June 19
SUDAN:
Sudanese human rights defenders face death sentence
Sudan's authorities are under pressure to release prominent human rights
defenders facing the death penalty or life imprisonment for allegedly inciting
an uprising against the state.
Ibrahim Adam Mudawi and his colleague Idris Eldoma Hafiz face 6 charges such as
"undermining the constitutional system' and "waging war against the state".
Rights groups have denounced the allegations as trumped up and linked to their
human rights advocacy.
The trial is underway in the capital Khartoum.
"Human rights work is not a crime, so Dr Mudawi and Hafiz must be immediately
and unconditionally released," said Muthoni Wanyeki, Amnesty International's
regional director.
"Their arrest and continued incarceration is a miscarriage of justice, plain
and simple."
Mudawi has continuously been harassed for his human rights work in Darfur and
across Sudan for more than a decade.
"Unfortunately, this latest round sees the harassment take a more sinister turn
as both he and his colleague Hafiz potentially face the death penalty," said
Wanyeki.
Intelligence agents arrested engineering professor Mudawi in December 2016. He
is the former director of the Sudan Social Development Organisation (SUDO) and
won several human rights awards.
Hafiz, a refugee from Darfur, was arrested in November at Mudawi's house.
(source: African News Agency)
KUWAIT:
Kuwait commutes death sentence of -pro-Iran cell leader'----Hasan Abdulhadi
Ali, convicted of being the mastermind behind a Shiite terror cell, given life
behind bars instead
Kuwait's supreme court on Sunday reduced the death sentence of a Shiite citizen
convicted of forming a pro-Iranian cell and of plotting attacks, changing it to
life in prison.
Hasan Abdulhadi Ali was sentenced to death by the lower and appeals courts last
year after he was convicted of being "the mastermind of a cell" of 26 Shiites
accused of link to Iran and of plotting attacks in the Sunni-ruled emirate.
Members of the cell had been charged with spying for Iran and hiding large
quantities of arms, explosives and ammunition in underground warehouses.
Ali was also found guilty of having been an operative of Lebanon's Shiite
Hezbollah movement since 1996 and of smuggling significant amounts of arms and
explosives from Iran into Kuwait.
The supreme court judges, whose rulings are final, sentenced 20 other members
of the cell to between 5 and 15 years in jail and acquitted 2.
The cases of the remaining three members were not taken up by the supreme court
because they remain fugitives.
They include the only Iranian member of the cell, Abdulredha Haider, who was
handed the death penalty in absentia by the lower court in January last year.
The court had accused Haider of ties to Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard and of
recruiting the Kuwaiti Shiites and facilitating their travel to Lebanon, where
they received military training from Iran-backed Hezbollah.
The 23 defendants present at the trial have denied the charges and said that
their confessions were extracted under torture.
Iran has denied any links to the group.
(source: timesofisrael.com)
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