June 16
JAPAN:
The Sayama Incident: Kazuo Ishikawa's half-century struggle against a wrongful
murder conviction and Japan's backward legal system
In 1963, Kazuo Ishikawa was convicted of the murder of a high school girl in
Sayama City, Saitama Prefecture. A member of the Buraku, Japan's historical
untouchable caste, Ishikawa grew up poor and uneducated, and the police built
the case against him by taking advantage of his naivety, by capitalizing on
social prejudices, and by manipulating an already unfair legal system to their
advantage. Now 74, he is still fighting to clear his name and to make sure
others have access to a fair trial.
The Case
On May 1, 1963, a female high school student disappeared on her way home from
school. That evening, a ransom note was delivered to her home, but soon after a
botched attempt to deliver the money allowed a possible culprit to escape, her
body turned up in a nearby field, the girl having been raped and murdered.
After a team of 40 police investigators failed to make an arrest, public
pressure was mounting.
The police decided to investigate a local Buraku area on the off-chance the
criminal was there. The burakumin as they are sometimes called in Japanese are
not an ethnic minority, but a social one. In the feudal era, people who were
cast out from society or engaged in professions considered unclean, like
undertakers or tanners, lived in separate villages or ghettos. Even in modern
times, they are negatively stereotyped as especially criminal and lazy.
The police picked up Ishikawa on an unrelated charge, as well as a few other
youths from the Buraku district. Ishikawa was released on bail, but then they
decided to go after him for the murder and took him into custody again.
The Substitute Prison System and Forced Confessions
Ishikawa was held in police detention for a total of 47 days, with access to
his lawyer limited to 5 minutes at a time and subjected to 16-17 hour
interrogation sessions.
This treatment is actually permissible under Japanese law. Detainees can be
held under the direct police management for up to 23 days before formal charges
are laid. After a warrant is issued, the police can hold a person for 72 hours
without laying charges. If they deem that is not sufficient, they can apply for
2 10-day extensions. However, if the person faces multiple charges, the charges
can be dealt with separately and the process repeated over and over.
Keeping a suspect in direct custody makes things much easier on the police. In
comparison with the rules governing a state detention center run by the
Ministry of Justice, in police detention lawyers cannot be present in an
interrogation, nor can it be videotaped or tape-recorded. There is no legal
limit on the length of the interrogation sessions, nor is there a law
stipulating that matters raised during interrogation have to be related to the
charges. The 'confessions' are not actually written or dictated by the detainee
but composed by the police and simply signed by the detainee.
During this time, the suspect is not legally guaranteed access to a lawyer,
except in cases involving the death penalty - a provision that wouldn't have
helped Ishikawa anyway, as it was enacted in 2006.
While he was in custody, the police intimidated Ishikawa, threatening to arrest
and prosecute his brother, the sole breadwinner in the family at that time, if
he did not confess to the crime. They also misleadingly assured him that if he
did confess, he could plea out to 10 years instead of getting the death
penalty. Eventually, broken down by the long interrogations sessions and
thinking he was protecting his family, Ishikawa agreed to confess.
"Things didn't turn out the way the police had told me," Ishikawa says. "I was
sentenced to death, and my brother lost his job anyway, because people refused
to employ someone related to a confessed murderer. My younger sister was
harassed out of school. Those years in prison were really tough for me."
Appeal After Appeal
Ishikawa was sentenced to death on March 11, 1964. On appeal at the Tokyo High
Court in 1974, they confirmed his guilty verdict on the weight of his
confession, although he had retracted it. They did, however, reduce his
sentence to life. That case then made it to the Supreme Court, but no effort
was made to investigate how Ishikawa's confession was obtained or to look into
unreleased evidence, and they upheld the verdict again.
In fact, there may have been exonerating evidence all along. Japanese law only
requires that evidence used in court by the prosecution be disclosed to the
defense. All other evidence can be withheld.
In Ishikawa's case, a large amount of evidence remains undisclosed, as
evidenced by missing sequential numbers in the evidence list. The defense has
stated that they are willing to have any sensitive data in the documents
blacked-out to protect the privacy of concerned parties and that they would be
willing to examine this evidence only in the prosecutor's office, but the
prosecution continues to deny them access or even release a list of the types
of evidence they hold.
A Prison Education
Ishikawa would eventually serve 32 years of hard labor in prison, but he says
the time was not completely wasted. In prison, a guard taught him how to read
and write, and this opened up a whole new world for him.
