June 17
JAPAN: Japan PM says no to abolishing death penalty Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said on Tuesday he supported continuing the death penalty, hours after the country executed 3 convicted murderers including a notorious serial killer. "In Japan, the majority view is that capital punishment should be maintained, so I feel no need to change what we have continued doing until now," Fukuda told from the Group of Eight rich nations. "But we also have to keep an eye on trends of world opinion," he said. Japan, the only G8 nation other than the United States to apply the death penalty, has come under fire from the European Union and human rights groups for stepping up the pace of executions. Japan has executed 23 death-row inmates since December 2006, when it ended a de facto moratorium called by a former justice minister who said capital punishment went against his Buddhist beliefs. Japan earlier on Tuesday hanged 3 death-row inmates, including Tsutomu Miyazaki, who murdered 4 girls in the late 1980s and ate some of their bodies. (source: Economic Times) ****************** Defense lawyer for executed child murderer protests, says she wanted retrial The defense lawyer for Tsutomu Miyazaki, who was executed on Tuesday, protested to the Justice Ministry for going ahead with the execution while knowing she was preparing to file a request for a retrial for her client. "I had been preparing to file a request for a retrial over the past few months. I strongly protested (to the ministry) for carrying out the execution even though they knew about my plans," lawyer Maiko Tagusari said in a statement. "What I had feared actually happened," Tagusari told reporters. In late May, Tagusari sent a letter to Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama asking him not to order the execution of Miyazaki. Miyazaki had been receiving treatment by a psychiatrist. Moreover, Tagusari had asked an expert to write an opinion on her client's mental condition. (source: Mainichi Daily News) CHINA: China mulls death penalty reform When China's newly appointed top judge suggested recently that death penalties meted out in the country should adhere to popular will, many were outraged. >From those who shuddered recalling the pandemonium of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) when gangs of teenagers administered "people's will" by beating up their teachers on the streets to those who saw rows of corrupt officials being lined up and shot on the strength of prevailing public opinion, everybody had a word to say against judge Wang Shengjun's suggestion. "China's legal system is still immature and courts mustn't blindly cater to popular will by becoming its rubber stamps," said Zhang. Jianwei, legal expert at Qinghua University in Beijing. "We should remember the lessons of the Cultural Revolution. All those public executions carried out by the masses made the calamity even worse. We have plenty of historical evidence to believe that public will tends to favor harsher punishments." Lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan said China was engaged in an intense battle against corruption and if public opinion was taken as basis for judging corrupt officials there would be plenty of death sentences. "The irony is that in China public opinion is almost never a factor in trying corruption cases," he says. "More often than not corrupt officials are given lenient sentences in belief of their repentance, while other criminal cases where public opinion is fiercely divided are resolved with the death penalty." By suggesting that popular will should be a factor in carrying out death sentences, top judge Wang Shengjun had only voiced the desire of certain legal officials and experts to reform China's much criticized death penalty system. But the uproar that ensued sheds light on the hurdles the reform movement needs to overcome. Court officials and legal experts contend that the Chinese people commonly believe in retribution as "an eye for an eye and a life for a life". "I believe the principal of adherence to the popular will raised by the top judge refers only to this public belief," suggests legal researcher Xie Pengcheng. "Sometimes nothing but the death penalty can placate people's anger." Rights groups say China executes more people annually than the rest of the world combined. The country's penal system has been denounced for putting people to death summarily, meting out wrongful sentences and keeping the numbers of executed secret. Since last year though, China has taken several strides forward toward reform. In January, the Supreme Court took back its power of final approval on death penalties. This power was relinquished to provincial high courts in a crime-fighting campaign in the 1980s. The change has led to a decline in the numbers of people executed, according to China's legal authorities. The Supreme Court rejected 15% of all death sentences handed down by lower courts in 2007 due to a lack of evidence, injustices and illegal court procedures. Death sentences were handed down only for an "extremely