February 10
BANGLADESH:
Bangladesh makes record drugs seizure amid crackdown----The country has
struggled to control a surge in yaba imports crossing the border from Myanmar,
where the pills are manufactured by the millions
Bangladesh seized a record 53 million methamphetamine pills in 2018 – up 33% in
a year – amid a deadly nationwide crackdown on the trade, officials said
Sunday, February 10.
Nearly 300 suspected drug dealers were killed last year, according to
authorities, who insisted the seizure figure was proof that their campaign was
working.
Rights groups said the record haul showed the deaths had failed to make an
impact on the trade.
The government Department of Narcotics Control said the drug – popularly known
as 'yaba', a Thai word meaning 'crazy medicine' – was seized across the South
Asian nation of 165 million people.
"It is the highest amount seized in a year," Bazlur Rahman, a department deputy
director, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Masum-e-Rabbani, another senior official at the department, said the record
haul was proof that a crackdown launched in May last year was yielding
"positive" results.
He said there has been a significant decline in the use and sale of yaba.
Nearly 300 suspected drug dealers were killed by security forces in the
campaign and some 25,000 arrests made, according to Rabbani.
Human rights groups say many of the deaths amount to extrajudicial killings
however.
More than 40 were killed in the town of Teknaf, which borders Myanmar's
troubled Rakhine state and is close to the refugee camps housing about 1
million Rohingya Muslims.
Bangladesh has struggled to control a surge in yaba imports crossing the border
from Myanmar, where the pills are manufactured by the millions.
The pills have become an easy source of income for the Rohingya who poured
across the border after the Myanmar military launched a clampdown in Rakhine in
August 2017.
The refugees act as carriers, handing over the pills to dealers on the
Bangladesh side of the border who then take them to major cities, according to
police.
In October, authorities made yaba a class-A banned substance and parliament
passed a law allowing the death penalty for dealing the drug.
A top rights activist said the record yaba seizure meant the hundreds of deaths
had failed to make a serious dent in the drug trade.
"It proves that the police crackdown is not working. They need a different
approach," an Nur Khan Liton, a former head of rights group Ain O Salish
Kendra, told AFP.
(source: rappler.com)
ISRAEL:
Justice minister urges death penalty for suspect in Jerusalem murder
A senior Israeli minister told prosecutors on Saturday to pursue the death
penalty for a Palestinian suspect in the grisly murder of an Israeli teen in
Jerusalem last week.
Arafat Irfayia, 29, was arrested Friday on suspicion of killing Ori Ansbacher,
19, in a wooded area of southern Jerusalem on Thursday, in a case that has
sparked outrage across the country.
Authorities suspect Irfayia may had a nationalistic motive, according to
Hebrew-language press reports, but are also probing if the attack was sexual in
nature.
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked told Channel 13 news Saturday that “the military
prosecution needs to ask for the death penalty.”
Shaked and other ministers have insisted that the murder was a terror attack,
though most details of the incident have been kept under gag order.
“We should not hide the truth,” she told the news channel. “He killed Ori
because she was a Jewish girl.”
Ansbacher, from the settlement of Tekoa in the West Bank south of Jerusalem,
was found dead in the woods at the Ein Yael nature center in south Jerusalem
late Thursday, with what police said were “signs of violence,” after she was
reported missing earlier in the day.
Citing the suspect’s own account under questioning, the police and the Shin Bet
said in a statement Saturday night that Irfaiya left his home in Hebron on
Thursday armed with a knife and made his way toward Jerusalem, where he spotted
Ansbacher in the woods and fatally attacked her.
He was arrested Friday during a raid in Ramallah but has not yet been charged.
Irfayia had previously served time for being in Israel illegally and for
possession of a knife, Channel 13 reported. Public Security Minister Gilad
Erdan said Saturday that authorities should treat the case as terror no matter
what.
“When a Palestinian in Israel illegally murders a Jew in the State of Israel,
there is no doubt that it needs to be considered as nationalistic murder,” he
told Channel 13 news. “It does not matter what he says or doesn’t say in the
interrogation. I hope the relevant authorities understand this and if not, we
need to legislate it.”
Although the death penalty formally exists in Israeli law, it has only ever
been used once — in 1962 in the case of Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann, one of the
architects of the Holocaust. It is technically allowed in cases of high
treason, as well as in certain circumstances under the martial law that applies
within the IDF and in the West Bank, but currently requires a unanimous
decision from a panel of 3 judges, and has never been implemented.
Legislation that would have expanded the use of the death penalty in terror
cases failed to advance late last year amid political wrangling after Yisrael
Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman, who had been pushing the bill, left the
coalition.
In April, Shaked told the Ynet news site that she was in favor of the death
penalty in extreme cases, but did not think the new legislation was necessary
as military prosecutors already had the option.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who as defense minister oversees the
military prosecution, backed the death penalty bill in November. He also called
for the death penalty after a 2017 terror attack in which several members of a
family were knifed to death inside their home in the West Bank settlement of
Halamish.
However, the legislation has been opposed by security officials, including Shin
Bet chief Nadav Argaman who called it “unhelpful” in testimony in front of a
Knesset panel in November.
