Sept. 6
IRAN:
Juvenile Offender Mehdi Khazaeian in Imminent Danger of Execution----Based on
his identity documents, Mehdi was born on November 20, 1999. The alleged murder
took place when he was 16 years old, in Gorgan on March 13, 2016.
Unofficial sources have informed Mehdi Khazaeian’s family that his execution
will be carried out soon. Mehdi Khazaeian is a juvenile offender whose death
sentence has been upheld by the Supreme Court and can be implemented at any
time.
According to close sources, Mehdi Khazaeian’s family have been informed that he
will be executed soon. Mehdi Khazaeian is charged for a murder allegedly
committed at the age of 16. He is currently being held at the Correction and
Rehabilitation Center of Gorgan.
Based on his identity documents, Mehdi was born on November 20, 1999. The
alleged murder took place when he was 16 years old, in Gorgan on March 13,
2016. The relatives of the juvenile offender stated that he was in a gang fight
leading to the murder of Amir Hossein B., 19, and it is not clear who delivered
the fatal blow.
The verdict, a copy of which was received by IHR, mentions, “The forensic
report indicates that “currently there’s no sign of mental disorder in the
defendant and considering his statements about the incident and his total
awareness of the situation, it seems that he was in a good mental health and
wasn’t under the influence of alcohol and was mentally mature as of March 14,
2016 “
Eventually, Mehdi Khazaeian was sentenced to 80 lashes for the drinking of
alcohol, 3 years in prison for participation in a gang fight, and qisas
(retribution) death penalty for murder. The sentence was upheld by the Supreme
Court.
Based on Article 91 of the new Islamic Penal Code, approved in 2013, judges can
potentially deny issuing a death sentence for juveniles who do not understand
the nature of their crime.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Iran has ratified, clearly
bans execution and life imprisonment of juveniles.
It’s worth mentioning that currently a sum of money is being collected in order
to win the consent of the plaintiffs. Since the juvenile offender couldn’t
choose a lawyer during his arrest and the proceeding of his case, Iran Human
Rights invites human rights lawyers who are willing to voluntarily handle the
cases of juvenile offenders to help this death-row prisoner.
Since the beginning of 2019, at least 2 juvenile offenders have been executed
in Iran.
(source: Iran Human Rights)
ENGLAND:
To Gene, on death row
For almost 20 years, the charity Human Writes has fostered connection between
American death row inmates and British pen pals.
One of the most vivid memories from my childhood is a small, slightly time-worn
and sun-faded polaroid of a a mixed-raced man in his mid-20s, handsome and
healthy, with the first signs of five o’clock shadow and a cautious smile that
hints at an imperceptible private amusement. It sat on a bookcase in the living
room of the flat where I was raised by my aunt and grandmother, and would
hardly catch your eye unless you were looking for it.
I've never met the man. Neither has anyone in my family. His name is Gene* and
he was on Death Row in Texas, having been convicted before his 18th birthday,
sometime in the late 1990s.
He was part of our life many thousands of miles away in both London, then
Scotland, because my aunt wrote to him for years, even after his sentence was
commuted to life imprisonment following a Supreme Court ruling. She, like many
others, was a volunteer writer for Human Writes, a UK-based charity that links
American Death Row prisoners with correspondents — or “writers” in the
charity’s parlance — from across the pond. For almost 20 years, the charity has
have worked towards the same, unwavering goal: an offer of friendship to those
living within a particularly inhuman method of incarceration.
Human Writes is not unique, nor is it the first British organization of its
kind. The civil-rights charity LifeLines formed in 1988 after its founder, Jan
Arriens, found himself intensely moved by the BBC Documentary 14 Days In May,
which charts the aftermath of one young man’s execution in Mississippi. In
2000, controversy erupted when Sue Fenwick, a senior member of LifeLines,
married her pen pal, Bobby “Tenessee” Lusk, which caused a schism in the small
world of prison writing. Fenwick joined Human Writes soon after and remains a
key figure in its work to this day. The charity is entirely self-funded, with
membership fees covering its essential operating costs, while all of the key
office holders are volunteers, including the “state coordinators” who act as
the liaison between Human Writes and each U.S. state with the death penalty.
