Sept. 1
IRAN----executions
Man Charged With Rape Hanged in Rajai Shahr Prison----Prison authorities in
Rajai Shahr break routine and execute a prisoner on a Monday rather than the
usual Wednesday.
A 29-year-old man who was sentenced to death for the charge of rape was
reportedly hanged at Karaj's Rajai Shahr Prison. According to a report by the
state-run news outlet, Iran, the execution of the man, who was only identified
as "Morad", was carried out on the morning of Monday August 28. The report says
"Morad" burglarized the house of a 62-year-old woman whom he raped.
In addition to the death sentence, the prisoner was also issued a 10-year
prison term and 74 lashes for the charge of theft, and a 1-year prison term for
the charge of beating up a police officer.
Executions in Rajai Shahr Prison are typically carried out on Wednesdays, but
"Morad" was hanged on a Monday.
*********************
Unidentified Prisoner Hanged in Public
An unidentified prisoner who was sentenced to death on the charge of "raping a
married woman" was hanged in public in Bandar Abbas while a crowd of people
watched.
According to a report by the state-run news agency, Mehr, the public hanging
sentence of the man was carried out on the morning of Thursday August 31. The
report says the prisoner was also charged with kidnapping and armed robbery and
was issued prison and lashing sentences for those charges.
The research of Iran Human Rights shows 34 people were hanged in public in Iran
in 2016; and an audience of hundreds of people, including children, were
present for most of these hangings. Human rights activists and informed membes
of civil society have always severely criticized this issue.
(source for both: Iran Human Rights)
*************************
Urgent Action
PRISONER OF CONSCIENCE SENTENCED TO DEATH
On 27 August a Revolutionary Court in Tehran sentenced spiritual
teacher???Mohammad Ali Taheri???to death for "spreading corruption on earth"
for establishing the spiritual group Erfan-e Halgheh. He has been held in
solitary confinement for over 6 years.
Write a letter, send an email, call, fax or tweet:
* Urging the Iranian authorities to quash Mohammad Ali Taheri's conviction and
death sentence and release him immediately and unconditionally, as he is a
prisoner of conscience targeted solely for the peaceful exercise of his rights
to freedoms of belief, expression and association;
* Reminding them that, under international human rights law, the death penalty
may only be used for "the most serious crimes", which international bodies have
interpreted as being limited to crimes involving intentional killings, and that
the charges brought against him do not meet this threshold;
* Calling on them to order an independent and impartial investigation into his
prolonged solitary confinement, which violates the absolute prohibition of
torture and other ill-treatment, and bring those responsible to justice;
* Expressing concern that, in violation of the legal prohibition of double
jeopardy, he was tried three times in relation to the same peaceful activities
Friendly reminder: If you send an email, please create your own instead of
forwarding this one!
Contact these 2 officials by 12 October, 2017:
Head of the Judiciary
Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani
c/o Public Relations Office Number 4
2 Azizi Street intersection
Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
Salutation: Your Excellency
H.E. Gholamali Khoshroo
Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations
622 Third Avenue, 34th Floor
New York, NY 10017
Phone: (212) 687-2020 I Fax: (212) 867-7086
Email: i...@un.int
Salutation: Your Excellency
(source: Amnesty International)
MALAYSIA:
Malaysian death judge who sentenced Kiwi to hang said he was reluctant servant
30 years ago today Kiwi Lorraine Cohen became the first white woman to be
sentenced to hang in Malaysia. Today we look at what was described as a
"sensational" sentencing after she was caught trying to smuggle heroin out of
the country.
When Lorraine Cohen was sentenced to die, the Malaysian hanging judge said he
was a "reluctant but obedient" servant of the country's lawmakers.
On hearing that she faced the gallows, Cohen reportedly remained standing in
the High Court dock, staring blankly at the judge for several seconds, before
an official told her to sit.
"By the time sentence was passed on [her son] Aaron 15 minutes later, Lorraine
was in tears. Mother and son clasped each other's hands tightly," the New
Straits Times wrote of the hearing, which was held on September 1, 1987.
The Auckland mother and son had been caught at a Malaysian airport trying to
smuggle heroin out of the country in their underwear in 1985.
Lorraine - who died in 2014, aged in her early 70s - and her son were charged
with trafficking.
The trial judge accepted that Aaron, but not Lorraine, was an addict at the
time of their arrest. The charge against Aaron, who was found with a smaller
amount of heroin than his mother, was reduced to possession. He was sentenced
to a whipping and life imprisonment.
