April 29
HUNGARY:
Hungary PM revives death penalty debate, draws EU concern
Prime Minister Viktor Orban's Fidesz party, under pressure from a eurosceptic
right, said on Wednesday it wanted to raise the question of a possible
reintroduction of the death penalty with its European Union partners.
A European Parliament member dismissed the idea as barbaric.
Hungary scrapped the death penalty as one of the terms of its accession to the
EU in 2004. Orban raised the matter anew after the recent murder of a young
tobacconist in southern Hungary that stirred anger in the country.
Fidesz's Parliament caucus leader said the party was aware European rules
precluded capital punishment but a debate was still necessary.
"Even in an EU member state, if that country's public wants to have the death
penalty ...then a substantial debate can be raised on the EU level," caucus
leader Antal Rogan told public radio.
Orban has taken a hard line on a series of issues recently, including proposals
for a crackdown on illegal immigrants as his Fidesz loses ground to the
far-right, euro-sceptic, anti-immigrant Jobbik party. He said on Tuesday the
question of reintroduction should be kept on the agenda in Hungary.
The leftist opposition said Orban was going against European values, while
Jobbik Chairman Gabor Vona said the premier was copying his party's playbook.
At the European Parliament (EP), Austrian Socialist MEP Joerg Leichtfried
called any return to capital punishment "barbaric and an infringement of
European law."
EP President Martin Schulz said he had requested an opportunity to speak with
Orban on the telephone.
Orban's press chief did not say on what EU forum Hungary might raise the issue.
"Consultations are necessary on the subject on a European level, so the PM will
happily discuss it with the (EP) President," Bertalan Havasi told state news
agency MTI.
(source: Reuters)
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES:
Contract killer gets death penalty in RAK
The Ras Al Khaimah Criminal Court on Tuesday sentenced an Emirati man to death
for murdering a compatriot lawyer after conspiring with the deceased's wife and
another man. The defendants put the unconscious victim in his car, which the
1st defendant pushed into a valley in RAK to trick the police into believing
that he died in a traffic accident.
The victim's wife hired the 1st defendant to carry out the murder for
Dh100,000.
The deceased's wife and an Asian driver were sentenced to life in jail for
assisting the 1st defendant in murdering the 54-year-old former police officer.
According to court records, the woman locked her children on the upper floor of
their house and let her 2 accomplices in. She led them to where her husband was
sleeping, where they injected insulin into his body. The defendants then put
the husband in the sitting room as per plan.
However, the woman changed her mind and asked the men to put her husband in one
of his cars.
The 1st defendant put the victim in the front seat and took the steering wheel
as the driver sat in the rear seat. He drove to Ham Valley in the Dafta area in
RAK.
The defendants stopped the car near the edge of the valley and got off. The 1st
defendant put the car in the drive mode, which then fell into the valley.
The police solved the murder on May 28 last year. Initially believed to be a
traffic accident, a murder probe was initiated after the police found the
victim's legs tied.
Investigations led the police to his wife, who confessed to the crime. She said
she conspired with her 2 accomplices to murder her husband due to long and
complicated family disputes.
The woman confessed that she unsuccessfully tried to kill her husband many
times before. She hired the 1st defendant after promising to pay his fee of
Dh100,000 and pledged to clear his financial dues.
(source: Khaleej Times)
NORTH KOREA----executions
North Korea's Kim ordered 15 executions this year: South's spy agency
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered the execution of 15 senior officials
this year as punishment for challenging his authority, South Korea's spy agency
told a closed-door parliament meeting on Wednesday.
A vice minister for forestry was one of the officials executed for complaining
about a state policy, a member of parliament's intelligence committee, Shin
Kyung-min, quoted an unnamed National Intelligence Service official as saying.
"Excuses or reasoning doesn't work for Kim Jong Un, and his style of rule is to
push through everything, and if there's any objection, he takes that as a
challenge to authority and comes back with execution as a showcase," Shin said.
"In the 4 months this year, 15 senior officials are said to have been
executed," Shin cited the intelligence official as saying, according to his
office.
