Sept. 27
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES:
Death penalty sought as UK journalist denies murdering his wife in
Dubai----British journalist Francis Matthew appeared in court in Dubai
Prosecutors in Dubai are seeking the death penalty for a British journalist
accused of murdering his wife.
Francis Matthew, the editor-at-large of a prominent English-language newspaper,
pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to a premeditated murder charge.
Police allege Matthew, who worked for Gulf News, beat his 62-year-old wife Jane
to death with a hammer, leaving her body in a pool of blood in their bed before
telling detectives that robbers killed her.
The killing has shocked the United Arab Emirates' large British expatriate
population.
The 61-year-old Matthew wore white prison-style clothes to a brief hearing in a
Dubai courtroom on Wednesday.
He looked thin and sombre while entering his plea, saying: "Not guilty."
After the hearing, Matthew's lawyer Ali al-Shamsi said they are looking to get
a minimum sentence for his client.
"There is a mistake in the autopsy report," Mr al-Shamsi said, without
elaborating.
On July 4, Dubai police said they were called to Matthew's 3-bedroom villa in
Dubai's Jumeirah neighborhood.
There, they say they found his wife of over 30 years dead and the editor told
them robbers broke into the home and killed her.
During a later interrogation, however, police say Matthew told them his wife
had grown angry with him because they were in debt and needed to move.
Matthew said he got angry when his wife called him "a loser" and told him "you
should provide financially", according to police.
Matthew told police his wife pushed him during the argument.
He then got a hammer, followed her into the bedroom and struck her twice in the
head, killing her, according to a police report.
The next morning, Matthew tried to make it look like the house had been robbed
and later went to work like nothing had happened, throwing the hammer in a
nearby tip, police said.
Gulf News previously has said Matthew served as its editor from 1995-2005 and
then became an editor-at-large at the newspaper.
He was still with the newspaper at the time of the killing, though a Gulf News
article on the court appearance on Wednesday referred to him as a former
employee.
(source: Belfast Telegraph)
ISRAEL:
Liberman's party revives death penalty for terrorists bill after Har Adar
attack----MK Robert Ilatov says legislation needed to send a 'clear and
unequivocal' message on punishment for terrorism
Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman's Yisrael Beytenu party said Tuesday it will
revive legislation applying the death penalty to convicted terrorists after a
deadly terror attack in the settlement of Har Adar earlier in the day.
MK Robert Ilatov, who will submit the bill, said the legislation is necessary
to deter future terrorists from carrying out attacks.
"The legislation needs to be clear and unequivocal. A terrorist who comes with
the goal of murdering innocent citizens - his sentence is death," said Ilatov
in a statement Tuesday.
Liberman and his Yisrael Beytenu party have long advocated introducing the
death penalty for terrorists and the issue was one of the party's key campaign
promises in the 2015 elections.
While the proposed legislation has previously failed to garner sufficient
support, Liberman expects Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to support the
bill, Channel 2 reported Tuesday.
Following a terror attack in July in the West Bank settlement of Halamish, in
which a Palestinian stabbed to death 3 family members of the Salomon family as
they celebrated the birth of a grandson in their home, Netanyahu said he
supported the death penalty for the terrorist, saying it was a fitting
punishment for a "base murderer."
Despite the comment by Netanyahu and a number of other top right-wing political
figures at the time, an IDF prosecutor said the punishment is not Israeli
policy, despite it being permissible under law.
In Israel, the death penalty is applicable only in limited circumstances, and
has only been carried out once in a civilian court, against Nazi war criminal
Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Final Solution, in 1962.
According to a poll in August, over 70 % of Jewish Israelis said they support
the death penalty for terrorists.
The Knesset has several times rejected legislation that would apply the death
penalty to Palestinian terrorists, including in Netanyahu governments.
Yisrael Beytenu's latest call for legislation mandating the death penalty for
convicted terrorists came after Tuesday's terror attack in Har Adar, in which a
Border Police officer and 2 security guards were shot dead by a Palestinian
from a nearby village.
The terrorist, identified as Nimer Mahmoud Ahmad Jamal, a laborer from the
nearby Bayt Surik village, was shot and killed by security forces at the scene,
police said.
The victims - border policeman Solomon Gavriyah, 20, and civilian security
guards Youssef Ottman, 25, from Abu Ghosh and Or Arish, 25, a resident of Har
Adar - were all buried later Tuesday.
(source: The Times of Israel)
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