"My parents never told us anything about Buraku issues. I don't even know if
they ever even mentioned the word. They had to have known it, had to have some
idea that they were from a Buraku, but they never told us anything about it,"
he says.
"It was only after those years of study in jail that I learned that the things
I had experienced as a child were something happening all over Japan. I learned
that I was from a Buraku and that's why my family faced such poverty and that's
why I went to jail for a crime I didn't commit."
Parole, but Not Freedom
In 1994, Ishikawa was released on parole, but still continues to suffer the
stigma of a murder conviction as well as the restrictions of a parolee. He
continues to make public appearances to talk about the case and to advocate for
judicial reform and minority rights. Over 1 million people have signed a
petition asking the government to retry his case.
In 2006, he and his defense team launched a 3rd appeal for retrial. Focusing on
exculpatory evidence such as the lack of any similarity between the handwriting
on the ransom note and Ishikawa's handwriting and the the fact that his
fingerprints do not appear anywhere on it or the envelope, the team hopes that
this final appeal will be successful.
"I am actually not asking the court to quickly give me a not-guilty verdict
because I am innocent. I am only asking that the court review the evidence, and
the truth will reveal itself in the process," he said at the time.
Yet, it is now the 50th anniversary of the crime and nearly 7 years after this
most recent request for an appeal, but the court has not yet issued a decision.
For Ishikawa, time is running out, but he says he will keep fighting.
"My time in prison was difficult, but...I connected with a movement that
extends beyond me and affects the lives of thousands of people all over Japan.
It is for these people as much as for myself that I fight for recognition of my
innocence."
(source: Rocket News)
****************
Man sentenced to death for killing 2 relatives of woman he stalked
The Nagasaki District Court on Friday sentenced a 28-year-old man to death for
killing 2 relatives of a woman he had been stalking in 2011.
A panel of 3 professional and 6 citizen judges imposed the death penalty on
Gota Tsutsui, a resident of Kuwana, Mie Prefecture, after finding him guilty of
fatally stabbing the woman's mother Mitsuko Yamashita, 56, and grandmother
Hisae, 77, at their home in the city of Saikai, Nagasaki Prefecture, on Dec.
16, 2011.
The defendant "claimed the lives of 2 people who had never been held
responsible for any mistake," Presiding Judge Akira Shigetomi said.
"He attempted to kill all those at the woman's home to get to her and was
preoccupied with his desire to posses and control the woman and too egoistic to
think about anyone else," the judge said.
The judge said that during the trial the defendant repeated irrational
explanations defaming and distressing the relatives of the victims. "We have no
choice but to impose the death penalty."
Makoto Yamashita, the husband of Mitsuko, said the death sentence was
"natural."
Prosecutors had sought the death penalty for Tsutsui, who had reversed his
earlier confessions admitting to the murder charge and had pleaded not guilty
in the trial. His defense lawyers immediately filed an appeal with the Fukuoka
High Court.
Tsutsui was also charged with injuring the woman and sent intimidating e-mails
to 8 people including her relatives.
The murder case highlighted the failure of the Chiba, Mie and Nagasaki
prefectural police departments to respond appropriately when they were
contacted by the woman's family about Tsutsui's stalking.
In particular, investigators at the Narashino police station of the Chiba
prefectural police department delayed officially accepting the complaint and
went off on a pleasure trip before launching an investigation.
The police have admitted the murder of the 2 women could have been prevented if
they had responded "with utmost efforts."
(source: The Mainichi)
TRINIDAD & TOBAGO:
2011 death penalty survey misrepresented
Oxford criminology professor emeritus Roger Hood says his survey of T&T's views
on the death penalty was misinterpreted and only 26 % of respondents were truly
in favour of the mandatory death penalty - not most of them.
Hood spoke to T&T Guardian after he finished contributing to a panel discussion
at yesterday's session on Asia and the Death Penalty at the Anti-Death Penalty
Congress at the Palacio Muncipal de Congresos.
The session assessed major issues in states from India to Indonesia, in a
region described by the abolitionist movement as a "worldwide bastion of the
death penalty."
In the panel talks, Hood spoke about his surveys in other parts of the world.
Afterwards, he was asked about the reported high figures in his 2011 survey and
whether he would be doing another one in T&T.
Hood said he isn't doing another survey in T&T but had been following the
Government's moves to implement the death penalty. He said, however, that there
were hopes to follow up his survey's finding with "the politicians."