The mother's sentence was reduced, on appeal, to life imprisonment after a
judge accepted the 140g of heroin found on her was for her own use.
Both were pardoned - at the 3rd attempt - and released in 1996, after more than
11 years in prison.
At the sentencing, Justice Mohamed Dzaiddin Haji Abdullah told the court that
Malaysia's death sentence for heroin trafficking was well known, the New
Straits Times reported.
Lorraine, "being no stranger to Malaysia, cannot complain that she did not know
the law and the penalty for trafficking".
"Every visitor who comes to Malaysia must have read the warning boldly stated
on the embarkation cards and the billboards at all entry points. Therefore, to
say that the warning did not actually explain the meaning of trafficking is no
excuse."
"Mandatory sentence is one field of the criminal [law] where my function as a
judge can be described as 'mechanical' because we judges become the reluctant
but obedient servants of the lawmakers.
"Accordingly, I sentence [Lorraine] to death by hanging."
To Aaron, who had been found with 34.6g of heroin, the judge said: "You may
consider yourself very lucky to escape the gallows by the skin of your teeth,
so to speak. I hope you will learn a bitter lesson for the great risk you have
taken in this case."
Anyone found with 15g of more of heroin is considered a dealer under Malaysian
law.
While in prison, Lorraine was diagnosed with breast cancer and treated in
hospital. The disease returned years later, but in the months before her death,
she told the Herald on Sunday that she was free of cancer.
She was also free of drugs, but this remained a struggle.
"It's very hard. It's always in your head. You can clean your body up but
getting it out of your brain - you're always looking for that first time again,
which never happens."
Aucklander Charles Chan, who in 1987 was associate editor of Malaysian
newspaper the Star, recalls that, by the country's standards, the case was not
controversial.
"It was sensational; it was the 1st time a white woman was sentenced to
hanging.
"I think in general people accepted she was sentenced correctly because other
people were similarly sentenced to death. The death sentence was mandatory.
They would be upset if she was exempted while other people were given the death
sentence."
Australians Brian Chambers and Kevin Barlow were hanged in Malaysia in 1986
after being convicted of heroin trafficking.
(source: New Zealand Herald)
SCOTLAND:
Barlinnie: The men who were hanged and their crimes: Carntyne cop killer John
Caldwell
CARNTYNE cop-killer John Caldwell features in the latest of our special crime
series.
Evening Times crime reporter Stacey Mullen has researched the stories of 10
judicial executions in Glasgow between 1946 and 1960... the men who were hanged
at Barlinnie
IT was the 'desperate and callous' murder which shocked the city - a retired
detective sergeant gunned down outside his neighbour's home in Carntyne.
James Straiton, 61, left his Edinburgh Road home and ran to the aid of his
neighbour who was being burgled by the gunmen.
They turned on him after he asked them to give themselves up and he was
brutally gunned down so they could make their escape.
In a story covering the murder in 1946, we reported: "He died from a bullet
wound within a few minutes, while his assailants, firing wildly in a headlong
flight, vanished into the darkness, despite a valiant effort by the driver and
conductor of a passing bus to intercept them."
Evening Times:
With gunmen on the loose in the city of Glasgow, this murder on March 26, was
at the forefront of the top detectives of that day's mind - and a major manhunt
was launched.
That probe started with a key piece of evidence one of the bandits had left
behind - their shoes. They were found in the garden by police and a description
of the footwear was issued in a bid to catch those responsible for the murder.
Cops also started their investigation with the theory that one or both of the
gunmen had made their escape by getting on a tramcar in the Duke Street or
South Carntyne areas.
But aside from finding those responsible, police officers had to say goodbye to
one of their own.
Evening Times:
The funeral of Straiton, who had work for the Eastern Division of Glasgow
Police, brought the East End of the city to a standstill.
"Bagpipes and crepe-covered drums of Glasgow Police Pipe Band played a lament,"
as the funeral cortege headed out of Edinburgh Road.
We also reported: "Hundreds of neighbours stood respectfully by the roadside,
men doffing hats and caps, and the women bowing their heads.
"The dead man's widow, leaning heavily on the arm of a daughter, came to the
door of her trim little villa to catch a last glimpse of the flower-covered
coffin as it was placed in the hearse."
