Oct. 9
INDIA:
SC confirms death penalty awarded to 'tantrik' couple
The Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty awarded to a 'tantrik' couple
from Chhattisgarh, for killing a 2-year-old boy as a human sacrifice perform
during a religious ritual.
A bench of Justices R F Nariman, R Subhash Reddy and Surya Kant termed the case
the rarest of the rare, wherein main accused Ishwari Lal Yadav and his wife
Kiran Bai planned and committed the murder of 2-year-old child Chirag, as a
sacrifice to the God.
The court also noted an aggravating circumstance, that the couple was already
convicted and sentenced to death for the similar murder of a six-year-old girl
but the high court had commuted their punishment to the life term without
remission.
They were not possessed of the basic humanness, they completely lacked the
psyche or mindset which can be amenable for any reformation,” the bench said,
noting that the couple had 3 children of their own.
On November 23, 2010, 2-year-old Chirag went missing from his home in Durg. The
family members, who started looking for him, noted loud music being played in
the house of Yadav. When they entered the house, they found mounds of freshly
dug earth. On being questioned by the crowd, the convicts confessed that they
had sacrificed Chirag, whose body and severed head were retrieved.
During the investigation, the couple, who claimed to be 'tantrik', confessed to
killing another child 6-7 months before the incident.
The clothes and skeletal remains of the 6-year-old girl they had sacrificed
were recovered after their confession. In their appeal, the same bench
confirmed the high court judgment sentencing them to life imprisonment for this
killing.
(source: deccanherald.com)
PAKISTAN:
Death penalty doesn't stop child abuse. What's it for then? ---- The call to
murder is the ultimate distraction. It is the most cynical act of manipulation.
The bodies of 3 young children who were raped and killed in Kasur were
discovered less than one year after the execution of Imran Ali for the rape and
murder of young Zainab.
Imran Ali, despite calls for a public hanging, was executed inside the walls of
Kot Lakhpat jail, Lahore. Yet, his execution was public in the sense of it
being inescapable in the national conversation, as a response to an unspeakable
assault on common decency and moral fabric of the society. The cries for
revenge, public hanging and the execution itself did not, however, stop the
perpetrator of the next round of rape and killings.
Before Imran Ali, there was Javed Iqbal, the serial killer who confessed to the
murder of 100 young boys. The judge, while sentencing him to the gallows in
March 2000, wrote “you will be strangled to death in front of the parents whose
children you killed. Your body will then be cut into 100 pieces and put in
acid, the same way you killed the children." Javed Iqbal later died in an
apparent suicide while in prison.
The point in the dominant discourse for Imran Ali and Javed Iqbal was not about
protecting our children from the next Imran Ali or Javed Iqbal, but about
looking tough as a government and a society in the face of an elementary,
unconscionable failure.
The death penalty is always about just that: demonstrating our willingness and
capacity to inflict murder. The message is not directed to the future murderers
and rapists (it demonstrably doesn’t work on them), but to the public at large.
The relationship between an authoritarian state and the death was eloquently
highlighted by Robert Badinter, French Minister of Justice under Francois
Mitterrand in his September 1981 speech to the French parliament. “It is
anti-justice…it is passion and fear prevailing over humanity.”
More importantly, “in countries of freedom, abolition is almost the rule; in
dictatorships, capital punishment is everywhere in use. This division of the
world doesn’t result from just a coincidence. It shows a correlation. The true
political signification of capital punishment is that it results from the idea
that State has the right to take advantage of the citizen, till the possibility
to suppress the citizen’s life.”
Following the revolution in Iran, the Ziaul Haq regime began disseminating the
news of executions being carried out under Ayatollah Khomeini. Archives of
Pakistani newspapers following the overthrow of the Raza Shah’s regime in
February 1979 have the death sentences being handed down as headline news and
Khomeini doing “nashta” of “dozens” (of people).
It seemed slightly odd; yet, it was deliberately aimed at creating acceptance
for state-sponsored violence and setting up the stage of the biggest
execution/murder of Pakistan’s history, the execution of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto on
April 5, 1979.
In 1983, the murderer of Pappu, a young boy from Lahore, was publicly executed
and the body of the killer was left hanging for an entire day as a spectacle.
The rape and murder of children did not end in the country or even the city;
however, the point had been made yet again by the Zia dictatorship that it took
perverse pleasure in making a spectacle of violence. Floggings of activists and
journalists become significantly more palatable when there are bodies hanging
from lamp posts.
