April 11 IRAQ: New Iraqi president opposed to Saddam death sentence Iraq's new president, Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, hinted in an interview published Sunday that he opposed the idea of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein being sentenced to death. "I am among the lawyers who signed an international petition against the death penalty in the world and it would be problem for me if Iraqi courts issued death sentences," he told the pan-Arab Asharq al-Awsat newspaper. Talabani, who was sworn in as president Thursday, was answering a question about the fate of Saddam, who is in U.S. custody in Iraq awaiting trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity and could face the death penalty. The new head of state, who spent much of his life fighting Saddam's regime, stressed however that he could not decide on a pardon individually if the deposed president was sentenced to death. "The issue of a possible pardon is the responsibility of the presidential council and I cannot make an individual decision," he told the London-based newspaper. Kurds were among the communities who suffered the most under the iron-fisted rule of Saddam. Among the main charges facing him and his henchmen is the brutal Anfal campaign against the Kurds carried out in the 1980s. However, Talabani kicked off his tenure as the war-torn country's president on a conciliatory note, proposing amnesty for insurgents in a bid to reach political unity. Talabani also sought to allay fears that as a Kurd he would pursue his own community's agenda and let national and Arab interests fall by the wayside. "For 50 years, I have worked actively for an alliance between Kurds and Arabs and deployed tremendous efforts to establish good relations with leaders in the western world and in the Arab world," he said. "We are keen to revive Iraq's real Arab and international role, bearing in mind that Iraq is a founding member of the Arab League. "Iraq will play an effective Arab role by consolidating Arab solidarity and security and taking part with its Arab brothers in efforts to find a solution to crucial issues that as the Palestinian one," he added. (source: Agence France Presse) SOUTH KOREA: Ministry to overhaul death penalty statutes The Ministry of Justice has commenced a review of the death penalty statutes which stipulate nearly 90 different offenses subject to capital punishment, ministry officials said yesterday. "We're looking into the death penalty statutes to reduce the number of crimes that can be punished by the penalty, focusing mainly on those offenses which do not involve risking or taking someone's life," Yonhap quoted a ministry official as saying. The ministry, which has been opposing a move by politicians to abolish capital punishment, came up with the measure to prepare for the possibility that the National Assembly may decide to retain it, upholding the general sentiment still in support of the death penalty. "As a ministry obliged to protect people's life and body from crimes, we remain cautious on the abolishment of capital punishment, but it is desirable to seek a stricter application of the punishment," the official said. A bill to replace capital punishment with life imprisonment without parole or pardon is now pending in the parliament, submitted by Uri lawmaker Yoo Ihn-tae and signed by a total of 175 lawmakers. Putting spurs to the death penalty opponents' drive, the National Human Rights Commission decided Wednesday to recommend to the government that it repeal the death penalty because it undermines human dignity. However, a survey conducted by the commission in 2003 found 69.5 % supporting the death penalty and another survey by the private Korea Social Opinions Research Institute in 2004 showed 66.3 % were in favor of the death penalty. According to the ministry, there exist 87 clauses in 17 different laws leading to capital punishment in Korea. Almost 1/2 of them are from the Military Criminal Law, while 15 others belong to Criminal Law, eight to the Additional Punishment Law on Specific Crimes, and 4 from the National Security Law. Experts have been criticizing the current legal system for excessively applying capital punishment, citing the example of other countries such as the United States and Japan which have only 5 or 6 crimes punished by the death penalty. The ministry's overhaul plan is seen as a response to such arguments, aiming to revise 55 offense clauses that are not crimes against someone's life but subject to capital punishment. "We need a thorough study on whether there has been any case in the past in which offenders of those crimes were actually sentenced to death, and whether the changes in our society call for any change in the way we punish offenders of a certain crime," the ministry official said. In Korea, there are 57 criminal convicts on death row but no executions have taken place since 1998. (source: The Korea Herald)
