Aug. 18
RUSSIA:
Russian Orthodox Church ex-spokesman: Enemies of the nation can be killed
Vsevolod Chaplin, former spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church, has said in
an interview with a Moscow-based radio station that "enemies of the nation can
and should be killed."
In an interview with Echo of Moscow, the ultra-conservative priest said
discussion is needed whether to reinstate death penalty in Russia, now
suspended by a moratorium.
"It was not the right decision. God Himself clearly justifies [...] the
elimination of large numbers of people to save others. Not to punish, but to
make [people] come to their senses, to [bring in] discipline," Poland's kresy24
website quoted Chaplin as saying.
"What is wrong with eliminating an internal enemy? Killing some people is
possible and necessary," the kresy24 website cited him as saying.
Father Chaplin is known for highly controversial public statements.
At the World Russian People's Council in 2014, he said that Russia is capable
of "defeating America and its supporters."
In a 2015 interview for the Russian News Service, Chaplin said that Russia has
the right "to defend itself in any of the countries and regions of the world."
Vsevolod Chaplin had been the head of the church's department for cooperation
with society. He was dimissed from the post in December 2015.
(source: kresy24, Polskie Radio)
IRAQ----executions
ISIS reportedly boils 6 alive in vats of tar after Sharia court orders death
sentences
The Islamic State terrorist group has displayed yet another one of its gruesome
methods of public execution, killing six men in Iraq accused of collaborating
with the U.S.-led coalition and Kurdish forces by boiling them to death in vats
of tar.
As IS (also known as ISIS or ISIL) has utilized various brutal and heinous
styles of public execution in order to frighten people within its strongholds
so that they won't dare challenge the authority of the group's sovereignty, IS
leaders recently seem to have taken a liking to boiling their helpless victims
to their demise.
After the militant group executed seven of its own jihadi soldiers who fled the
battlefield in Iraq last month by tying them up and boiling them alive in a
giant cauldron of water, an unamed source told Iraqi News that IS recently
sentenced 6 men to death and boiled them to death in tar vats.
"ISIS executed 6 persons in Mosul for collaborating with Nineveh Operations
Command," the source explained. "The death sentence was issued ISIS Sharia
court."
"The six persons were placed inside tanks containing boiling tar and the
execution was carried out in one of ISIS headquarters at al-Shora," the source
added.
The source continued by saying that the execution was carried out in such a
tortuous manner in order to intimidate local residents.
"The execution took place in public and it was done with an aim of inciting
fear among the citizens," the source stated.
Media activist Abdullah al-Malla spoke with the Kurdish news site ARA News and
explained that hundreds of onlookers were present for the execution. According
to witnesses, an IS official read the charges against the men before the
execution was carried out.
(source: Fox news)
IRAN----executions
3 Ahwazi Arab Prisoners Executed
The Iranian state-run news agency, YJC (Young Journalists Club), quoting the
public relations department of the Khuzestan Judiciary, has identified the
prisoners as: Ghais Obidawi, 25 at time of arrest; Ahmad Obidawi, 20 at time of
arrest; and Sajjad Balawi. According to the report, the executions were carried
out by Iranian authorities on the morning of Wednesday August 17. Iranian
authorities did not announce the location of their executions, but Farhad
Afsharian, the head of the Khuzestan Judiciary, had previously told official
Iranian media that the executions would likely be carried out in public in the
city of Hamidiyeh (Khuzestan province).
"These 3 people carried out several operations in spring 2015 that resulted in
the martyrdom of 3 police force personnel. Also, they created fear and terror
by destroying the seismological center in the Hamidiyeh region, attacking
pilgrims, and engaging in terrorist acts," said Amanat Behbahani, an official
in the Khuzestan Judiciary. According to unofficial local sources, neither the
families or the lawyers were informed about the scheduled executions.
"These three Ahwazi Arab prisoners are victims of the Iranian government's
systematic repression in the ethnic regions of Iran. We call on the
international community to draw more attention and show strong reaction to the
arbitrary executions in Iran, especially the executions carried out in the
ethnic regions this month," says Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, spokesperson for Iran
Human Rights.