They are also the main point of contact for writers in the UK, there to provide
support to both sides of the pen-pal relationship.
My aunt had seen Human Writes advertised in The Spectator magazine, she
recalled when we spoke about Gene over the phone. It’s been a while since she
thought of him, she later told me. “I corresponded with him regularly for
several years and sent him money at Christmas time. I rattled on a lot about
our life, and he enjoyed stories of your teenage experiences — a bit different
from his, I think. He was still a very young man when we were exchanging
letters and quite frightened at times. I remember he was frightened about
leaving the Polunsky Unit — death row — for the main body of the prison, and
that he told me about being insulted by some of the guards when the Supreme
Court ruled that his execution was off.”
Luke Templeman has been a writer with Human Writes for 7 years now, and has ran
its media relations on a volunteer basis for the past three. For the duration
of his time with the charity, he has been pen pals Florida. “It breaks my
heart, how he made a decision when he was much younger, which resulted in him
doing something terrible,” Templeman told me. “The consequences of that are his
life now. He’s exceptionally intelligent. All of that is just lost to the
world. [But] it’s heartening, for both of us, that he has this outlet.”
Human Writes has never been a campaign, or lobbying group. This was a strategic
decision, as Templeman said. Unlike with the National Coalition to Abolish the
Death Penalty or Amnesty International, it does not express abolitionist
sentiment. It makes a certain kind of operational sense, not to potentially
antagonize the prison authorities they rely on for access to prisoners. It has
no official religious affiliation, nor does it seek to minister. There’s little
encouragement for writers to ask about inmates’ crimes, though what people
choose to reveal is up to them.
“There are plenty of other groups that have a stance on the death penalty, both
for and against. That is not what we do or get involved in and is ground very
well covered elsewhere,” Templeman said. We do not have a view [on that]. What
we do have is a belief in the importance of the mental well-being of the people
who are living within this situation.”
Though it varies from state to state, the average inmate on Death Row typically
remains there for well over a decade, with a significant number having been
there for more than 20 years. In 2018, 61 year-old David Earl Miller was
executed in Tennessee after spending 36 years on Death Row, the longest gap
between sentencing and execution recorded that year. Conditions for inmates are
brutally harsh by design. Isolation from other prisoners, exclusion from
educational programs, sharply restricted visitation rights, limited
opportunities for exercise and 23 hours a day spent alone in a cell. It is a
double punishment: the inhumanity of solitary confinement added on to the
looming death sentence itself. Many are bound with complex appeals and efforts
to commute their sentences to life without parole. The companionship offered by
pen-palship can be one small human mercy, if nothing else.
“It certainly gives you a very different perspective on life. Your life is full
of movement and change, but they’re in their position, which is the opposite.”—
Luke Templeman
One common objection from those who are queasy with the charity’s work is an
appeal to the memory of the victims. How, the argument usually runs, can it be
appropriate to prioritize the humanity of people who have committed such
inhuman acts and erase the victims and their loved ones? The Human Writes
answer is simple: It doesn’t. Candles are lit every year at the organization’s
annual conference in memory of all those that have lost their lives; inmates
and victims alike.
My aunt knew what Gene was inside for, though it was never an issue even as his
constant proclamations of innocence rankled her. “It was clear he’d been bad.
He'd shot somebody,” she said. “I made a point of never asking for details of
his offense, it was irrelevant. But neither did I go along with him when he
claimed he was innocent.”
The demand for new writers often outpaces the number of new volunteers. One of
the key requirements is consistency. Though there are many compassionate people
in the world, there are perhaps fewer who can commit to keeping a regular
correspondence. Life has its way of throwing unexpected curve balls and frantic
moments, for those on the outside at least. Life on death row, on the other
hand, is in a state of suspended animation, and this is often one of the most
difficult psychological gaps to breach for both correspondents.
