August 1
LIBYA:
Illegitimate Show Trial Sentences Gaddafi's Son to Death
In 2007, candidate Obama said "(t)he president does not have the power under
the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation
that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."
Straightaway after entering office, he expanded drone attacks against
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. He increased troop strength in
Afghanistan after pledging to end war by yearend 2009. US-led NATO aggression
on Libya followed. Obama lied claiming Gaddafi "attack(ed) his (own) people.
(So) we took ... swift steps ... to answer his aggression."
A litany of Big Lies followed. "Innocent people were targeted for killing,"
Obama blustered. "Hospital and ambulances were attacked."
"Journalists were arrested, sexually assaulted and killed ...Water for hundreds
of thousands of people ... was shut off. Cities and towns were shelled. Mosques
were destroyed."
"Gaddafi declared he would show no mercy to his own people" - willful Obama
deception. He tried justifying the unjustifiable, adding "I authorized military
action to stop the killing and enforce UN Security Council Resolution 1973."
International law is clear. Nations may not attack others except in
self-defense - and only if UN Security Council authorized.
America wasn't attacked, nor other NATO countries. Gaddafi threatened no one,
including his own people. The longer war raged, the more popular he became.
Libyans rallied around him for safety and security - hoping he'd be able to
restore peace and stability.
At war's end, he was brutally sodomized and murdered in cold blood. On November
19, 2011, his son Saif was arrested trying to flee Libya to safety, held
captive by Zintan rebels, tortured, until tried in absentia in Tripoli and
convicted by kangaroo tribunal proceedings affording him no chance for justice.
He was declared guilty by accusation - sentenced to death by firing squad along
with 8 other former Gaddafi officials, including former intelligence chief
Abdullah Senussi, and 2 former prime ministers, al-Baghdadi and Abuzaid Dorda.
A total of 32 defendants were tried - 23 got lesser sentences and fines.
Attorney John Jones represented Saif. "It was clearly a show trial" for all
defendants, he said. "It was basically a trial by militia" lasting 2 days -
conducted by an illegitimate Islamist regime controlling Tripoli after ousting
the US-installed one operating from Tobruk.
"Lawyers were intimidated," said Jones. "The judges were intimated. Lawyers had
to leave the case." Controlled proceedings excluded the right to a proper
defense. Only 2 intimidated witnesses for Saif were allowed. No evidence
against him was presented.
Prosecutors relied solely on torture extracted information - what no legitimate
tribunal permits. Transitional Justice and Rule of Law Division of the UN
Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) human rights director Claudio Cordone said:
"Concerns over the trial include the fact that several defendants were absent
for a number of sessions. The evidence of criminal conduct was largely
attributed to the defendants in general, with little effort to establish
individual criminal responsibility."
"(I)t is particularly worrisome that the court handed down 9 death sentences.
International standards require that death sentences may only be imposed after
proceedings that meet the highest level of respect for fair trial standards.
The United Nations opposes the imposition of the death penalty as a matter of
principle."
Spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ravina Shamdasani,
added:
"We had closely monitored the detention and trial and found that international
fair trial standards had failed to be met. Among the key shortcomings is the
failure to establish individual criminal responsibility in relation to specific
crimes."
Other serious issues included lack of access to lawyers, torture and other
forms of ill treatment, as well as illegitimate trials conducted in absentia.
An UNSMIL press release said "(d)uring their pre-trial detention defendants
were denied access to lawyers and family for prolonged periods, and some
reported that they were beaten or otherwise ill-treated, but UNSMIL is not
aware of any investigation into these allegations."
"Many defendants were not represented by a lawyer during the pre-trial process,
which deprived them of a crucial opportunity to establish their defence.
Defence lawyers said they faced challenges in meeting their clients privately
or accessing the full case file, and some said they received threats."
"They were constrained by the court to 2 or 3 witnesses per defendant and some
said that witnesses were reluctant to appear in court due to fears about their
safety. The court did not respond to defence counsel requests to examine
prosecution witnesses."
US-led NATO turned Africa's most developed country into a cauldron of endless
violence, deprivation and despair.
Tens of thousands were murdered in cold blood. Multiples more were injured
and/or displaced. Violence, instability, insecurity and chaos reflect daily
life. No end in sight looms. Millions of Libyans live in constant fear.
Obama bears full responsibility for raping, ravaging, destroying, and
plundering a nation threatening no others. Anarchical charnel house conditions
replaced it.
Dystopian harshness persists. Libya is a failed state. Central authority is
absent. Public services aren't provided. Corruption and criminality are
rampant. Conditions are in free fall. Human misery is extreme.