In 2013, Kim purged and executed his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, once considered
the second most powerful man in Pyongyang's leadership circle, for corruption
and committing crimes damaging to the economy, along with a group of officials
close to him.
Kim has also reshuffled close aides and senior officials repeatedly since
taking office.
South Korea's spy agency also expected Kim to travel to Moscow this month to
attend an event marking the end of World War Two in Europe, although there was
no independent confirmation of the plan, Shin said after the spy agency
briefing.
North Korea has not booked a hotel in Moscow for Kim's stay, but the country's
embassy was equipped to accommodate its leader, Shin said, quoting the spy
agency official.
The visit would be Kim's 1st overseas trip since he took power in 2011 after
the death of his father.
Russia has said Kim would attend the May 9 event marking the 70th anniversary
of the war's end in Europe, although officials in Seoul have cautioned that
there was no official confirmation from the North.
Some analysts have questioned whether Kim, believed to be in his early 30s,
would choose for his 1st overseas visit an event where he would share the stage
with several leaders and have less control over proceedings than in a 2-way
summit.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye has decided not to attend the function.
U.S. President Barack Obama and many European leaders are staying away, but
Chinese President Xi Jinping and the heads of many former Soviet republics are
expected to attend.
(source: Reuters)
CHINA:
Death penalty case: Sydney man Peter Gardner to face Guangzhou court over drug
charges
Hours before the Bali 9 duo were shot dead, another young Australian man came a
step closer to facing execution overseas.
Sydney man Peter Gardner, 25, has had his death penalty case in a Chinese
courtroom brought forward by almost 6 months and will go on trial in the
southern metropolis of Guangzhou next Thursday, May 7, for allegedly attempting
to export 30kg of methamphetamine, or ice.
Gardner's lawyer, New Zealand barrister Craig Tuck, said the reasons for the
fast-tracked trial were unknown.
China executes thousands of people every year according to Amnesty
International, and has killed at least a dozen foreign nationals in the past 15
years.
The opaque Chinese legal system operates on 3 levels: police, prosecutors and
courts - all come under the control of the nation's ruling Communist Party.
Once cases are passed to the courts, conviction rates are 99 % and Gardner's
lawyers have previously said his fate all but certain.
Gardner is a dual New Zealand and Australian citizen. His father and 2 sisters
live in Sydney while his mother is in New Zealand. They have declined to
comment.
Gardner was with Australian woman Kalynda Davis - whom he met weeks earlier
through an online dating site - when they were detained by customs officials in
Guangzhou on November 8 after a 3-day visit. 2 bags being checked in by the
couple were allegedly found to have 60kg of ice inside with their zips glued
shut.
In a development that stunned China watchers, Davis was released after 4 weeks
of negotiations between her China based lawyers and Chinese authorities with
her long blonde hair roughly cropped after her lawyers argued she had no
knowledge of the cargo.
"I knew she was so innocent. I prayed every night that the truth would come
out, I prayed for the authorities, that it was dealt with in the way that it
was dealt with, and our prayers were answered," her father Larry David said
upon her release.
It is understood that Gardner's case was passed from the police to prosecutors
several months ago but his lawyer said earlier this month that he did not
expect the case to go to trial for 6 months. However on Tuesday night he said
the trial date had moved to May 7.
"This is considerably earlier than expected. The trial will take place in
Guangzhou Municipal Intermediate Court and is expected to last no more than two
days,' he said in a statement.
"The Gardner family have requested privacy at this time and will not be making
any comments to the media."
Since his detention, Gardner has been in a crowded Guangzhou detention centre
with no heating or airconditioning. He has been sharing a room with up to 14
other people, according to sources.
Gardner is permitted one visit a month from a New Zealand embassy official,
having travelled to China on his New Zealand passport.
Gardner is alleged to have been carrying 60 vacuum-packed plastic bags in 2
cases with the zips glued shut.
Chinese lawyers who spoke to News Corp Australia at the time of his detention
said that his fate was all but certain. Under Chinese law anyone caught
smuggling more than 50g of meth or heroin faces death by firing squad or lethal
injection Gardner has been charged in the very highest level of drug
exportation, his lawyer said.