While respects were made to Straiton, officers continued their manhunt and
issued an appeal for items which were missing from the house where the murder
took place.
Investigators then got the break they needed and on April 1, 1946 we reported
of John Caldwell's 1st court appearance - with a 15-year-old boy attending the
city's juvenile court.
Caldwell, 20, had served in the army and was arrested by top detectives at a
house in Bridgeton's Fielden Street when he was in bed. Cops arrived at
property in the early hours of the morning having cracked the case.
Lord Stevenson passed the death sentence on Caldwell with his hanging at
Barlinnie announced to take place.
He was found guilty by a jury on several charges after an absence of just 50
minutes. He did not show any emotion as he was taken below to the cells -
though his sister sobbed bitterly as the death sentence was read out. The jury
recommended that he should be shown mercy on account of his age.
On the day of Caldwell's death, the Evening Times revealed exclusively how
officers nabbed their man through, among several other things, a fragment of
thumb print on a glass he had left at the scene of another robbery.
Evening Times:
Only a few men were present outside Barlinnie prison when the notice was pinned
to its doors confirming that the execution of John Caldwell had been carried
out.
He had killed a man who had served the city as a police officer. But his victim
was honoured in the best way possible, by Glasgow cops nabbing their killer
through some good old detective work.
(source: Evening Times)
NORTH KOREA:
N. Korean court sentences S. Korean reporters, newspaper chairmen to death:
KCNA----Journalists reportedly committed "capital" crime by writing about
"North Korean Confidential" book
The DPRK Central Court has sentenced 2 reporters and the chairmen of 2 South
Korean newspapers to "capital punishment" for reporting on the release of a
newly translated book about North Korea, the state-run Korean Central News
Agency (KCNA) reported on Thursday.
A spokesperson for the Central Court of the DPRK condemned the Chosun Ilbo and
the Dong-A Ilbo for reporting on the book "North Korea Confidential: Private
Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors," a Korean
language version of which was published in mid-August.
"The puppet conservative newspapers 'Dong-A Ilbo' and 'Chosun Ilbo' recently
committed hideous crime of seriously insulting the dignity of the DPRK by using
dishonest contents carried by a propaganda book 'North Korea Confidential',"
the KCNA quoted the spokesperson as having said.
"The Central Court of the DPRK declares that the Dong-A Ilbo journalist Son Hyo
Rim and Director General Kim Jae Ho and Chosun Ilbo journalist Yang Ji Ho and
Director General Pang Sang Hun will be sentenced to capital punishment under
the DPRK Criminal Code," it added.
The court said it has "seriously warned" the outlets "will be made to pay a
high price" for the work.
"Now they have reached the state of slandering and insulting even the
inviolable name of our country and its national emblem."
The title of the Korean version of the book translates to "Capitalist Republic
of Korea" and a design on its cover replaces the red star in the DPRK national
emblem with a U.S. dollar mark.
"Article 60 of the DPRK Criminal Code stipulates that those who insulted the
dignity of the DPRK from the anti-state purpose shall be sentenced even to
maximum punishment including death, depending on the severity of the
perpetration," KCNA said in an English-language version of the article.
The North Korean outlet said authors James Pearson and Daniel Tudor had written
a "propaganda book" based on the "ludicrous statements of the riff-raffs
including rubbish defectors 2 years ago."
KCNA criticized the book for its "sophistries which slandered atrociously,
distorted and fabricated the DPRK reality saying 'the lives of the North
Koreans are 100% capitalist'."
The book was released in English in 2015 by Tuttle, a Vermont, U.S.-based
publisher which specializes in works on Asia.
Other, more left-leaning South Korean outlets, including the Hankyoreh, the
Hankook Ilbo, and the Kyunghyang Shinmun also covered the book's release, but
are not mentioned in the North Korean statement.
The North said the Chosun Ilbo and the Dong-A Ilbo made "all kinds of abusive
languages blindly" in reporting on the book.
The DPRK court appears to have taken issue with several quotes from the book
cited by the Dong-A Ilbo, including: "North Korea is a country where the power
of money is stronger than the capitalist country", "young people without mobile
phone are treated as 'loser' in Pyongyang," and "a person with a lot of money
can marry a person of high status at any time."
The North said the "criminals... hold no right to appeal," saying that
punishment "will be carried out any moment and at any place without going
through any additional procedures."
"We will track down to the end those who masterminded and manipulated hideous
provocations of slandering and insulting the dignity of the DPRK and mete out
death to them."