The deterrence argument for the death penalty has been widely discredited and
most governments, including Pakistan, make the deterrence argument feebly and
almost unwillingly, since that is not the purpose of the death penalty.
Arthur Koestler in his seminal case against the death penalty in England wrote
about the time when pickpockets were publicly executed, and other pickpockets
would take advantage of the crowds gathered to witness the executions to
exercise their talents. In 1886, out of 167 men at the Bristol prison sentenced
to public execution, 164 had witnessed at least one public execution.
The call to murder is the ultimate distraction, the most powerful rallying cry
for the mob. In a society walking wounded, it is the most cynical act of
manipulation. The victims, like most victims of mob attacks, are marginalised
or the poor.
Protecting our children requires doing the hard work of reforming the criminal
justice system to make it more responsive, tackling structural and societal
barriers and creating a more open society. However, hanging a Pappu or Imran
Ali is much more immediate, tangible, easier and dishonest.
The news then becomes about Imran Ali, revenge and how justice has been served,
rather than the fact that Zainab was abducted from Kasur where over 700 cases
of child abuse have been recorded since 2015. It will for a blood-fueled moment
obscure the fact that, on average, seven new cases of child sexual abuse are
reported daily in Pakistan.
The argument applies to all cases of death penalty including rape, child abuse,
terrorism and the everyday murder. In putting people to death, the government
neither attempts deterrence nor enacts justice; it simply kills because it can.
[This article is part of a collaboration with Justice Project Pakistan in the
lead-up to the World Day Against the Death Penalty on October 10th.]
(source: dawn.com)
*******************
Play on death penalty to be staged tommorrow
Following the incredible success of ‘No Time to Sleep’, a ground-breaking
24-hour livestream charting the last 24 hours of a death row prisoner to
commemorate World Day Against Death Penalty last year, Justice Project Pakistan
(JPP) is all set to take it one notch further.
JPP will host an immersive evening of live art at Bari Studios this October,
featuring around 11 artists who will display their live art performances
centered around the theme of death penalty and confinement and isolation in
detention. The curated show ‘‘We’ve been waiting for you’’ will kick off at
Bari Studio in Lahore on the evening of 10th October 2019. The 1-day event has
already generated a lot of buzz amongst the arts and theatre enthusiasts and is
being touted as the single largest platform in Pakistan to bring together art
and law to highlight the flaws in the criminal justice system and the gross
human rights violations that occur in the case of wrongful executions.
This year’s event is promising a jam-packed agenda, comprising of multiple
performances happening side by side in different rooms of Bari Studio each
highlighting a different theme from the broader umbrella of detention and
capital punishment. The performances will explore the ideas of freedom and the
lack of it in our society and how fate can be highly unpredictable for those in
custody. The artists will explore how prisoners see themselves and how the
outside world sees them.
The Justice Project Pakistan is a non-profit organization based in Lahore that
represents the most vulnerable Pakistani prisoners facing the harshest
punishments, at home and abroad.
(source: nation.co.pk)
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES:
Rape, murder of woman in her apartment in UAE: Death penalty upheld
One of the men handcuffed her and dragged her into the bedroom.
A watchman and a car cleaner, who were convicted of killing a married woman in
the UAE after raping her, will be executed, a top UAE court has ruled.
The Federal Supreme Court in Abu Dhabi upheld earlier rulings by lower courts
that sentenced the Asian men to death after they were found guilty of murdering
the Asian woman after raping her.
Official court documents stated that the Asian men carried out the murder at
the woman's apartment in one of the emirates.
The defendants, a building watchman and a car-cleaning worker in a nearby
workshop, confessed that they killed the victim after raping her.
The men told authorities that they had planned to break into the apartment of a
married woman, who was living on same building, 4 days prior to the attacks.
On the day of the murder, according to prosecutors, the first defendant in the
case, the watchman, knocked on the door of the woman's apartment.
When the victim opened the door, the man pushed her, entered the apartment by
force, handcuffed her and dragged her into the bedroom. He threw her to the
ground and raped her in phases along with the car cleaner.
When the victim tried to shout and resist from being attacked, the men put a
piece of cloth in her mouth. They then choked her with a piece of cloth.
The men said they killed the woman because they feared she would report them to
her husband.