On Saturday, Liberman and National Union party head Bezalel Smotrich urged
legislators to reconsider the death penalty legislation in the wake of the
Ansbacher killing, and others urged hard-line measures.
Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who founded the New Right party with Shaked
for April elections, called on Netanyahu to implement Knesset legislation
passed in July to slash funds to the PA by the amount Ramallah pays out to
convicted terrorists and the families of Palestinians killed while carrying out
attacks.
“The terrorists are no longer afraid. At this moment [they] are preparing the
next terrible murder of Jews,” Bennett said in a statement.
The education minister, along with Shaked, vowed to support the implementation
of the legislation, which was supposed to have gone into effect in January.
Security officials have reportedly opposed the law due to concerns that it may
lead to the collapse of the PA, whose security forces Israel cooperates with
considerably to limit terror in the West Bank.
(source: The Times of Israel)
JORDAN:
Death by hanging for 2 terrorist brothers
The State Security Court on Sunday announced its 2nd and final ruling regarding
the Karak terrorist attack in southern Jordan which happened in December 18,
2016, sentencing the 2 accused brothers, Khalid and Hamza Nayel al-Majali, to
death by hanging.
The second verdict came after the Court of Cassation overturned the highest
judicial body of its previous court ruling issued in October 2018 which reduced
the death penalty to a life sentence.
The State Security Court had adopted a reduction in the sentence in its 1st
verdict on the bases that the accused are young men and should be given the
chance to allow them to correct their lives.
A judicial source said earlier that the Court of Cassation found that the State
Security Court’s decision does not serve mitigating reasons, especially that
the actions of the accused contributed to the chaos and panic and terror among
members of Jordanian society as well as tourists, and led to the threat to the
security and stability of the country, and contributed to the martyrdom of 12
members of the public security, citizens and a foreign tourist, and the injury
of several members of the public security.
Gunmen linked to the so-called Islamic State killed 10 people, and injured
many, on December 18, 2016, after a series of shootings took place in the city
of Al-Karak in southern Jordan. The attack came when a group of militants
ambushed emergency responders and then moved into the city, attacking police
patrols and the local police station before a starting a shoot-out in the
historic Crusader-era Kerak Castle, a popular tourist attraction.
(source: Roya News)
IRAQ:
Caught in Syria, foreign jihadist suspects may face trial in Iraq
Their home countries don't want them and holding trials in Syria isn't an
option: now suspected foreign jihadists could end up facing tough justice over
the border in Iraq. Both countries have suffered for years at the hands of the
Islamic State group and Iraqi courts have already meted out hefty sentences to
hundreds of foreigners detained on its soil, often after lighting-quick trials.
As the final shred of the once-sprawling jihadist "caliphate" crumbles in
eastern Syria, Kurdish-led forces backed by the US have captured hundreds more
diehard foreign fighters. The American military -- which spearheads an
international coalition fighting IS -- has in the past shown itself willing to
hand those captured in Syria to the authorities in Iraq.
In August AFP attended the Baghdad trial of 58-year-old French citizen Lahcene
Gueboudj, who said he had been spirited from Syria to Iraq by US troops.
Belkis Wille of Human Rights Watch said the organisation knows of at least five
instances in which US forces handed foreign detainees over to Iraq's
Counter-Terrorism Service. They include Australian and Lebanese citizens
transported out of Kurdish-controlled areas, at least one of whom was
eventually sentenced to death in Iraq.
Iraqi justice can be harsh and its courts have doled out death or life
sentences to hundreds of foreigners accused of being IS members, including some
100 women. Others who come from Syria can expect similar treatment. "They are
at risk of torture and unfair trials in Iraq," Wille warned.
- 'Secret deal' -
The fate of foreign fighters in Syria has come into sharper focus since
President Donald Trump's announcement in December that the US will withdraw its
troops from the war-torn country. Washington has stepped up pressure on its
reluctant allies to bring home hundreds of jihadists, but the issue is
politically sensitive in countries like Britain and France.
Governments have been grappling for weeks with the question of foreign fighters
detained by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, who have warned that they
may not be able to guard their jails once US troops leave.
France, hit by repeated deadly IS attacks, has so far opposed returning
jihadists. But since Trump's announcement, Paris has said it is studying "all
options".
On a visit to Iraq this week, French Defence Minister Florence Parly warned of
the need "to avoid some jihadists ending up in the wild and dispersing".
Hisham al-Hashimi, a researcher on jihadist movements, told AFP that a deal
appears to have been struck with Iraq "at the very highest level and in secret"
to tackle the issue.
Such a pact allows foreign fighters' countries of origin to avoid politically
fraught repatriations; in exchange, Iraq will receive "ultra-modern arms and
crucial military equipment", Hashimi said.
"Iraq can put anyone on trial who passed through its territory, even if they
didn't fight there and just headed to Syria," he said.
- 'Not settling problem' -
But while such a deal might solve a headache for politicians, it has raised
serious concerns among relatives and representatives of those detained. French
lawyer Vincent Brengarth, who is handling the cases of some of those detained,
questioned "how it could be justified that Iraqi courts would have
jurisdiction" over crimes committed in Syria.