In late June of this year, Iran's Judiciary spokesman, Gholamhossein Mohseni
Eje'i, issued various statements confirming the execution sentences for these 3
prisoners and claimed they murdered 5 people.
Ghais, Ahmad, and Sajjad were reportedly sentenced to death after they were
unlawfully arrested and subjected to a nontransparent trial. They were among 20
people who were arrested by Iranian authorities after bullets were shot at a
tent belonging to Iranian security guards inside. Most of the detainees were
eventually released, but the Ahwaz Revolutionary Court sentenced 3 of the
defendants to death and 4 others to long prison terms. Their sentences were
confirmed by Iran's Supreme Court.
******************************
2 Prisoners Hanged in Eastern Iran
A prisoner was reportedly hanged at Mashhad Central Prison (Razavi Khorasan
province, northeastern Iran) on murder charges, and another prisoner was
reportedly hanged at Tabas Central Prison (South Khorasan province, eastern
Iran) on drug related charges.
A report by the Iranian state-run news agency, Rokna, identifies the prisoner
who was executed in the city of Mashhad as "N", hanged on the morning of
Tuesday August 16.
Unofficial source, Human Rights Defenders Association of Kurdistan, reports on
the execution in the city of Tabas. The prisoner, whose identity is not known
at this time, was reportedly also executed on Tuesday morning. Iranian official
sources have not announced this execution.
(source for both: Iran Human Rights)
ISRAEL:
Ask the Rabbi: Does Jewish law promote the death penalty? As we saw in our
previous column on executing convicted terrorists or enemy combatants, Jewish
law has a complex relationship with the death penalty.
Almost every country in the Western world has banned the use of capital
punishment in its civil penal system. The one prominent exception is the United
States, which continues to debate the efficacy and morality of the death
penalty for murderers. Supporters and abolitionists alike have pointed to the
Jewish tradition in support of their positions. We'll review the evidence,
while focusing on the question of what authority might allow the state to
execute a human being, including its own citizens.
As we saw in our previous column on executing convicted terrorists or enemy
combatants, Jewish law has a complex relationship with the death penalty.
The Bible mandates the death penalty in roughly 30 circumstances. One possible
justification for such a harsh punishment is "just desert" - namely, something
that is deserved or merited, as in the case of murder. "...The penalty shall be
life for a life, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth ..." (Exodus 21:23-24).
Elsewhere, the Torah speaks of harsh punishments to deter others from doing
similar acts and to remove the threat represented by this criminal. "Thus will
you sweep out evil from your midst. Others will hear and be afraid, and such
evil things will not be done again in your midst" (Deuteronomy 19:19-20). This
perspective of deterrence and prevention was adopted by medieval thinkers like
R. Sa'adia Gaon and the unknown author of Sefer Hahinuch.
Yet within talmudic literature, one finds severe impediments in implementing
these punishments. For starters, strict evidential requirements make it
difficult to convict a person of a capital crime, to the extent that a court
which administered a death penalty every 7 years (according to others, every 70
years) was called as a "destructive tribunal."
Moreover, 40 years before the Temple's destruction, the Sages stopped convening
to order such executions since an increase in violence led them to conclude
that the death penalty was no longer an effective deterrent. Following the
Temple's destruction, it became legally impossible as well since the law
demands the death penalty to only be administered by the High Court (Sanhedrin)
when it sits in judgment next to a functioning Temple. Accordingly, one might
conclude, as Rabbi Shimshon R.
Hirsch did, that the biblical punishment became less of a practical measure and
more of a moral lesson that our right to life is contingent on respecting the
rights of others.
Yet as Simcha Assaf has documented, significant literature indicates that in
the medieval and early modern periods, Jewish communities occasionally executed
criminals. Such capital punishment seemingly drew its legitimacy from the
talmudic proclamation that "A judicial court may impose flagellation and
pronounce capital sentences even when not warranted by the Torah." Accordingly,
in cases of social exigency, the court may administer corporal punishments
beyond the letter of the law. Yet the question remains what basis courts or
governments, both then and now, have for such sentences in the absence of a
contemporary Sanhedrin.