South Korea's Ministry of Unification (MOU) on Thursday said that Seoul
"strongly condemned" the North's "preposterous threats."
"The menace to normal reporting activities of journalists is a serious threat
to freedom of the press and an act of intervening in domestic affairs," the MOU
said in a spokesperson's statement. "...it does not help in developing the
inter-Korean relations that should be based on respect for the other side."
"[We] gravely warn North Korea to immediately stop the threats to our people."
Thursday's statement is not the 1st time in recent months that a North Korean
judicial body has sentenced a South Korean citizen to death in absentia.
In June, the Ministry of People's Security and the Central Public Prosecutors
Office announced it would "impose [the] death penalty" on former President Park
Geun-hye and former director of the National Intelligence Service (NIS) Lee
Byung-ho.
In a statement carried by KCNA, the 2 institutions called on the government of
South Korea to hand over the 2 former officials so their sentence may be
carried out.
The ruling was a response to what North Korea claimed was a failed U.S.-ROK
assassination plot against current leader Kim Jong Un in April, which it
alleged was planned by Park and Lee.
(source: nknews.org)
INDIA:
Mumbai: TADA court convicts Abu Salem aide of Pradeep Jain murder
More than 20 years after the sensational murder of builder Pradeep Jain, the
Special Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Prevention Act (TADA) court
convicted gangster Riyaz Ahmad Iqbal Ahmad Siddiqui of the crime. The same
court had in 2015 sentenced underworld don Abu Salem and his driver to life
imprisonment for the murder.
Brother recalls
Pradeep was murdered in March 1995 to teach a lesson to his family, after they
refused to vacate a property in Kol Dongri that Salem's gang had its eye on.
Pradeep's brother, Sunil, told mid-day, "Riyaz was the first to approach us for
the property. He called and said that Salem would kill our whole family if we
didn't do as they wanted. Riyaz also came to our office and asked us to hand
over the property to Salem quietly."
Also read: Gangster Abu Salem moves SC against conviction in Jain murder case
"Riyaz should be imprisoned for a long time. People like Salem and Riyaz, who
take the lives of others, should not be spared. I am happy with our judiciary;
it took time, but I got justice," he added.
In his testimony to the court, Sunil had said that he too had sustained a
bullet wound during the attack on his brother on March 7, 1995.
The charges
The special court, presided over by G A Sanap, convicted Siddiqui under the
same charges as Salem and Hassan, which are sections 120B (criminal
conspiracy), 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder), 193 (false evidence), 386
(extortion), 449, 450 and 452 (house-trespass) of the Indian Penal Code, along
with various sections under the TADA that attract the death penalty.
Siddiqui had initially turned approver for the prosecution, giving detailed
information about the crime. However, he was declared a hostile witness after
he denied his and Salem's roles in the killing. The court will hear arguments
on the point of sentencing on September 8.
(source: mid-day.com)
MALDIVES:
Urgent Action
MALDIVES TO RESUME EXECUTIONS BY SEPTEMBER
According to statements by the Maldives President, the death penalty would be
implemented 'by the end of September'. If carried out, these would be the first
executions in the country in over 60 years. The Maldives Supreme Court upheld
the convictions and death sentences of 3 men in mid-2016, who could be at
imminent risk of execution.
Write a letter, send an email, call, fax or tweet:
* Halt any plans to resume executions and establish an official moratorium on
all executions, with a view to abolishing the death penalty;
* Immediately commute the death sentence against all prisoners under sentence
of death, including those imposed for crimes committed when the prisoners were
below 18 years of age;
* Amend national legislation to remove provisions that are not in line with
international law and standards and abolish the death penalty for all crimes.
Friendly reminder: If you send an email, please create your own instead of
forwarding this one!
Contact these 2 officials by 11 October, 2017:
President of Maldives
Abdulla Yameen Gayoom
The President's Office
Boduthakurufaanu Magu, Male' 20113,
Republic of Maldives
Fax: (960) 332 5500
Twitter: @presidency
Salutation: His Excellency
H.E. Ambassador Ahmed Sareer
Permanent Mission of the Republic of Maldives to the United Nations
800 Second Avenue, Suite 400E
New York, NY 10017
Fax: 1 212 661 6405
Phone: 1 212 599 6194
Email: i...@maldivesmission.com
Salutation: Dear Ambassador
(source: Amnesty International)
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