May 8
PAKISTAN:
Aasia Bibi: Christian acquitted of blasphemy leaves Pakistan----Held in
protective custody since her acquittal after 8 years on death row, Bibi leaves
citing threats to her life.
Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman acquitted of blasphemy by Pakistan's Supreme
Court last year in a case that has become emblematic of fair trial concerns in
such cases, has been granted asylum in Canada, her lawyer says.
Bibi, 53, flew out of Pakistan after being held for months in protective
custody by Pakistani authorities following her acquittal, Saif-ul-Malook told
Al Jazeera by telephone on Wednesday.
She joins her husband and 2 daughters, Malook said. "She has gone to Canada,
she will live there now as she has been granted asylum by them," he said.
Canadian authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment on
the case.
Bibi spent 8 years on death row after her arrest in the central village of
Ithan Wali after an argument with 2 Muslim women who refused to drink water
from the same vessel as her, due to her religion.
The women and a local cleric accused Bibi of having insulted Islam's Prophet
Muhammad during the altercation, a charge that she has consistently denied.
Blasphemy is a sensitive subject in Pakistan, where the country's strict laws
prescribe a mandatory death penalty for some forms of the crime.
Increasingly, blasphemy allegations have led to murders and mob lynchings, with
at least 74 people killed in such violence since 1990, according to an Al
Jazeera tally.
Among those killed were Salman Taseer, then a provincial governor, and Shahbaz
Bhatti, then a federal minister, in 2010. Both officials had stood up for Bibi
when she was first accused of blasphemy.
Incendiary issue
In a landmark judgment acquitting Bibi, the Supreme Court noted in October that
there were "glaring and stark" contradictions in the prosecution’s case against
Bibi.
"[There is] the irresistible and unfortunate impression that all those
concerned in the case with providing evidence and conducting investigation had
taken upon themselves not to speak the truth of at least not to divulge the
whole truth," wrote Justice Asif Khosa, now Pakistan’s Supreme Court Chief
Justice, in the verdict.
Bibi had been convicted and sentenced to death by a trial court in November
2010, with the Lahore High Court upholding her conviction on appeal four years
later. Rights groups had long insisted there were numerous fair trial concerns
in her case, as well as in blasphemy prosecutions generally.
The Supreme Court verdict prompted days of violent protests by the far-right
Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), a hardline religious group with widespread
support that has long pushed for those accused of blasphemy to be executed or
murdered extrajudicially.
Led by firebrand cleric Khadim Hussain Rizvi, the TLP blocked roads and major
intersections across the country following Bibi's acquittal in October.
Rizvi was arrested in November and charged with treason for leading the
protests. Afzal Qadri, the cofounder of the TLP, released a statement last week
apologising for the protests and promising not to engage in further political
activity.
Rizvi, and scores of other TLP activists, remain in police custody, charged
with hate speech and inciting violence.
Days after the verdict was announced, Bibi's lawyer Malook sought refuge in the
Netherlands, citing threats to his life for having represented her.
In February, Bibi told the Associated Press news agency through an intermediary
that she was being held by Pakistani authorities in indefinite protective
custody and that they would not let her leave the country.
On Tuesday, "the long running issue" of her departure from the country was
resolved, her lawyer says, and Bibi is now safely in Canada and reunited with
her family.
(source: aljazeera.com)
CHINA:
Canadian drug smuggler Robert Lloyd Schellenberg to appeal death sentence in
China
A Canadian man handed the death penalty for drug smuggling in China will appeal
his sentence Thursday, in a case that has deepened the diplomatic rift between
Beijing and Canada.
The appeal comes against the backdrop of Beijing’s anger over the December
arrest of Meng Wanzhou, a senior executive at the Chinese tech giant Huawei,
who faced a U.S. extradition hearing in Canada on Wednesday.
Robert Lloyd Schellenberg was sentenced to death on charges of drug trafficking
in January.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau denounced the decision as “arbitrarily”
chosen.
Schellenberg’s appeal will take place Thursday morning at the Dalian
Intermediate People’s Court in northeastern Liaoning province, a source said.
The Dalian court declined to comment. The provincial level Liaoning High
People’s Court did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Canada remains extremely concerned that China has chosen to apply the death
penalty, a cruel and inhumane punishment,” Canadian foreign ministry
spokeswoman Brittany Fletcher said in an email. “Canada has requested, and will
continue to seek, clemency for Mr. Schellenberg.”
Canadian officials plan to attend Thursday’s hearing.
Schellenberg was originally sentenced to 15 years in prison and a forfeiture of
150,000 yuan ($22,000) in November.