small number of extremely serious and extremely vile criminals posing a grievous threat to society", former top judge Xiao Yang said in his report to the annual session of the National People's Congress in March. Xiao Yang didn't give a number of the people executed. The exact number of convicts put to death is a state secret. The Dui Hua Foundation - a US-based advocacy group that researches Chinese prisons - has documented about 6,000 executions in 2007, a 25% to 30% drop from the year before. Amnesty International believes China remains the world's most prolific executioner, sentencing to death and executing more people than other countries that practice the death penalty. But China has repeatedly defended its use of the ultimate punishment, citing broad popular support for it. "The conditions are not right in China to abolish the death penalty, and it would not be supported by the majority of the people," Foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said in her most recent remarks on death penalty reform. "But we strictly control it and use it cautiously to ensure that it is used in only a small minority of the most serious cases." Beijing is pushing for the replacement of gunshot executions with lethal injection as the next step in its death penalty reform. Currently half of the country's 404 intermediate people's courts use lethal injections. "It is considered more humane and will eventually be used in all intermediate people's courts," Jiang Xingchang, vice president of the Supreme People's Court (SPC) was quoted as saying in March. To help speed the reform process, the SPC has said it will begin providing the lethal cocktail used in the injection to local courts for free. In the past, the toxic mixture was prepared in Beijing and local court officials were required to travel to the capital to receive it. This practice has proved too costly for many of the provinces, leading to delays in the introduction of lethal injection nationwide. But popular opinion may prove an obstacle to the introduction of the injection as well. The new method of executions has been decried in the press as the "last privilege of corrupt officials", with reports suggesting wealth and connections had been used to secure some convicts a less painful death. (source: Asia Times) INDONESIA: Family of Bali bombers says ready for execution The family of 2 of the Bali bombers, awaiting a final legal appeal lodged at Indonesia's Supreme Court, has made preparations in case their execution is announced soon, a relative said on Tuesday. 3 Islamic militants -- Amrozi, his brother Mukhlas and Imam Samudra -- face death by firing squad for their role in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people including foreign tourists and Indonesians. "We have prepared things that we need for the worst possible situation," Muhammad Chozin, the brother of Amrozi and Mukhlas, told Reuters. "Preparations include plain white clothes and three cars ready and tuned up for a long journey in case we are told to go there (the prison)," Chozin added, speaking by telephone from his family home in Lamongan, near the country's second-largest city of Surabaya. The bombers had told their families in their wills that they wanted Islamic funerals, with a plain white cloth to cover their bodies after they were killed. The three are being held in a maximum security jail on Nusakambangan island in Central Java, hundreds of kilometres from their families who live in East and West Java. Indonesian prosecutors are still waiting for the Supreme Court to deliberate on a third judicial review filed on behalf of the 3. "That certainty is what we want. Meanwhile, preparations (for their execution) have been started," Daulat Nainggolan, a spokesman for the attorney general's office, said. The three Bali bombers have repeatedly told the media they are ready to die as martyrs, and will not seek presidential clemency. Indonesia does not make public the timing and exact location of executions, but a deputy attorney general told reporters last month that it would be in Central Java. (source: Reuters) NIGERIA/SAUDI ARABIA: Save Olufemi Sulaimon Olufemi, 28, is now on death row in Saudi Arabia. He and 12 other Nigerians were tried for the alleged murder of a policeman in Jeddah in 2002. The other 12 were sentenced to varying jail terms and corporal punishment, but the court slammed the death sentence on Olufemi. The Saudi Arabian Human Rights Commission claims that the Supreme Judicial Council has ratified it. Olufemi could therefore be executed any moment from now. His trial was conducted in secret and in Arabic, a language he does not understand. Besides, he had no access to any legal representation or consular assistance. Amnesty International (AI) is so worried about the irregularities in Olufemi's trial that it has appealed to the federal government to pressure the Saudis to commute the sentence. Where was the Nigerian mission in Riyadh when the questionable trial was going on? Now that AI has blown the whistle, the citizen diplomacy advocated by foreign affairs minister