Dec. 10
SAUDI ARABIA:
Saudi Arabia On Track To Execute The Most People This Year In 2
Decades----Figures provided exclusively to BuzzFeed News reveal that, despite
Mohammed bin Salman's attempt to present himself as a reformer, the country's
approach to the death penalty has not changed.
Mujtaba al-Sweikat was 17 years old when he attended a protest against the
government in Saudi Arabia in the summer of 2012. That December, on his way to
visit Western Michigan University, where he was to study English and finance,
he was arrested at the airport of eastern city of Dammam, hauled away and
convicted after a secret trial on charges that included overseeing a dissident
Facebook page and photographing anti-government protests. His sentence: death
by hanging, a verdict upheld by an appellate court over the summer.
The ascension of Saudi Arabia's ambitious new Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
raised hopes for change inside and outside the conservative, oil-rich monarchy.
He has announced drastic social reforms that include modernizing the nation's
religious teachings and granting women more rights. But when it comes to the
death penalty, Saudi Arabia remains stuck in its old ways.
The number of executions carried out so far this year is on track to match or
possibly exceed the numbers of death penalties in each of the last 2 years.
According to numbers provided exclusively to BuzzFeed News by the UK human
rights group Reprieve, 137 people have been put to death this year in Saudi
Arabia, 11 of them over the last 9 days. Saudi Arabia executed 158 people in
2015 and 154 in 2016, the highest numbers in 2 decades. A record-high 192
people were executed in 1995.
"These figures demonstrate that under Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi government
has no intention of ending the use of executions as a tool to crush dissent,"
Maya Foa, director of Reprieve, a privately funded human rights organization
which focuses on death penalty cases, said in an email.
Along with China, Iran and Pakistan, Saudi Arabia is among the world's leading
executioners, often deploying the death penalty as a tool for political
repression, but also frequently against those charged with non-violent
offenses.
This year Bin Salman ascended to the post of Crown Prince, making him next in
line to the Saudi throne after his father, King Salman. MbS, as he's commonly
known, has impressed some diplomats, investors, and journalists with promises
of reforming the country's conservative religious rules and ridding the economy
of corruption.
But more than 2/3 of Saudi Arabia's 2017 executions took place in the 5 months
since the 32-year-old Saudi royal, who studied law at university, was named
Crown Prince. Under the strict interpretation of Islamic law, or sharia, in
practice in Saudi Arabia, the death penalty is applicable as punishment for
crimes ranging from murder to leaving the faith.
"Capital punishment, since it's in sharia law, is pretty difficult to change,
and I have not heard anything from MbS to the contrary," Ali Shihabi, executive
director of the Arabia Foundation, a Washington think tank close to the Saudi
leadership, said by email.
Nearly 3/4 of the 2017 executions were carried out after US President Donald
Trump's visit to Riyadh in May, according to numbers provided by Reprieve, with
the rate of executions appearing to speed up after his visit. Shortly after
Trump's visit, 4 people were executed for attending political protests, while
14 protesters had their death sentences upheld. (Following the visit, Trump
treasury secretary Wilbur Ross cited a lack of protests in Saudi during Trump's
visit as evidence of widespread contentment.)
"The Saudi authorities seem to have been emboldened after Trump's visit, when
he notably failed to raise human rights," said Foa.
At least 54 of those executed were foreigners charged with non-lethal
drug-related offenses, including at least 10 people who allegedly smuggled
narcotics in their stomachs.
Increasingly, multiple convicts have been put to death the same day, a new
trend which has disturbed rights monitors. On November 28, 7 people were put to
death.
"This is unusual; in the past, executions have tended to happen individually,
under the auspices of different provinces," said Foa.
Among those on death row are young men such as Sweikat charged with trying to
organize political events through Facebook. Rights groups such as Amnesty
International have accused Saudi Arabia of using the death penalty as a
political weapon against the country's restive Shia minority. Saudi Arabia
considers itself a patron of the Sunni branch of Islam and continues to promote
a controversial and puritanical school of the faith that Bin Salman has vowed
to moderate.
"While [Bin Salman] talks a good game about bringing in social reforms and
supporting the Kingdom's young people, the reality is that under his
leadership, scores of young people have been sentenced to death for exercising
their democratic rights," said Foa. "It's perverse to describe the Crown Prince
as a reformer, when he is threatening to execute young people whose only crime
was attending protests calling for reform."