Prosecutors had charged the pair with murder and rape.
Both the Criminal Court of First Instance and the Appeal Court had sentenced
the men to death after they were found guilty on all counts.
They challenged the ruling to UAE's top court which rejected their appeal and
maintained earlier rulings.
(source: Khaleej Times)
IRAN----execution
Man Hanged at Mashhad Prison
A prisoner has been executed at Mashhad prison for murder charges.
According to IHR sources, on the morning of Tuesday, October 8, prisoner Jahan
Agashteh, 39, was hanged at the Iranian city of Mashhad’s prison (also known as
Vakilabad prison).
“Jahan Agashteh was from the city of Isfahan. Four years ago, he was arrested
for killing a person in Mashhad and sentenced to death,” a well-informed source
told IHR.
Out of the 110 people who were executed in the first half of 2019, 83 were
sentenced to qisas (retribution in-kind) for murder.
(source: Iran Human Rights)
*********************
Suspects Who Plotted Soleimani Assassination to Face Hirabah Charges
An Iranian prosecutor revealed that individuals arrested for the attempted
assassination of IRGC Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani will be tried on
the charges of acting against national security, Hirabah (fighting God) and
helping foreign secret services.
The charge of Hirabah can entail the death sentence for the suspects.
The prosecutor of Kerman in southeastern Iran also uncovered new details on the
case a few days after Hossein Taeb, the head of the IRGC’s Intelligence
Organization, was cited for making new allegations about the thwarting of the
assassination plot which targeted Soleimani’s life last September.
According to Taeb, the suspects had planted 350 kg to 500 kg of ammunition in a
canal dug under a mosque and were planning to detonate it and assassinate
Soleimani when he came to visit the place.
As reported by IRNA, Kerman Prosecutor Dadkhoda Salari told reporters that 3
agents will be tried soon.
“These individuals will be tried on the charges of acting against national
security, fighting God and helping foreign secret services,” Salari said. He
also noted that the plot had went into its implementation phase ahead of the
suspects’ arrest.
He added that IRGC intelligence was monitoring the activities of the terrorist
group in and outside the country six months before their arrest, noting that
their recruitment and training, as well as supply of their weapons, ammunition
and communication systems, were all carried out outside the country and even
the equipment had been sent to them from abroad.
Yet, the official declined to name any specific country.
“All parts of the operational process, including the recruitment, training, and
equipping of spies with weapons, materiel, explosives, communications
equipment, and military equipment, were moved across the border by the
project's sponsors,” Salari said.
(source: aawsat.com)
****************
This Iranian singer has been “accused” of being gay and could face the death
penalty----“If convicted, this charge could result in death sentence.”
An Iranian singer has been “accused” of being gay and could face execution
under the Islamic Republic’s anti-homosexual laws.
Earlier this week, BBC journalist Ali Hamedani tweeted: “A famous Iranian
singer from the Kurdish province of Kermanshah has been ‘accused’ of being a
homosexual and could face execution. Iran executes gay men.”
Accordng to The Kurdistan Human Rights Network, Mohsen Lorestani has been
charged with ‘corruption on earth’.
It is the capital crime in Iran and can lead to the death penalty. The term is
used in the Quran to refer to “corrupt conditions, caused by unbelievers and
unjust people, that threaten social and political well-being”.
Lorestani’s lawyer said “the alleged incidents happened in a private chat” and
said he could be executed for his ‘crime’.
Iran News Wire also reported: “Well known Iranian Kurdish singer, Mohsen
Lorestani was charged with ‘corruption on earth’ by a court in Tehran for
posting ‘immoral’ content on social media. ‘Corruption on earth’ can carry the
death sentence.”
Volker Beck, a German Green Party politician and LGBTQ activist, told The
Jerusalem Post: “It is a perversion of unjust states like Iran and Saudi Arabia
that alleged or actual homosexuality is presented as an accusation that can
cost you your life.
“It is time for the international community to outlaw states punishing
homosexuals.”
Iran’s mullah regime has executed “between 4,000 and 6,000 gays and lesbians”
since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Earlier this year, Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the
country still carried the death penalty because their society has “moral
principles” and they live “according to these principles”.
“These are moral principles concerning the behaviour of people in general,” he
said. “And that means that the law is respected and the law is obeyed.”
