Aug. 22
BANGLADESH:
Mir Quasem's review plea hearing Wednesday
The Supreme Court is set to hear on Wednesday a petition filed by condemned war
criminal Mir Quasem Ali seeking review of its earlier verdict upholding his
death penalty for crimes against humanity during the Liberation War in 1971.
A 4-member bench of the Appellate Division, led by Chief Justice SK Sinha, is
likely to hear the review pleas.
A 5-member bench of the Appellate Division, headed by the Chief Justice, was
scheduled to hear the petition on July 25.
However, it deferred the hearing until August 24 as the defence counsels filed
a time prayer seeking adjournment of the hearing for 2 months.
Earlier on June 20, Chamber Judge of the Appellate Division Justice Hasan Foez
Siddique fixed July 25 for hearing the pleas following a petition filed by the
state.
On June 19, Mir Ahmed Bin Quasem, son of Mir Quasem, filed a 68-page review
petition with the Appellate Division seeking the acquittal of the war criminal.
The Supreme Court released the full text of its verdict upholding the death
penalty awarded by the International Crimes Tribunal-2 to Mir Quasem Ali for
the crimes he committed against humanity during the Liberation War on June 6.
On March 8, the Appellate Division upheld the death penalty for Mir Quasem Ali
for his war crimes.
The International Crimes Tribunal-2 sentenced Mir Quasem Ali, Al-Badr chief in
the port city of Chittagong in 1971, to death on November 2, 2014.
On November 30, 2014, he filed an appeal before the Supreme Court challenging
the death penalty.
Top Jamaat-e-Islami financier Quasem, now 64, was president of the Chittagong
town unit of the Islami Chhatra Sangha, the then student wing of Jamaat, till
November 6, 1971.
He was then made general secretary of the East Pakistan Chhatra Sangha.
(source: prothom-alo.com)
PHILIPPINES:
Philippines' Drugs War Deaths Reaches 1,800, Police Tell Senate Inquiry
Drug-related killings under Rodrigo Duterte's presidency double, as relatives
of the dead accuse police of murdering suspects.
The number of drug-related killings in the Philippines since President Rodrigo
Duterte took power has doubled to almost 1,800, police have said.
The number of suspected drug traffickers killed in his seven-week-old war on
drugs had previously been put at about 900 by Philippine officials.
However, Philippine National Police Chief Ronald Dela Rosa on Monday told a
Senate committee investigating extrajudicial killings that 712 drug traffickers
and users had been killed.
He added a further 1,067 drug-related deaths were being investigated by
officers.
The latest figures had been compiled since the start of July, he said.
Mr Duterte, dubbed "The Punisher", took office on 30 June after winning the
presidency on a single-issue campaign of tackling illegal drugs and other
crime, pledging to kill tens of thousands of criminals.
He has repeatedly called on police, and even civilians, to kill drug criminals
- and warned police officers involved in the trade will face the death penalty.
Senator Leila de Lima, spearheading the inquiry, said she was concerned law
enforcers and vigilantes may be using the crackdown "to commit murder with
impunity".
Witnesses have accused police officers of shooting dead suspects.
1 woman told the Senate committee her husband and father-in-law were arrested
and beaten by officers and taken to a police station where they were gunned
down last month.
Rodrigo Duterte speaking against the UN after they criticised his anti-drugs
policies
He urged the UN to also consider the number of innocent lives lost to drugs,
before laying into the organisation in a typically expletive-laden tirade.
But his foreign minister Perfecto Yasay has since said the Philippines has no
intention of quitting the UN.
"We are committed to the UN despite our numerous frustrations and
disappointments with the international agency," said Mr Yasay.
(source: Sky News)
IRAQ:
Executions will not eliminate security threats
The execution of 36 men in Iraq yesterday marks an alarming rise in the
authorities' use of the death penalty in response to the dramatic security
threats the country is facing, said Amnesty International today.
The men were convicted over the killing of 1,700 military cadets at Speicher
military camp near Trikrit in June 2014, after a deeply-flawed mass trial which
lasted only a few hours, and relied on "confessions" extracted under torture.
"These mass executions mark a chilling increase in Iraq's use of the death
penalty," said Lynn Maalouf, Deputy Director for Research at Amnesty
International's Middle East and North Africa Regional Office.
"Time and time again, Amnesty International has emphasized that victims'
families have the right to truth and called for justice for the atrocities
committed by the armed group calling itself the Islamic State. However,
executing men who were forced to 'confess' under torture and were not given a
proper chance to defend themselves is not justice.
"Relying on executions to counter Iraq's security challenges is completely
misguided. It does not address the root causes of deadly attacks and will only
serve to perpetuate the cycle of violence. The death penalty is the ultimate
cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment and there is no credible evidence that
shows it serves as more of a deterrent to crime than a prison term."
Only thorough, fair and transparent trials will deliver justice for victims of
deadly attacks and their families.
Amnesty International had raised the Speicher case during a meeting in Baghdad
on 4 August 2016 with the Special Committee in the Presidency Office
established last year to speed up executions, and explicitly appealed for the
President not to ratify the death sentences for these men.