Libya is one of many high crimes on Obama's rap sheet. Perhaps he plans Libya
2.0 for Syria, Iran, Lebanon and Yemen. Longstanding US/Israeli plans to redraw
the Middle East map suggest it.
(source: Stephen Lendman, thepeoplesvoice.org)
EGYPT:
Ibrahim Halawa trial: Irish Government should support call for
investigation----Ireland should condemn Egypt's flagrant disregard for
international standards
Today an Irish teenager lies abandoned to his fate in a Cairo prison, cut off
from the world. Ibrahim Halawa was arrested in August 2013 near Cairo's Ramses
Square by security forces, who bundled him into a squalid jail 2 days after
they had carried out what Human Rights Watch has condemned as "one of the
world's largest mass killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent
history". It far exceeded the daily death toll in Tiananmen Square in 1989 or
the number who died at the hands of Uzbek forces during the Andijan Massacre in
2005.
Arrested as a child
Security forces rounded up hundreds of unarmed people taking refuge in the
Al-Fateh Mosque during protests, on the belief it was a sit-in by the Muslim
Brotherhood.
The teenager's case file contains no evidence to link him to any of the crimes
he is alleged to have committed. It gives no reason, other than his presence at
the mosque, to arrest him at all. And yet Halawa was arrested - at 17 years of
age, a child under international law - 1 of a group of 494, rounded up and
charged with crimes that carry life imprisonment or the death penalty. He has
been left to languish in rotten conditions ever since.
In the 2 years since his arrest he has been severely mistreated. There are
persistent and credible allegations that he has been denied treatment for a
gunshot wound to his hand (sustained when gunfire was used, unnecessarily,
during his arrest); that he has been stripped naked and whipped with metal
chains; that he has suffered routine verbal taunts about being executed - all
at the hands of the prison officers supposedly responsible for his welfare.
Amnesty International report that such physical and mental mistreatment of
prisoners has become widespread in Egypt. The Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy
has described conditions in Tora Prison, where Halawa is held, as
"psychologically unbearable".
In the 2 years since his arrest, Halawa has also been denied the most basic
requirements of procedural fairness. He faces vague, generic charges; he does
not have access to any of his lawyers; he cannot attend court hearings in his
case; he will not be able to see or hear witnesses against him; and he cannot
call his own witnesses.
The trial, due to start tomorrow, for him and 493 others, will inevitably be
unfair. The backdrop is that the Egyptian courts have recently conducted many
other flagrantly unfair mass trials, which the United Nations High Commissioner
for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, has described as "outrageous" and in clear
breach of international human rights law.
For example, in March 2014, Minya Criminal Court sentenced 529 people to death
for alleged participation in an attack on a police station. The trial took
under an hour, the court prevented defence lawyers from presenting their case
or calling witnesses, and the vast majority of defendants were tried and
convicted in their absence.
In spite of his isolation, Ibrahim Halawa's name has become well known in
Ireland. What is less well known are the steps which we, his lawyers, have
taken to shine an international spotlight on the serious violations of his
rights which he has endured, in advance of his trial.
We have recently filed applications with 3 United Nations bodies, requesting
them to urgently investigate Halawa's case: the UN Working Group on Arbitrary
Detention; the Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or
Degrading Treatment or Punishment; and the Special Rapporteur on
Counterterrorism and Human Rights. The Irish Government has been asked to
formally support these applications, but regrettably they have not agreed to do
so.
An Irish citizen is held in arbitrary detention overseas, facing serious
charges, and without access to his lawyers. Surely his Government should
support calls for urgent investigation by expert international bodies of his
detention, conditions and treatment.
Halawa has been receiving important consular support from the Irish Embassy in
Cairo. But it is not enough. Why hasn't the Irish Government - at the highest
level - been more outspoken in supporting its citizen and in condemning Egypt's
grave disregard for international human rights?
When a US citizen, Mohamed Soltan, was imprisoned in Egypt for almost 2 years
on charges that he supported an Islamist protest, the Obama administration was
strident in its criticism.
In March 2014, a US State Department spokeswoman described the 529 death
sentences in Minya as "shocking, unconscionable" and the use of mass trials as
representing "a flagrant disregard for basic standards of justice". Secretary
of State John Kerry made clear that US aid to Egypt - suspended in 2013 because
of the military overthrow of a democratically elected government and the
crackdown on peaceful protesters - would remain suspended unless the Egyptian
government changed its ways.
Similarly, when journalist Peter Greste was let out of Egypt in February 2015,
it was after public criticism of the system by the Australian government and
repeated direct requests from Australian prime minister Tony Abbott to
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and by foreign minister Julie Bishop to her
counterpart in Cairo.