“We have to make sure people are aware that this is a commitment that you
really can’t shirk on. I think people generally understand that and get why
that’s the case,” Templeman said. “They also need to realize that the
relationship might end when a prisoner is eventually executed. It’s something
that can’t be ignored.”
My aunt’s correspondence with Gene didn’t end when his sentence was commuted to
life in prison. “I wrote to him for a couple of years after he was transferred
from the Polunsky Unit to the Ferguson Unit after a period in solitary,” she
said. But “the correspondence just came to a natural end.”
For Templeman, the pen-pal relationship necessarily contains a tension, as the
writer is narrating events to a person who has done the same things over and
over for years. “We have people that have been writing for a very long time. It
certainly gives you a very different perspective on life,” he said. “Your life
is full of movement and change, but they’re in their position, which is the
opposite. You’re moving forward and telling them about your marriage and
family, and everything else. That is, hopefully, an emotional support for
them.”
My aunt knew what Gene was inside for, though it was never an issue even as his
constant proclamations of innocence rankled her.
Though perhaps not for all. It’s another complication, knowing how much to
reveal and how much to elide and gloss over when dealing with people who have
not have seen a world outside their cells for many years or decades. Is there a
point at which withholding is the greater kindness? It’s a question that many
Human Writers have to grapple with on a regular basis. Like so much else, it
depends on the individual relationship.
There are the obvious potential pitfalls. Readymade opportunities for
oversharing or crassness. What is the right amount to give away about a recent
summer holiday, for instance? Does the person at the other end really want to
hear the breathless details of a particularly thrilling trip to Europe? The
only correct answer is a personal one. I’m told that most inmates are keen on
the full picture and genuinely want to hear about what’s happening in your
life, far away from prison walls, something that’s usually positive for both
sides.
This bind is something that colors my own memories of Gene. Children are not
always subtle creatures and I wanted answers to the obvious questions. I’d ask
my aunt the details of what he’d done to be there and she’d ask if there was
anything I wanted to reveal about my own life, chocked full of all the typical
youthful embarrassments. I remember receiving a mild ribbing from Gene after
sharing my early adolescent infatuation with Public Enemy, that extended over
several letters.
Talking over all of this through brought back plenty of memories for my aunt,
as well as the thought that it might well be time to reconnect with Human
Writes and offer up her services again as a correspondent. It’s something I’ve
started to seriously consider, too. After all, I make my living by writing; an
occasionally enjoyable, often entirely maddening pursuit. At times it’s easy
enough to question what good it has ever done, for myself anyone else. Human
Writes offers a clear corrective to these thoughts, and a reminder of the
small, unpredictable joys that can come from the act of putting pen to paper.
*name has been changed
(source: Francisco Garcia, theoutline.com)
BANGLADESH:
Man gets death penalty for killing wife, child in Khagrachhari
A court here on Thursday sentence a man to death and his parents to life term
imprisonment for killing his wife and child in 2016.
The condemned convict is Saber Ali, 29 while the lifers are his mother Renu Ara
Begum, 49, and father Md Mahbub Ali, 54.
District and Sessions Court Judge Reza Md Alamgir Hasan passed the order also
fined Saber Tk 50,000 and his parents Tk 10,000 each.
According to the case statement, on March 22, 2016, Saber strangled his wife
Mezeda Begum and 6 month child Redwan to death while they were sleeping in
their house in Guimara upazila.
Victim’s father filed a case with Guimara Police Station in this regard.
(source: unb.com.bd)
CAMEROON:
Cameroonian Rapper and Activist to Appear Before Court, Could Face Death
Penalty----PEN America calls for charges against pro-democracy activist Valsero
to be dropped
The arrest, ongoing detention, and charges against Cameroonian rapper Gaston
Serval Abe, known as Valsero, are inexcusable violations of freedom artistic
expression, PEN America said in a statement today. Arrested earlier this year
in the vicinity of a pro-democracy demonstration, Valsero will appear before a
military court Friday and could face the death penalty. He’s charged with
rebellion against the state, terrorism, insurrection, inciting public disorder,
and propagating false information.