Many have cited the Biblical notion of the "king's justice" (mishpat hamelech)
as depicted in the Book of Samuel when the Jewish people requested a king. "We
will be like all the nations, our king will judge us, and go out at our head
and fight our battles." This power, it seems, allows the king to administer
justice - including the death penalty - without the confines of the strict
rules of evidence required by a Sanhedrin. In fact, Rabbenu Nissim of Gerona
further suggested that an alternative system was envisioned precisely because
the Sanhedrin model of justice would be too cumbersome to effectively run a
nation. As Rabbi J. David Bleich has noted, many rabbinic scholars have
asserted that this authority would apply equally to Jewish and non-Jewish
governmental powers alike.
In fact, one prominent 20th-century scholar, Rabbi Meir Simha of Dvinsk,
contended that mishpat hamelech is an extension of the Noahide Law that
requires the establishment of a justice system (dinim) for every society.
Rabbinic literature makes clear that gentiles may be executed for violating
norms established under the Noahide Code. Some medieval authorities even
understood this to be a mandatory punishment. Yet as Arnold Enker has shown,
the 12th-century scholar Rabbi Meir Abulafia, along with several 20th-century
scholars like rabbis Meir Don Plotzki and Yosef Henkin, asserted that civil
authorities have permission to administer corporal punishments for such
infractions but are not required to do so.
In the contemporary era, rabbinic scholars have been divided over the utility
of the death penalty. Israeli chief rabbis Yitzhak Herzog and Benzion Uziel
asserted that Halacha did not require using the death penalty in the fledging
State of Israel, especially with severe jail sentences providing a satisfactory
alternative. Yet in 1981, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, in a letter to New York
Governor Hugh Carey, argued that Jewish law would support the utilization of
this extreme measure if it could effectively deter the rampant homicide rates
and consequential cheapening of human life. This position was strongly opposed
by Rabbi Aharon Soloveichik, who argued that the death penalty was an
intolerably cruel punishment given that it was no more effective as a deterrent
than life in prison. Additionally, Prof. Aaron Kirschenbaum has noted that
medieval authorities were very wary of applying lower standards of proof to
execute criminals, fearing the possibility of killing an innocent person. In
light of the growing number of cases in which DNA evidence has proven that
defendants were wrongly convicted (and even executed), one may certainly cast
doubt on whether Jewish law can tolerate death sentences when the justice
process seems insufficiently sound.
(source: Rabbi Shlomo Brodo; The writer teaches at Yeshivat Hakotel, directs
the Tikvah Israel Seminars, and is a junior scholar in the Judaism and Human
Rights project at the Israel Democracy Institute----Jerusalem Post)
UGANDA:
Why Ugandan government will start killing capital offender on camera
Ugandans have received with mixed reactions, reports that President Yoweri
Museveni is in support of maintaining the death for capital offences.
Museveni made the comments while officiating at the passing out ceremony of
1,548 prisons officers in Kampala on Monday. Uganda upholds the death penalty
for all capital offences.
Lately however, there has been a drive by parliament to amend the laws that
reference the death penalty and replace them with life imprisonment with or
without parole.
Uganda last put the death penalty to use in 1999 when 28 people were hanged in
Luzira prison. Whether the 1,548 wardens and wardresses will witness an
execution under their wardenship remains to be seen.
(source: standardmedia.co.ke)
BANGLADESH:
7 get death penalty for murder in Joypurhat
A Joypurhat court on Wednesday sentenced 7 people to death and one another to
life-term imprisonment in a murder case filed in 2006.
The condemned convicts are-Wajed Ali Toraf, Choitun Mollah, Safadul, Masir
Uddin, Anu, Abu Hasan Dilip and Montu. Among them, Montu was tried in absentia.
The lifer was identified as Mahbub Alam Babu.
According to the prosecution, Abdul Matin, son of Mafiz Uddin of Dharki village
in Sadar upazila, was stabbed to death over previous enmity with the convicts
on October 27, 2006.
Victim's brother filed a case was filed with Sadar Police Station accusing 9
people.
Golam Rabbani, sub-inspector of Sadar Police Station submitted, a chargesheet
against the convicts on March 30, 2007.
After examining the records and 10 witnesses, Joypurhat District and Sessions
Judge Abdur Rahim handed down the verdict.
(source: prothom-alo.com)
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