(source: Borzou Daragahi is a Middle East correspondent for BuzzFeed News and
is based in Istanbul----buzzfeed.com)
INDIA:
Should death penalty be abolished? Study presents a firm argument----The study
points towards lack of uniform understanding of 'rarest of the rare'
At a time the debate on whether capital punishment should be abolished rages in
the country, the study based on interview of 60 former Supreme Court judges
brought out a non-uniform and rather contradictory approach by judges while
awarding death sentences.
Significantly, these judges, which included eight former CJIs, had adjudicated
208 death penalty cases between them at different points during the period
1975-2016, and confirmed 92 of them. The study also goes on to expose the
serious flaws in administration of death penalty in India and presents a firm
argument for abolishing capital punishment.
The report showed that despite "rarest of rare" doctrine in death penalty as
laid down by the SC in the Bachan Singh case, there existed no uniform
understanding of the requirements of rarest of rare doctrine. "For a
significant number of judges, the 'rarest of the rare' was based on categories
or description of offences alone and had little to do with judicial test
requiring that the alternative of life imprisonment be 'unquestionably
foreclosed', said the report.
As per the 1980 Bachan Singh case, which had laid down the principles which
still hold the field, death sentence can only be given in "rarest of rare"
cases, offences of extreme depravity, and which shocks the collective
conscience of the community. Death is also not given if there is a chance of
the convict reforming.
1 judge who decided 9 death penalty cases in 6 years at the SC dismissed the
entire concept of 'reformation', calling it "astrology". Another judge who
presided over 13 death penalty cases in 5 years at SC did not see the point of
reformation in serious crimes stating, "people out of habit go and do some
small offences - he can be reformed a man who is determined to kill innocent
persons,how do you expect to reform him?"
(source: intoday.in)
***********************
Court sentences man to death for rape of housemaid
A special court has sentenced an Indian businessman and his domestic help to
death for the brutal rape and murder of a 25-year-old housemaid in their home
in Noida city on the outskirts of the national capital in 2006.
The court of India's Central Bureau of Investigation pronounced the quantum of
punishment, a day after holding businessman Maninder Pandher and his aide
Surinder Koli guilty in the crime they had committed in their house in Nithari
village in Noida.
This was the 9th of a total of 16 cases in the macabre serial killings that
took place in Nithari in 2005 and 2006.
While Koli has been found guilty in the earlier 8 cases and awarded death
penalty, Pandher was convicted in 3 cases and sentenced to death in 2.
Handing down the punishment in the latest case, special CBI judge P.K. Tiwari
said both Koli and Pandher were involved in the rape and murder of housemaid
Anjali in 2006, and they deserved to be punished in the strictest manner.
"Koli had dragged the victim inside the house and made her unconscious, raped
her, and then ate her flesh, therefore death sentence is the only option in
law.
"Pandher was also involved in the crime. Both will be hanged till death," the
court held.
Anjali, who used to work as a housemaid in Noida, was reported missing in
October 2006.
Her killing came to light after Koli's arrest in December that year when police
discovered skulls and bones of 16 persons, mostly children, near Pandher's
house.
The CBI took over the case from the local police subsequently and charge sheets
have been filed in 10 out of 16 cases.
The other cases are under trial.
(source: punchng.com)
*****************
Rajasthan hacking: Afrajul's family demands death penalty for accused
Family members of Mohammad Afrajul Khan, who was brutally killed in Rajasmand
district of Rajasthan, have demanded the main accused Shambhu Lal Regar be
hanged to death. On the other hand, his neighbours have asked for security for
over 400 migrant construction labourers working in the Rajasmand district.
The demands were raised in front of Trinamool Congress ministers and MPs,
including party's Lok Sabha leader Sudip Bandopadhyay and municipal affairs and
urban development minister Firhad Hakim, who went to meet the grieving family
at Saiyadpur village in Malda district of West Bengal on Saturday.
While Afrajul was laid to rest at his native village on Friday, West Bengal
chief minister Mamata Banerjee had called up his wife Gurfar Bibi and assured
all government help to the bereaved family. He was the sole bread earner of the
family.
Meanwhile, accused Shambhu Lal Regar has told media in Rajsamand that Afrajul
was threatening to kill his family after Regar opposed the marriage of a girl
of his locality with a Bengali Muslim construction labourer from Malda.
However, relatives of Afrajul has refuted the claims.
On the other hand, Udaipur inspector general of police Anand Srivastava told
media that the motive for the murder is yet to be ascertained. The accused had
warned in his videos that he killed Afrajul as a retribution for 'love Jihad'
and had warned of similar attacks on 'Jihadis' if they did not quit India.
(source: newindianexpress.com)
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