April 26
CHINA:
Society Review hearing set for murder conviction 20 years after execution
A court in the eastern province of Shandong will review a controversial 1994
rape and murder case that saw a man executed, only for another to later confess
to the crime.
Nie Shubin was 21 in 1995 when found guilty of the rape and murder of a woman
in Hebei's capital, Shijiazhuang, and executed. In 2005, another man named Wang
Shujin confessed to the attack.
Wang, 48, was apprehended by police in 2005 for three unconnected rape and
murder cases, and confessed to a rape and murder with similar facts to Nie's
case.
Hebei Higher People's Court approved the death penalty for Nie in 1995,
rejected Wang's request for a retrial in 2013 and still holds that Nie was
guilty. Last December the Supreme People's Court ordered the case be moved out
of the province and reviewed in Shandong.
Five judges from Shandong higher court have reviewed Nie's case and the
attorneys acting for Nie have seen the case files. In March, the attorneys
claimed to have found several "evident errors" while duplicating Nie's case
files, most of which involve legal procedure.
Nie's family, their legal team and officials representing those involved in the
original trial will attend the hearing, scheduled for April 28, said a
statement from the court. Other than the 2 parties, 15 people, including
lawyers, lawmakers, political advisors and representatives of the public, will
attend the hearing as independent witnesses and ask questions to both parties.
To protect the identity of the victim, the hearing will not be open to the
public but proceedings will be documented via the court's official microblog
account.
Normally in China, for the review of a murder conviction, the court goes
through case files rather than holding an actual trial.
Prof. Bian Jianlin of the China University of Political Science and Law told
Xinhua that this kind of hearing is very rare and may be be an attempt to
promote judicial transparency and raise the credibility of the judicial system.
"We want to conduct a fair and just review of the case with adequate
transparency," Zhu Yunshan, presiding judge of the the review team, said. "A
hearing of this kind is our best option to hear both sides of the story and
inform the public without compromising the victim's privacy."
Nie's case drew public attention following the acquittal of an executed convict
in another rape-murder case last December.
A teenager named Huugjilt from Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region was executed
for the rape and murder of a woman in June 1996. A few years later a
self-confessed serial rapist and killer, Zhao Zhihong, admitted to the murder
when arrested in 2005.
(source: ECNS)
SAUDI ARABIA----execution
Saudi executes Jordanian drug trafficker
Saudi Arabia executed a Jordanian man on Friday for drug trafficking in the
ultra-conservative kingdom, the interior ministry said.
Mohammed Abu Samak was arrested "as he was smuggling a large amount of banned
amphetamine pills," said a ministry statement carried by the official SPA news
agency.
His beheading in the northwestern region of Tabuk is part of a surge in
executions that has alarmed human rights activists.
Saudi Arabia has already executed 68 people so far this year, after 87 in all
of 2014, according to AFP tallies.
Drug trafficking, rape, murder, apostasy and armed robbery are all punishable
by death under the kingdom's strict version of Islamic sharia law.
Amnesty International's 2014 global report on the death penalty ranks Saudi
Arabia among the top five executioners in the world.
(source: Agence France-Presse)
NIGERIA:
Alleged Killer-Bride Has Case to Answer, Says Judge
A high Court in Gewaza, Bauchi State on Tuesday rejected a motion to have
murder charges against a child bride accused of killing her husband dismissed,
saying there was enough evidence for the case to proceed.
Wasila Tasi'u was 14 when she married Umar Sani, 35, in Nigeria's deeply
conservative, mainly Muslim north last year, and could face the death penalty
if convicted of using rat poison to kill him.
"I am of the opinion that there is a case against the accused," High Court
Judge Mohammed Yahaya said. "As such, I overrule the submission of no-case from
the defence counsel."
The AFP reported that Tasi'u's lawyers had argued that the state failed to
establish her intent to kill Sani and questioned the reliability of a key
prosecution witness.
The witness, a 7-year-old girl named Hamziyya who was identified as the sister
of Sani's other wife, testified that Tasi'u gave her money to buy the poison on
April 5 last year, the day Sani died.
The defence said that relying on testimony from a minor contravened Nigeria's
Evidence Act and that the state's case should therefore be thrown out.
The murder trial has highlighted the range of attitudes towards child marriage
in Nigeria, especially in the impoverished north.
The families of both the deceased and the accused have rejected claims that she
was forced to marry a man more than twice her age, noting that 14 was an
appropriate age to marry and that Tasi'u chose Sani from a range of suitors.
Some locals have called for Tasi'u to face stiff punishment to discourage other
girls from taking similar action if they become unhappy in their marriage.
But rights activists have demanded that Tasi'u be rehabilitated as a victim of
a forced marriage, which likely included incidents of rape.
Laws regarding both sexual and marital consent are complex in northern Nigeria,
given the coexistence of both secular and Islamic law, creating contradictions
in the justice system.
Tasi'u has remained largely stoic through her appearances in court so far,
crying when charges were first read against her, but otherwise sitting
silently, often with her head bowed.
On Tuesday she stood quietly in the dock, with her head fully covered in a
sky-blue hijab.
Sani died after eating food that Tasi'u allegedly prepared for a meal to
celebrate their marriage. Three others who reportedly ate the food also died,
but prosecutors have combined the three deaths into a single murder charge.
The state has concluded its case and following Tuesday's ruling the defence was
instructed to move forward with its own evidence when the trial resumes on
April 29.
(source: The Guardian)
MAUIRITIUS:
Mauritius urged to reintroduce death penalty
People in Mauritius have been calling for the reintroduction of the death
penalty after numerous sexual abuse cases on children, including the rape and
murder of an 11-year-old girl earlier this month. Police have registered some
17 cases of sexual assaults in April, including the murder case as well as one
where a father is accused of having raped his 4-year-old daughter for months.
Vice Prime Minister Shawkutally Soodhun told the press Thursday that he also is
in favor of the death penalty as sentence to some sexual offenders.
"We have all seen what they did to that 11 year old girl. We cannot just send
them to jail and pay for their living costs. There is a need for strong
punishment," he said.
(source: spyghana.com)
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