Suffered enough
Halawa deserves no less energetic an effort from Ireland, no matter what its
prospects of success. His fate has been the fate of thousands upon thousands of
men, women and children in Egypt; all of them victims of the country's deeply
politicised, blunt judicial system.
A great many of them, having reached the end of the road down which Halawa is
being swept, have paid with their lives.
The Irish Government has a chance to prevent the same from happening to Halawa.
He is innocent. He has suffered enough. Let's bring him home.
(source: Caoilfhionn Gallagher, Katie O'Byrne and Mark Wassouf are barristers
from Doughty Street Chambers who act for Ibrahim Halawa and his family----The
Irish Times)
CHAD:
Chad reintroduces death penalty. Which other countries use it?
Chad has beefed up its security in recent weeks after a spate of deadly attacks
by Boko Haram.
Amid several suicide bombings in the past few months, Chad reintroduced the
death penalty for acts of terrorism.
The Chadian parliament voted unanimously on Thursday to reauthorize the death
penalty, 6 months after its abolition, the BBC reported.
Chad has beefed up its security in recent weeks, following a spate of deadly
Boko Haram attacks.
On June 17, the country banned people from wearing burqas, or full-face veil, 2
days after 2 suicide bombers killed more than 30 people.
Despite the ban, on July 11 a Boko Haram suicide bomber man dressed in a
woman's burqa blew himself up in the capital's main market, killing 15 people.
Now Chad has aimed at arresting anyone who wears a burqa.
The country also opened a 2-week campaign against Boko Haram, during which the
government says its forces killed 117 insurgents, Reuters reported.
Chad is the second country that has decided in the past few months to attempt
to deter terrorism by resuming the death penalty.
Last March, Pakistan also lifted its moratorium on the death penalty in terror
cases. On July 29, the United Nations urged Pakistan to halt executions.
The UN says the death penalty is an extreme form of punishment that, if used at
all, should only be imposed for the most serious crimes, "after a fair trial
that respects the most stringent due process guarantees as stipulated in
international human rights law."
In July 2014, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said "Death penalty has no place
in 21st century" and urged countries to stop the practice.
Currently, more than 160 UN member states have either abolished the death
penalty or do not practice it. But there are still dozens of countries that
carry out death sentences.
In December 2014, the Guardian analyzed Amnesty International data and
concluded that at least 1,722 people were sentenced to death in 58 countries in
2012, which showed a decrease from 2011 with 1,923 executions in 63 countries
worldwide.
The Guardian reported in 2013 at least 778 executions were carried out in 22
countries. In 2014, Amnesty International said the number of recorded death
sentences has jumped by almost 500, compared to 2013.
Last year, China had the highest rate of the executions. Amnesty believes
thousands were executed.
The other countries topping the list were Iran, with 289 officially and at
least 454 unannounced executions; Saudi Arabia, with at least 90 executions;
Iraq, with at least 61 executions; and the US, with 35 executions. The United
States is the only G7 country that still executes people.
According to The Washington Post, Amnesty International data shows that in 2014
the number of death sentences handed down experienced a dramatic increase but
there was a drop in the number of executions carried out.
(source: Christian Science Monitor)
GLOBAL:
Death penalty: is capital punishment morally justified?
The execution, by hanging, of Jakub Memon for his part in the 2003 Mumbai
bombings invites us to revisit the vexed issue of capital punishment. Few
topics incite such moral passion and controversy.
The world's religious communities are divided on the death penalty. Despite a
seemingly unambiguous commitment to non-violence (or "Ahimsa") in both Hinduism
and Buddhism, scholars within those traditions continue to debate the
permissibility of lethal punishment. The Old Testament enjoins us to take an
"eye for an eye" - the principle of lex talionis - while the New Testament
exhorts us to "turn the other cheek". And while Islam is generally regarded as
compatible with the death penalty, the Qur'an's emphasis on forgiveness
suggests that Muslims should sometimes respond to evil with mercy, not
retaliation. While many European countries urge an ethic of rehabilitation in
their criminal justice systems, many jurisdictions in the United States stand
firmly in favour of capital punishment for serious crimes. Even a federal jury
in Massachusetts, a liberal bastion, recently doled out the death penalty to
the sole surviving perpetrator of the Boston marathon bombing. And while the
United Kingdom abandoned the death penalty in 1964 - the year of the last
executions - nearly 1/2 of the British public favours a reintroduction of it
(though that figure has been dropping steadily).
We will not make progress in the public debate about the death penalty unless
we realise that it is only one element in a much bigger controversy: about the
point of punishment itself. As The Conversation invites us to rethink the death
penalty over the next several weeks, we must not conduct this discussion in a
vacuum. Before you ask yourself whether we should have the death penalty,
consider: why hand out any punishments at all? Considering the 3 main families
in the philosophy of punishment can help us organise our conversation.