"It's really become a political issue...I think the work we did there (T&T)
really destroyed their case for maintaining a mandatory death penalty in T&T,"
he said.
"Not only was it shown to be ineffective in bringing cases to court and getting
convictions for murder, but it was highly arbitrary in the way it was enforced,
and also senior judges and other lawyers we spoke to were not in favour of the
mandatory death penalty themselves."
He stressed that only 26 % of respondents were in favour of the mandatory death
penalty.
Agreeing it was misinterpreted, Hood said: "When we asked people if they
thought the death penalty was an appropriate sentence, it was a much lower
figure, and the number of people who thought every murder case should be
sentenced to death was very small indeed."
Hood also gave the thumbs down to legislation to categorise murder, a course
which the Government began, but braked on when it hit an Opposition block in
the Parliament months ago. That legislation is now in limbo.
Hood said Britain tried that legal option and failed with it years ago.
"Utter failure - it creates great deal of arbitrariness; who is to say one
murder is much worse than another?"
Saying he had been following what the T&T Government had been doing in that
area, Hood said: "We in Britain had it in 1957, and by 1965, high court judges
said it was a disastrous policy and brought the law into disrepute. It was
eventually abolished."
So what were his suggestions on the issue on which the death penalty is
expected to be a deterrent?
"Much of the crime involves gangs and people in the drug trade, it seems, of
which very few are apprehended and convicted.
"So clearly, whatever effort has to start with much better law enforcement and
much better safety for victims and people threatened by violence and death, and
you've got to start with a greater concentration on education of the young.
"In my survey we asked people what were the most effective ways of dealing with
crime from greater moral education of youths, greater policing and greater
attempts to seize drugs or more executions.
"More executions came in at the bottom, so people don't really think more
executions will do it. It needs to be thought through again."
T&T attorney and Catholic Commission for Social Justice member Leela Ramdeen,
who spoke at Thursday's conference session on the Caribbean, echoed similar
suggestions. She said regional governments must focus on preventative measures
and rethink strategies to tackle crime, violence, gangs, drug trafficking and
small-arms issues.
Ramdeen, who is also on the Greater Caribbean for Life group, encouraged
Caribbean states to respond to the UN's call to abolish the death penalty.
Head of the Puerto Rican coalition against the Death Penalty, Carmelo Campos
Cruz, said yesterday he hoped the regional abolitionist movement would be able
to establish communication with the T&T Government when regional leaders hold a
meeting in T&T on October 30.
At Thursday's conference session on the Caribbean, Cruz (head of the Victims'
Rights Unit of the Puerto Rico Bar Association) told the audience efforts were
being made for a meeting to be held in T&T when the World Day Against the Death
Penalty is observed on October 10.
(source: Trinidad Guardian)
SAUDI ARABIA:
Saudi Arabia deserves worldwide condemnationM
Will Saudi Arabia ever join modern civilization? Or will it remain a virtual
medieval country?
Alas, the latter seems likely. Barbaric executions, most of them public
beheadings, still take place in that country. Its "justice" system, based on
Islamic Sharia law, is about as "just" as the Spanish Inquisition in the 16th
century, when so-called heretics were interrogated, tortured and put to death
for the most ridiculous "crimes," mainly an unwillingness to believe in
medieval Catholicism.
Saudi Arabia is 1 of 5 countries that still practice public executions. The
others, not surprisingly, are Iran, Syria, North Korea and Yemen. Those
condemned in Saudi Arabia are beheaded by a swordsman in front of crowds. Some,
including now and then female adulterers, are stoned to death.
One especially appalling execution happened last January when 22-year-old
Rizana Nafeek was beheaded. Nafeek was convicted of smothering the 4-month-old
baby boy whom she was babysitting. When she was just 17, Nafeek came to Saudi
Arabia from Sri Lanka in order to work as a maid for a Saudi family. She wanted
to earn money to help her 3 other siblings back home pay for schooling. At the
time, in order to be accepted into a Saudi work program, Nafeek's passport was
falsified to make her seem older than she was. She was a minor when the baby
died, and she insisted the baby began choking while bottle-feeding and that she
tried to revive it.
Nafeek had no access to lawyers. She did not speak Arabic. Her translator was
poorly trained if not downright incompetent. Not once in her trial was the age
issue considered, a glaring omission because Saudi Arabia, surprisingly, is a
signatory to the international Convention of the Rights of the Child.