French officials say Kurdish forces in Syria are currently detaining some 60
adult French citizens.Veronique Roy, a member of a group of around 70 French
families with relatives who went to IS territory, said it would be "tragic" if
captives were handed over to Baghdad.
Iraqi law means that anyone found guilty of joining a "terrorist group" can
face the death penalty and its justice system has been accused of providing
scant chance for a fair trial.
A number of foreign fighters have already been sentenced to death in Iraq,
although three French jihadists tried so far have been handed life terms that
equate to 20 years in prison. The families of those in Syria insist that their
home countries should take responsibility. "We are pushing the problem back but
not settling it," said Roy. "France should not subcontract this out."
(source: timesnownews.com)
SOUTH SUDAN:
Cambridge University student faces death penalty after criticising South Sudan
government ---- Father-of-2, Peter Biar Ajak, has been detained without charge
since July last year
A Cambridge University student faces the death penalty in South Sudan after
criticising the country’s regime. PhD student Peter Biar Ajak, 35, is being
“arbitrarily detained in a modern-day hellhole”, his lawyer says. Mr Ajak has
been detained without charge since his arrest at Juba Airport in July last
year.
He had returned to his home country to hold a youth forum, but was intercepted
by government officials and taken into custody.
‘A clear violation of his rights under international law’
Jared Genser, representing Mr Ajak, claims this was “in clear violation of his
rights under international law”. The charges being considered by the South
Sudanese authorities include terrorism and treason, according to Mr Genser,
both of which carry the death penalty.
Shortly before his return to the country, Mr Ajak, who has a wife and 2 young
children, made the following comment on Twitter about the country’s governance:
“We must stop thinking that the so-called leaders will bring peace #SouthSudan.
We, the great people of #SouthSudan, must organize ourselves to bring about the
peace we deserve!”
As a child he was one of the country’s Lost Boy refugees, orphaned and
displaced by war. Mr Ajak resettled in the United States and studied at Harvard
University and Philadelphia’s La Salle University, before moving to the UK to
continue his studies at Cambridge University, according to a BBC report.
Cambridge University “deeply concerned”
Amnesty International, the human rights organisation, is campaigning to raise
awareness of his plight, which was raised in the United States House of
Representatives by Congresswoman Madeleine Dean, who “knew Peter as a brilliant
student and leader” while teaching at La Salle University. Seif Magango,
Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for East Africa, described Mr
Ajak’s detention as “absurd”. “South Sudanese authorities must either release
him so he can rejoin his wife and children who miss him dearly, or charge him
with an offence recognised under international law,” he said.
A spokesperson for Cambridge University said: “The university remains deeply
concerned about Peter’s welfare and his access to legal representation and the
violation of his rights in accordance with the constitution of South Sudan,
which guarantees all South Sudanese people liberty and security of person, due
process, and freedom of expression and association.”
There has been no comment from the South Sudan government.
(source: inews.co.uk)
CANADA:
Time to reconsider the death penalty?
I wish to comment on the report in The Telegram of Jan. 30, regarding the
reported guilty pleas of Bruce McArthur to eight counts of 1st-degree murder.
Inevitably, McArthur will receive a sentence of life imprisonment. One is left
to wonder what plea deal, if any, was offered to McArthur to induce the guilty
pleas.
This case raises once again the issue of capital punishment — the death
penalty. McArthur is likely to live at least 20 more years, his upkeep
maintained by the Canadian taxpayer.
Capital punishment was removed from Canadian judicial consideration officially
in 1976 by politicians who had no mandate from the Canadian people to do so.
Polls on the issue have revealed Canadian public support for the restoration of
capital punishment for premeditated murder to be about 60 % (as per a 2013
public opinion poll).
At the very least the Canadian public should be given the opportunity to vote
on whether or not the death penalty should be restored to Canadian law.
Notorious child killer Clifford Olsen mercilessly mocked his victims’ families
from behind bars while he was collecting a pension. (Editor’s note: The federal
government changed this in 2010, preventing inmates serving sentences of 2
years or more from receiving their pensions while in prison. Olson died in
2011. Media reports at the time indicate his retirement benefits while in jail
were put into a trust.)
Recently a convicted child killer was moved without notice to a Correctional
Service Canada-run healing lodge where she enjoyed her time until there was
such a public outrage the Liberal politicians had the killer removed back to a
medium-security prison.
There is also the case of the nurse who deliberately murdered helpless old
people in her care. These kind of cases merit consideration of capital
punishment.
Liberal politicians and academics have undermined the sentencing principle of
retribution in sentencing law.
However, the Canadian people have a right to voice their opinion on the issue
and there should be a national vote on the restoration of capital punishment in
Canadian law.
Robin Reid, St. John’s
Editor’s note: Bruce McArthur was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of
parole for 25 years on Friday afternoon — after this letter was written. He
will not be eligible to apply for parole until he is 91 years old
(source: Letter to the Editor, The Telegram)
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