Retribution
"Bad guys deserve to suffer." This is a blunt slogan, but it captures the
essence of a deeply familiar notion: people who have committed culpable wrongs
deserve their lives to go worse as a result. Why do they deserve it? Perhaps
because it's not fair for the lives of wrongdoers to go well when the lives of
the innocent have gone poorly - punishment levels the playing field. Whatever
the reason, "retributivists" - those who believe in retribution - argue that
the punishment of criminals is intrinsically valuable; it is valuable in and of
itself, rather than valuable because of its good consequences (for example,
preventing future crime).
Even if punishing murderers and thieves had no effect on reducing the overall
crime rate, retributivists tend to think it's still the right thing to do.
Retributivists also think that the severity of punishment should match the
severity of the crime. So, just as it is wrong to over-punish someone
(executing someone for stealing a pair of shoes), it can be wrong to
under-punish someone (giving him a community service order for murder).
If you are a retributivist, you might support the death penalty because you
think that certain or all murderers (and perhaps other criminals) deserve to
suffer death for their crimes. Depending on how you think about death, however,
you might oppose the death penalty on the grounds that it is disproportionately
harsh - perhaps you think that no matter what someone has done, she does not
deserve to die for it.
On the other hand you might oppose the death penalty on the grounds that it is
disproportionately light. Many people who opposed the recent death sentence for
the Boston bomber did so on the grounds that life in a maximum-security prison
would be a worse punishment - and so more fitting - than death. Deterrence
"Criminals should be punished so that they and others will be less likely to
commit crime in the future, making everybody safer." Many people criticise
retributivism on the grounds that it is nothing but a pointless quest for
barbaric revenge.
Inflicting suffering on human beings, if it is to be morally justified, must
instead have a forward-looking purpose: protecting the innocent from harm. If
this sounds sensible to you, you probably believe the point of punishment is
not retribution, but rather deterrence.
The idea here is familiar enough: people face temptations to break just laws;
the demands of morality and the demands of rational self-interest sometimes
seem to diverge. Threats of punishment realign those demands by making it
irrational for self-interested individuals to break the law.
If you are a defender of deterrence, you must answer 2 questions about capital
punishment before determining where you stand. The 1st is empirical: a question
about real-world facts. Does the threat of the death penalty actually deter
people from committing heinous crimes to a greater extent than the threat of
life imprisonment?
The 2nd question is moral. Even if the death penalty deterred crime more
successfully than life imprisonment, that doesn't necessarily mean it would be
justified. After all, imagine if we threatened execution for all crimes,
including minor traffic violations, theft, and tax fraud.
Doing so would surely slash the crime rate, yet most people would judge it to
be wrong. Deterrence theorists tend to defend some upper limit on the harshness
of punishment - and it may be that death simply goes beyond what the government
is ever permitted to threaten.
Reform
"Punishment communicates to criminals that what they have done is wrong, and
gives them an opportunity to apologise and reform." There are many different
variants of this view: educative, communicative, rehabilitative - and there are
important differences between them. But the basic idea is that punishment
should make the wrongdoer understand what he or she has done wrong and inspire
her to repent and reform.
Whatever version of this view one supports, its implication for the death
penalty is reasonably clear. What is the point of a criminal reforming herself
as she prepares for the execution chamber?
To be sure, many people try to mix and match different elements of these three
broad views, though such mixed theories tend to be unhelpfully ad hoc and can
offer conflicting guidance. Far better, to my mind, to plant one's flag clearly
and answer the question: which view should have priority in our thinking about
punishment?
Then, and only then, can we proceed to think about the justice (or lack
thereof) of governments who kill their citizens.
(source: Jeffrey Howard,Lecturer in Political Philosophy at University of Essex
---- theconversation.com)
PAKISTAN:
Convicted: Death penalty awarded to constable's killer
An anti-terrorism court on Friday sentenced a man convicted of killing a
constable to death on 2 counts.
Prosecution said Javaid Iqbal and his accomplices Shahid, Umar Hayat and Zafar
Iqbal had shot dead a police constable, Muneer Ahmad, during a robbery on
September 9, 2013. They said the constable had tried to stop them from robbing
a house.
After examining the evidence and hearing witnesses, the judge sentenced Iqbal
to death under Sections 302-B of Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) and Section 7 of the
Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA).
He was ordered to pay Rs500,000 compensation to the heirs the deceased and
fined Rs500,000.
His accomplices were acquitted due to lack of substantial evidence.
(source: The Express Tribune)
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