Can you imagine the helplessness and terror of Nafeek, undergoing a trial she
did not understand so far from home, then languishing in a prison cell, missing
so badly her loved ones as she awaited the fate of having her head severed?
What kind of "justice" was that? It wasn't justice at all. It was an example of
barbarity that should have ceased hundreds of years ago. It the same kind of
"justice" that was meted out to the 14-year-old Pakistani girl by a Taliban
goon, who shot her in the head just because she was on her way to school in a
bus. Fortunately, that courageous girl lived, and her cause - the right to
education for Pakistani girls - lives too.
It's stomach-churning how radical interpretations of religion are used to
justify such utterly inhuman acts. In Saudi Arabia, there is a long list of
crimes for which people can be executed, including adultery, witchcraft,
sorcery and apostasy. The latter 3, especially, hark back to the Dark Ages and
to our own colonial Salem, Massachusetts, where at least 19 people, mostly
women, were hanged for practicing "witchcraft." A charge of "apostasy" can be
made against anyone who dares to criticize or to question Islam. Thus, Saudi
Arabia, a theocratic monarchy, is obviously a very dark and dangerous place to
live. Its leader, King Abdullah, must approve any execution.
Other atrocities occur regularly in Saudi Arabia, including cane-floggings, the
amputation of hands and feet and the gouging out of eyes. In 2010, a
13-year-old schoolgirl was lashed 90 times in front of fellow students for
allegedly assaulting her teacher. Another disturbing fact is that many people
put to death are guest workers, like the unfortunate Nafeek, and they cannot
properly defend themselves in such a feudal and lopsided "justice" system. As
of last January, there were 45 guest-working maids on death row, awaiting
execution.
Saudi Arabia, of course, is oil-rich. That's a shame because otherwise the
United States would probably condemn that country as it does most other
tyrannical nations. To find out more about Saudi Arabia's atrocities and how to
protest them, go to www.amnesty.org. You can register your outrage via that
site.
(source: Saudi Arabia)
LIBYA:
Libya must drop charges against politicians over women's rights cartoon
The Libyan authorities must drop charges against 2 politicians who published a
cartoon on women's rights deemed to be offensive to Islam, Amnesty
International said today.
Libyan National Party policy manager Ali Tekbali and Fathi Sager, the party's
secretary general, are due to appear in court this Sunday, 16 June at the
Criminal Court in Tripoli. They are facing the death penalty over a cartoon
calling for gender equality and women's rights that was circulated on an
electoral campaign poster last June.
The cartoon features a group of men discussing the role of women in Libyan
society, including a bearded character. That same character appeared as the
Prophet Muhammad three months later in a controversial anti-Islamic comic
published by the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo last September. The
cartoon, however, did not make any reference to the Prophet Muhammad or to
Islam.
The men face a string of charges under articles of the Penal Code which were
used to repress political opposition and freedom of expression during the
al-Gaddafi era. They are accused of spreading discord among Libyans and
intending "to change basic principles" of the constitution, as well as
insulting Islam and incitement to hatred. 2 of these charges incur the death
penalty.
"The charges against Ali Tekbali and Fathi Sager are ludicrous and must be
dropped immediately. If convicted on these charges Ali Tekbali and Fathi Sager
would be prisoners of conscience, imprisoned solely for the peaceful exercise
of their right to free expression," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Deputy Middle
East and North Africa Programme Director at Amnesty International.
The party offices in Tripoli were raided by a military brigade under the
Supreme Security Committee last November and closed by order of the
prosecution.
Ali Tekbali and Fathi Sager are apparently the 1st men to be tried on such
charges since the uprising, which toppled Muammar al-Gaddafi in 2011.
"It's been almost 2 years since Libya guaranteed freedom of expression in its
constitutional declaration. The authorities must stand by that pledge and
urgently repeal all laws, which criminalize freedom of expression and assembly,
and impose the death penalty," Hadj Sahraoui said.
"It is outrageous to think that speaking out on women's rights has become a
crime punishable by death at a time when Libyan women are calling for increased
participation in public life and the Constitution-drafting process."
Ali Tekbali, who takes responsibility for designing the cartoon in protest at
conservative men's opposing women's right to education, says he found the
picture by browsing on the internet for a bearded man.
He told an Amnesty International delegate who observed the 1st hearing of the
men's trial in May, "The main point of the cartoon was to show that women are
not buckets of sin walking on the street, as these men think. A society cannot
prosper without the 2 sides working together."
(source: Amnesty International)
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