The organization is calling on the Iraqi authorities to immediately establish
an official moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death
penalty. Pending abolition, Parliament should remove the death penalty from
legislation and respect all international standards applying to the use of the
death penalty.
One of the men executed "confessed" to killing 60 cadets at Speicher after
receiving threats that his wife and sisters would be raped. He was also beaten
with cables and given electric shocks. Video evidence shows the man being
punched in the face during interrogation and "confessing" on Iraqi TV with a
visible bruise under his right eye. Even though he recanted this "confession"
in court, according to lawyers it was used to justify its verdict. The court
did not order an independent investigation into his and other defendants'
allegations of torture.
Background:
40 people were convicted over the Speicher massacre in February 2016. On 31
July the verdict was upheld for 36 of the men and the Iraqi President ratified
the executions on 14 August.
The Iraqi authorities have come under increasing political and public pressure
to speed up executions, particularly following the deadly attack on Karrada, a
shopping district in Baghdad on 2 July, which claimed nearly 300 lives.
In the wake of the attack, the Ministry of Justice announced 7 executions were
carried out on 4 and 5 July. It stated that there were up to 3,000 individuals
on death row.
Amendments were also introduced to Iraq's criminal code on 12 July making it
more difficult for defendants sentenced to death to seek a retrial.
At least 81 executions have been carried out in Iraq so far in 2016, and at
least 123 people sentenced to death.
(source: Amnesty International USA)
******************
Is Execution Of Islamic State Fighters In Iraq Act Of Justice Or Revenge?
The massacre is named after the base near Tikrit where the Islamic State
reportedly kidnapped 1,700 recruits, promising to take them to their families,
but then they were executed after taking them to a shallow grave.
The Speicher base is also officially known as the Tikrit Air Academy, which was
renamed after U.S. troops took it over during the 2003 invasion. The base is
named after Captain Michael Scott Speicher, who was killed during the Gulf War
in 1991.
The New York Times reported on one of the Shia men who survived the massacre,
but it also details how the Iraqi men who fled the base were rounded up by the
Islamic State before they were executed.
Inquisitr has been covering reports of U.S.-led coalition forces pushing the
Islamic State out of various cities in Iraq and Syria they previously held. One
of them being Fallujah, a town with a Sunni majority who the Islamic State
supports, and who were reportedly also being executed by Shia militia groups as
they were being captured.
However, the coalition has been trying to avoid making the mistake, where
various tribes and previously conflicted groups have been working together
against the Islamic State, under the idea that even for towns like Fallujah,
the group was executing their own if they did not side with them. The terrorist
group has apparently not been very popular among Sunni Muslims either, as
mentioned in another report by Inquisitr about the divide the group has tried
to force.
"Sunnis in Iraq no longer view the ISIL radicals as liberators, and the Shiite
role in the fighting is less important than it was a year ago, officials in
Baghdad told Reuters. As a result, they said, the Iraqi army has gained Sunni
acceptance and is seen less as a Shiite-led sectarian force than it was under
former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki."
The New York Times also talks about reconciliation between Shia and Sunni,
where there were reports during the massacre that Sunni's assisted in the
execution of the Shia recruits. When the Islamic State was separating the Iraqi
troops, the Sunnis were given a chance to ask for forgiveness for their role to
defend the government, while the Shia were killed.
Other tribal conflicts, in Africa for instance, have had to apologize for them
and it's mentioned that a representative under Maliki traveled there to learn
more, saying that in the desert, revenge was how they settled their issues.
While both sides have their reasons to despise the Islamic State, the solution
from the coalition has been to make sure they're not doing something that will
generate more sectarianism, which gives rise to problematic terror groups.
(source: inquisitr.com)
IRAN:
Dutch-Iranians protest at The Hague over continuing executions in Iran
Hundreds of demonstrators rallied at The Hague on Saturday, to protest the
ongoing executions in Iran.
Those who gathered to stand in solidarity with the victims of the mullah's
cruel regime included members of the Dutch-Iranian communities and supporters
of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
They urged the Dutch government to condemn the executions and to call for an
immediate halt to the executions and torture in Iran. They argued that any
improvement of relations with the Iranian Regime should be conditioned upon an
improvement to the human rights situation.
This rally, on August 20, was the latest in a long line on similar protests
across Europe since an audio recording was released which proves the Regime's
involvement with the 1988 massacre.
Protesters from around the globe have called on the UN Security Council to
prosecute regime???s officials responsible for the 1988 massacre in Iran. Last
week dozens of protesters took part in a three-day hunger strike at The Hague,
with similar demonstrations in London and Oslo.
These protests all coincide with the 1988 Iranian Massacre in which 30,000
political prisoners mostly members of the Iranian Resistance Force, People's
Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI)- were executed over that one summer.
Earlier this month, audio was released of a 'Death Committee' meeting which
revealed that the Regime was indeed behind the massacre that they tried to
erase from history. Many of the people involved in the massacre, described by
Amnesty International as a crime against humanity, still hold high-ranking
positions in the Regime today.
Since the beginning of August, the Regime has executed dozens of people,
including 25 political prisoners of August 2. The total number of people
executed in Iran during President Hassan Rouhani's 3-year rule is almost 3,000.
(source: NCR-Iran)
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