced to death
by hanging.
Singapore President Halimah Yacob later rejected a clemency appeal from
Pannir's family.
Pannir then filed an application for a stay of execution before the Singapore
Court of Appeal on Wednesday (May 22), 2 days before he was due to be executed
in Changi Prison.
The Court, after hearing submissions from Pannir's lawyer on Thursday (May 23),
granted a stay of execution.
Liew said he was notified on Monday (May 20) about the impending execution by
rights group Lawyers for Liberty.
At about the same time, Pannir's family issued a press release urging Liew and
the Malaysian government to look into the matter.
Liew said he managed to speak to Singapore's Senior Minister in the Ministry of
State for Law on Wednesday afternoon.
"As time was pressing, I sought our Foreign Minister's blessings to communicate
with the Singapore Government and to write an email to them where I made a
representation based on valid legal grounds."
Liew said he had not read the grounds of decision by the Singapore Court of
Appeal in granting Pannir a stay of execution.
"What's obvious is that the Singapore Court made its decision having considered
the prevailing circumstances and the rule of law applicable to the case.
"It is therefore equally untenable to allege that there's an interference on my
part in their judicial process.
"I, and everyone of us here in Malaysia, respect the decision of Singapore's
Court," Liew said.
Liew said the Singapore Court of Appeal has only granted a temporary reprieve
to Pannir to allow him to exhaust his legal and constitutional rights by
engaging a competent counsel of his choice.
On Friday (May 22) – a day after the Singapore Court of Appeal decision –
Singapore's Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam was reported saying that
Singapore cannot make exceptions for Malaysians who have been sentenced to
death for their offences as it would undermine the rule of law here, he added.
"Let me be quite clear, it's not possible for us to do so, regardless of how
many requests we receive," said Shanmugam.
Shanmugam said the Singapore Government will not intervene when there are no
legal reasons to do so and when the courts have already imposed a sentence.
He added that the death penalty is imposed because evidence shows that it is an
effective deterrent.
(source: thestar.com.my)
IRAQ:
3 French IS members sentenced to death in Iraq
An Iraqi court on Sunday sentenced three French citizens to death after they
were found guilty of joining the Islamic State group, the first IS members from
France to be handed capital punishment, a court official said.
Captured in Syria by a US-backed force fighting the jihadists, Kevin Gonot,
Leonard Lopez and Salim Machou were transferred to Iraq for trial. They have 30
days to appeal.
Iraq has taken custody of thousands of jihadists repatriated in recent months
from neighbouring Syria, where they were caught by the US-backed Syrian
Democratic Forces during the battle to destroy the IS "caliphate".
The Iraqi judiciary said earlier in May that it has tried and sentenced more
than 500 foreign suspected IS members since the start of 2018.
Its courts have condemned many to life in prison and others to death, although
no foreign IS members have yet been executed.
The trials have been criticised by rights groups, which say they often rely on
evidence obtained through torture.
Those sentenced on Sunday were among 13 French nationals caught in
battle-scarred eastern Syria and handed to Iraqi authorities in February on
suspicion of being members of IS's feared contingent of foreign fighters.
One was later released as it was found he had travelled to Syria to support the
Yazidi religious minority -- the target of a particularly brutal IS campaign
that rights groups say may have amounted to genocide.
The remaining 12 were put on trial under Iraq's counterterrorism law, which can
dole out the death penalty to anyone found guilty of joining a "terrorist"
group, even if they were not explicitly fighting.
- Trials criticised -
Gonot, who fought for IS before being arrest in Syria with his mother, wife,
and half-brother, has also been sentenced in absentia by a French court to nine
years in prison, according to the French Terrorism Analysis Center (CAT).
Machou was a member of the infamous Tariq ibn Ziyad brigade, "a European
foreign terrorist fighter cell" that carried out attacks in Iraq and Syria and
planned others in Paris and Brussels, according to US officials.
Lopez, from Paris, travelled with his wife and two children to IS-held Mosul in
northern Iraq before entering Syria, French investigators say.
Iraq declared victory over IS in late 2017 and began trying foreigners accused
of joining the jihadists the following year.
Rights groups including Human Rights Watch have criticised Iraq's anti-terror
trials, which they say often rely on circumstantial evidence or confessions
obtained under torture.
Baghdad has offered to try all foreign fighters in SDF custody -- estimated at
around 1,000 -- in exchange for millions of dollars, Iraqi government sources
have told AFP.
Among those sentenced to life in prison are 58-year-old Frenchman Lahcen Ammar
Gueboudj and 2 other French nationals.
Iraq has also tried thousands of its own nationals arrested on home soil for
joining IS, including women, and begun trial proceedings for nearly 900 Iraqis
repatriated from Syria.
The country remains in the top five "executioner" nations in the world,
according to an Amnesty International report in April.
The number of death sentences issued by Iraqi courts more than quadrupled
between 2017 and 2018, to at least 271.
But only 52 were actually carried out in 2018, according to Amnesty, compared
with 125 the year before.
Analysts have also warned that prisons in Iraq have in the past acted as
"academies" for future jihadists, including IS supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
(source: france24.com)
*****************
Iraqi Court Sentences 3 French Members of IS to Death
An Iraqi judicial official says a Baghdad court has sentenced to death 3 French
citizens, members of the Islamic State group.
The official says the 3, sentenced on Sunday, were among 13 French citizens
handed over to Iraq in January by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to
speak to the media. Iraqi President Barham Saleh had said during a February
visit to Paris that the 13 will be prosecuted in accordance with Iraqi laws.
Thousands of men and women came from around the world to join IS when it
declared its self-styled Islamic caliphate in 2014.
It wasn't immediately clear how France, which abolished the death penalty
nearly 4 decades ago, will react to the sentencing of its citizens.
(source: Associated Press)
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