“Valsero, along with his sound engineer, has been imprisoned for over six
months for merely attending a peaceful march in protest of the last election
results in Cameroon,” said Julie Trébault, director of the Artists at Risk
Connection (ARC) at PEN America. “This is clearly a targeted attempt to silence
an internationally known and beloved rapper who strives, both through his music
and his activism, to critique the government and inspire social change. His
ongoing detention in poor conditions and the exaggerated charges against him
are an intolerable affront both to artistic freedom and human dignity. We urge
the Cameroonian government to immediately drop the charges against Valsero and
uphold its domestic and international commitments to protect freedom of
expression and ensure that artists are free to create without fear”.
Critics say Valsero is being persecuted for his work, which often includes
political themes. Songs like “Çe pays tue les jeunes” (“This country kills the
youth”), “Ne me parlez plus de ce pays” (“Don’t talk about this country to me
anymore”), and the well-known “Lettre au president” (“Letter to the President”)
have earned both the ire of the government and admiration of fans across
Cameroon. Many of his new songs reference current crises in Cameroon and the
current government, in power for nearly 4 decades.
Although his work fell afoul of censorship laws, his 2008 debut album,
“Poltiquement instable” (“Politically unstable”), became a runaway success,
earning him the title “The General” from fans across the country. Beyond his
rap career, he is also an engaged activist, starting initiatives such as “Jeune
et Fort” (“Young and Strong”), which promotes education through citizenship,
democracy, and electoral culture, and his new “Our Destiny” association, which
aims to empower young people to take control of their existence for the benefit
of the country.
Valsero was arrested on January 26 in Yaoundé on the margins of a peaceful
demonstration protesting last year’s national elections, which many deemed to
be rigged in support of the current president, Paul Biya. Maurice Kamto, the
opposition leader, had organized marches all over the country on that day, but
the protestors were met with widespread police suppression, and both Kamto and
Valsero were detained. Valsero is not a member of the opposition party.
PEN America leads the Artists at Risk Connection (ARC), a program dedicated to
assisting imperiled artists and fortifying the field of organizations that
support them. If you or someone you know is an artist at risk, contact ARC
here.
(source: PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights
to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide----pen.org)
SOUTH AFRICA:
‘No,no, no,’ for death penalty, says Angie Motshekga
This comes a day after the ATM wrote to National Assembly speaker Thandi Modise
and the Presidency to ask for the reinstatement of the death penalty.
Reinstating the death penalty? No, no, no, says Basic Education Minister Angie
Motshekga.
During Thursday’s sitting of the National Assembly, IFP MP Zandile Majozi said
South Africa has one of the highest rates of femicide in the world.
“Women are killed at five times the global rate. The statistics are alarming,”
she said.
“The culture of abuse and killing of women in this country has a long-standing
history. It has been ingrained in the very fibre of our society. It is time to
put an end to it.”
Majozi said, for this reason, the whole house must support the IFP’s motion to
debate the reinstatement of the death penalty.
Motshekga didn’t agree with her about the death penalty.
“Life is sacrosanct. Only God gives life and only God can take a life. As much
as I abhorred apartheid, I despise it to this day for the hanging – of taking
the lives of young people in the gallows,” said Motshekga.
She said if Majozi visits the museum of the gallows at the Kgosi Mampuru
prison, she would not come back saying she wants a government that can kill and
hang people.
“I abhor, detest and will never in my life support any government that will
take it in its hands [the right] to kill people for any reason. So, we’ll never
support the death sentence for anything. It’s a no, no, no,” said Motshekga.
This follows a day after the ATM wrote to National Assembly speaker Thandi
Modise and to the Presidency to ask for the reinstatement of the death penalty.
ATM president Vuyo Zungula wrote to Ramaphosa, asking him to invoke his powers
in terms of Section 84 of the Constitution to introduce a referendum on the
death penalty.
In Zungula’s letter to Modise, he asked that the Constitutional Review
Committee (CRC) be asked to hold public hearings on the reintroduction of the
death penalty.
(source: citizen.co.za)
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