Ojo Maduekwe should be used to prevail on the Saudis to ensure that they do not execute the sentence. Saudi Arabia is a friendly country. (source: Editorial, Leadership) EQUATORIAL GUINEA: Ex-SAS officer Simon Mann facing the death penalty as 'African coup plot' trial opens A former SAS officer accused of masterminding a failed coup plot against oil-rich Equatorial Guinea's dictator began today. Simon Mann faces a possible death sentence in the case, in which a verdict is expected by Thursday. Prosecutors allege Mann was the ringleader of a plot financed by the son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang, who seized power in a 1979 coup. He was first arrested in 2004 when his plane landed in Harare with 70 other alleged mercenaries to collect weapons purchased from Zimbabwe's state arms manufacturer. Mann has given different explanations, saying he and his team were hired to be bodyguards for a new president - not to overthrow Obiang's government. He has also said the weapons were to be used under a contract to guard a mine in Congo. Mann was extradited to the Spanish-speaking Central African nation in January from Zimbabwe. The Briton was driven in an armored car to a conference center complex where the trial was due to start. Security was tight, with dozens of soldiers deployed and snipers perched on rooftops in the area. Journalists were allowed in the courthouse but most without cameras, tape recorders, cell phones or even pens and notebooks. Attorney General Jose Olo Obono said that Equatorial Guinea's justice system will 'demonstrate through Simon Mann's own statements, the level of participation of each of the people implicated in this affair, which was orchestrated from beginning to end by Simon Mann'. Prosecutors have not formally said whether they will demand the maximum punishment - the death penalty - or the lesser sentence of 30 years in prison for treason. In an interview with Channel 4 News on the eve of the trial, Obiang did not rule out the death penalty, but said the court 'will determine what kind of punishment' Mann will face. Government-appointed defence attorney Jose Pablo Nvo said he was working for his client 'first, to not have a death sentence, and then to stay the least time possible in prison'. Nvo will be the only one defending the Briton in court. He took on the job just two weeks ago, but said he believes the trial will be fair. He said he has had unrestricted access to his client and plenty of time to prepare. 'I spoke with Mr. Mann last week,' he said. Referring to court documents, he added: 'I can read what is written in one day. It's about 192 pages.' Equatorial Guinea alleges that Mann's friend Mark Thatcher, the son of the former British prime minister, commissioned an attempt to overthrow Obiang and install exiled opposition leader Severo Moto. In April, a Spanish court ordered Moto jailed without bail on suspicion of trying to send arms to the African country. Mark Thatcher pleaded guilty in a South African court several years ago to unwittingly helping bankroll a 2004 coup plot. He was fined and given a suspended sentence. Obiang told Channel 4 News his government had concluded that Mann 'was used as an instrument, but there were material and intellectual authors behind it that financed the operation'. Obiang said there had been a contract between Mann and Moto in which Moto was going to give Mann rights to exploit oil. Equatorial Guinea held its 1st trial in the alleged plot in August 2004. South African arms dealer Nick Du Toit was sentenced to 34 years in prison. Amnesty International has said past trials in the case were flawed and impartial, with detainees allegedly tortured in jail and the prosecution offering bribes and inducements for defendants willing to incriminate others. Obiang's tightly controlled country commands enormous oil reserves - it is Africa's 3rd biggest oil producer - but many of its people remain poor. The tiny nation is also considered to be among the continent's worst violators of human rights. (source: Daily Mail) PAKISTAN: HR body urges Pak govt to abolish death penalty New York-based international human rights body - the Human Rights Watch, has urged the Pakistan Government to abolish death penalty in the country as, according to it, most of the convicts facing death penalty were poor and illiterate and tried without due process of law. Presently, out of more than 31,400 convicts in Pakistan, about 7000 have been sentenced to death, The News quoted the rights group as saying in a statement. Most convicts are poor and illiterate, it said, and added that many are held without due process of law and faced trials that did not meet international standards, the statement said. The group said in 2007, 309 prisoners were sentenced to death and134 were hanged. The number of persons sentenced to death and executed every year in Pakistan is among the highest in the world. If the new government is really interested in justice, it would end this unacceptable state of affairs, said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. (source: ANI)