If he is found guilty and sentenced to death he automatically has the right to
2 appeals - to China's High People's Court and the Supreme Court Guangzhou, so
it may be months after the trial before his fate will be decided. China's 3rd
largest and most important city with a population of about 14 million people,
once known in the west as Canton, is 100 kilometres up the Pearl River from
Hong Kong.
It has a long history of criminal gangs and has been notorious for its drug
trade since the Opium Wars Gangs manufactured huge quantities of
methamphetamine and other synthetic drugs such as ecstasy and ketamine. It is
also a major importing centre for cocaine.
Under the two-and-a-half-year-old regime of Chinese President Xi Jinxing,
authorities have launched a major anti-drugs campaign and several gangs in
Guangzhou have been reported in the Chinese media.
Guangzhou has also gained a reputation in Australia in recent years for rough
justice. 2 Australian businesspeople, travel business operator Matthew Ng and
tertiary institution founder Charlotte Chou, both received hefty sentences on
the back of business disputes that involved
Communist Party official and business people with close party connections.
Chou was finally released after 6 years in December last year and in March, Ng
became the 1st person to be transferred to Australia to complete his sentence
under a deal signed in 2010.
(source: news.com.au)
GLOBAL:
Which countries have the death penalty for drug smuggling?
In the early hours of April 29th, Indonesia executed 7 convicted drug
traffickers. 7 of the 8 were foreigners: 2 Australians, a Brazilian, a Filipina
and 4 Nigerians. The sentences have provoked outrage from the prisoners' home
countries, none of which hands down the death penalty to drug offenders. Brazil
and the Netherlands had already withdrawn their ambassadors, following an
earlier round of executions in January. Indonesia is rare in executing drug
smugglers, who in most of the world are condemned only to long stretches in
prison. Where else does trafficking earn a death sentence?
Thirty-two countries, plus Gaza, have the death penalty for drug smuggling,
according to Harm Reduction International (HRI), a drug-focused NGO. All but
four (America, Cuba, Sudan and South Sudan) are in Asia or the Middle East. But
in most of them executions are extremely rare. 14, including America and Cuba,
have the death penalty on the books for drug traffickers but do not apply it in
practice. Only in 6 countries - China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Malaysia
and Singapore - are drug offenders known to be routinely executed, according to
HRI's most recent analysis. (Indonesia will soon join this list, following its
recent executions.) In Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, South Sudan and Syria
the data are murky.
Executions of drug smugglers are becoming more common. Between 1999 and 2014
Indonesia carried out only 7 executions of drug traffickers, according to a
tally by Australian media. Since taking office 6 months ago, President Joko
Widodo has overseen 14, as part of a fight against drug addiction at home.
(Never mind that some of the recently killed prisoners were smuggling drugs out
of Indonesia, rather than into it.) An even greater escalation has taken place
in Iran, which executed fewer than 100 drug smugglers in 2008 but has put to
death 241 in only the first 4 months of this year, according to Amnesty
International. Possession of just 30g of some synthetic drugs can mean hanging
in Iran. China is thought to execute more drug offenders than any other
country. It does not publish statistics on its use of the death penalty, but in
the first 5 months of 2014 drug convictions were 27% higher than in the same
period a year earlier. Human rights advocates now worry about Pakistan, which
earlier this year ended a moratorium on the death penalty. It has 8,000 people
on death row, including an unknown number of drug traffickers.
Asia's toughening approach contrasts with a slackening off in the West. Trading
cannabis, which earns beheading in Saudi Arabia, has been legalised for
recreational use in 4 states of America, as well as in Uruguay, and
decriminalised in much of Europe and Latin America. Heroin addiction is
increasingly treated as an illness rather than a crime: clean needles are
available in many rich countries, and a few, including Britain and Switzerland,
even prescribe heroin to a small number of addicts. In most areas of social
policy, such different regional policies would not matter much. But in the case
of drugs, a relentlessly globalising business, the sharply diverging approaches
will lead to more uncomfortable stand-offs between East and West.
(source: The Economist)
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