(source: gaytimes.co.uk)
UGANDA:
Judiciary plots stiffer penalties for criminals----Effect. If the new
guidelines are enacted into law, the trial judge will consider the death
sentence first, which may later be relaxed downward during mitigation.
The Judiciary is drafting stiffer sentences for criminals who have committed
serious offences.
In an interview with Daily Monitor last week, the Principal Judge Yorokamu
Bamwine, said the draft of the new sentencing guidelines was sent to the
Judiciary’s Rules Committee headed by the Chief Justice Bart Katureebe for
further scrutiny and approval.
Justice Bamwine explained that the current guidelines have a wide range of
sentencing, which causes huge disparities in sentences for cases of nearly
similar facts. “There was a feeling that the sentencing range, which had been
proposed in the earlier sentencing guidelines from death to a caution in
capital offences, were too wide.
We thought that was not proper as it would not ensure uniformity in sentencing
hence the need to come up with new ones,” the Princple Judge said, adding: “Our
aim in the new sentence guidelines is that we want similar offences to attract
similar punishment and establish a pattern of sentencing that will make the
disparity in sentences less glaring than they are now.”
Justice Bamwine further revealed that in the new sentencing guidelines, under
the category of “very serious” offences, a death penalty will be the starting
point and the range gap will go down to 35 years imprisonment.
This means that once an accused has been convicted, the trial judge will
consider the death sentence first, which may later be relaxed downward during
mitigation if the convict presents such compelling reasons that warrant
reduction in severity of the sentence.
Currently, the sentencing guidelines provide for 35 years as the starting point
for an offence that attracts up to a maximum death sentence. Under the proposed
guidelines the starting point for the same offence will be death sentence
subject to being revised downward up to 35 years.
The offences under “very serious” category include: murder, rape, aggravated
defilement, aggravated robbery, treason, terrorism and kidnap with intent to
murder.
The 2nd category is the “serious” offences, which the Principal Judge said will
attract a life imprisonment on conviction as the starting point and a 30-year
jail term, being the minimum to be handed out. In the current guidelines, the
starting point for a sentencing on conviction can be a caution going upward to
life imprisonment.
The serious offences are cases that are capital in nature but don’t attract a
death punishment.
Justice Bamwine, who is the administrative head of the High Court, further said
when the new sentencing guidelines finally become operational, a judge will
have to explain why he/she handed an offender a jail sentence that is outside
the set parameters.
“Whether in very serious or serious category, the judge who has given a
sentence outside the given range will have to give reasons why he or she took
such a decision,” Justice Bamwine warned.
(source: Daily Monitor)
ZIMBABWE: “Time For Zimbabwe To Abolish The Death Penalty”: Veritas
The 10th October is the day on which the United Nations every year urges
countries of the world to abolish the death penalty.
Zimbabwe has not yet heeded the call, even though no one has been executed here
since 2005. Our courts continue to sentence prisoners to death for murder, and
these prisoners are kept in unspeakable conditions waiting for their sentences
to be carried out, not knowing from one day to the next when they will be taken
from their cells and hanged. As the courts continue to impose the death
sentence more and more prisoners suffer this horrible fate.
Children, the Unseen Victims
It is not only the prisoners who suffer. This year we are asked to consider the
innocent victims of the death penalty: the families of condemned prisoners,
particularly their children. Children of condemned prisoners have committed no
crime yet they are stigmatised by their communities and carry heavy emotional
and psychological burdens. They especially deserve our pity.
The Death Penalty can Easily be Abolished in Zimbabwe
The Constitution allows, but does not require, the penalty to be imposed for
murder committed in aggravating circumstances. All it needs to abolish the
penalty, therefore, is a short Act of Parliament. A Bill for such an Act has
already been drafted [link]. If the Government were to put forward such a Bill
most members of the public would acquiesce because the death penalty is not
part of Zimbabwe’s indigenous culture. The President and most Members of
Parliament favour abolition: all that is needed is political will.
Veritas urges the Government to present such a Bill to Parliament and urges all
Parliaments of good will to pass it without delay.
Zimbabwe Should Join the World in Abolishing the Death Penalty
•Out of the 195 member or observer states of the United Nations, only 55 keep
the death penalty in law and in practice.
•Out of the 54 nations in Africa, only 15 continue to carry out the death
penalty.
•More and more countries are abolishing the death penalty. It is time for
Zimbabwe to do so.
(source: zimeye.net)
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