But following an appeal, the high court in Liaoning ruled in December that the
sentence was too lenient. About a month later, his sentence was changed to
capital punishment.
China has executed foreigners for drug-related crimes in the past, including a
Japanese in 2014, a Filipina in 2013 and a Briton in 2009.
Last week, another Canadian, Fan Wei, was sentenced to death for drug
trafficking in a separate case in southern China.
Schellenberg’s case is seen as potential leverage for Meng, who was arrested on
a U.S. extradition request related to violations of sanctions on Iran. Beijing
has repeatedly denied a link between the cases.
Following the Huawei executive’s arrest in December, China detained former
Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor, in what
observers saw as retaliation.
Days after Canada launched the extradition process against Meng in March, China
announced it suspected Kovrig of spying and stealing state secrets. It alleged
fellow Canadian Spavor had provided him with intelligence.
Both men have been denied access to lawyers and are allowed only monthly
consular visits.
Meng is free on bail in Vancouver as the extradition process continues.
The diplomatic dispute appears to have has spilled over into the economic
arena: China has banned Canadian canola shipments worth billions of dollars.
Beijing has punished other countries with trade sanctions over diplomatic spats
in the past.
(source: Japan Times)
GAMBIA:
Gambia Commutes Death Sentence Of 22 Convicts
Gambia’s Attorney General and Justice Minister, Aboubacarr Tambadou, said
Tuesday that President Adama Barrow has commuted the death sentence of 22
inmates to life imprisonment after they were convicted of capital murder.
The move, he said, is in line with gov’t commitment to upholding the moratorium
declared by the Gambian leader on the implementation of death penalty.
Tambadou made the announcement during a news conference held at the Ministry of
Justice located along Marina Parade in Banjul.
Tiny Gambia made headlines in 2012 after former longtime ruler decided to
endorse the execution of 9 death row inmates, provoking waves of condemnations
across the globe. The new administration has vowed to right the wrongs of the
past in taking a stance against the implementation of capital punishment that
is highly welcomed by prominent human rights groups.
Weighing in on the 3 cases of death sentences echoed by Amnesty International,
Justice Minister Tambadou made it clear that Gambian courts will continue to
follow the law in delivering death sentence for convicted murderers.
“I am afraid that is still the law. The death penalty is constitutional
provision,” he added. ” We’ve seen how the death has divided public opinion in
the country.”
However, he was quick to add that gov’t has expressed its preference for total
abolition of death penalty.
“I can assure you that none will be executed,” he said with certitude.
While highlighting gov’t position on the issue of death penalty, Tambadou
pointed out that what will be in the Constitution will depend on Gambians.
The Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) is currently conducting massive
consultations on the country’s Fundamental Law.
“We will wait for the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) to conclude its
work and the gov’t will decide in the best interest of our country,” he
remarked.
(source: freedomnewspaper.com)
BANGLADESH:
Youth to walk gallows, 7 get life in prison for 2 murders in Kushtia
Separate courts in Kushtia on Tuesday sentenced a young man to death for
killing his wife in 2016 and 7 people to life imprisonment for murdering a
youth.
Judge Munshi Mohammad Mashiar Rahman of the Women and Children Repression
Prevention Tribunal awarded capital punishment to Azad Mondal alias Azad Saheb,
35, son of Sadeque Ali Mondal of Balia Shisha village in Mirpur upazila, for
killing his wife on May 19, 2016.
According to the prosecution, Azad used to torture his 16-year-old wife Tuli
for dowry.
In the early hours of May 19, 2016, he tortured his wife to death and hanged
the body from a tree with the help of other family members to make it appear
that she committed suicide.
Victim’s father Ali Hossain filed a murder case with Mirpur Police Station.
District and Sessions’ Judge Arup Kumar Goswami sentenced the 7 people to life
imprisonment for killing a young man in the same upazila.
The lifers are Jamal Pramanik, Atar Ali, Zaman Hossain, Asadul Mollah, Meher
Ali Malitha, Rubel Malitha alias Ribel and Aslam Malitha. They were also fined
Tk 20,000 each, in default, to serve 6 months more in jail.
The convicts hacked Dablu indiscriminately and later slaughtered him on June 7,
2010.
Victim’s elder brother Atar Ali filed a murder case with the same police
station in this regard.
***************
4 get death for raping teenage girl
A Shariatpur tribunal on Tuesday sentenced 4 people to death for raping a minor
girl at Ahmed Chowkidar Kandi village in Zanjira upazila in 2017, reports UNB.
The convicts are Nur Morol, 35, son of a certain Hamed Morol of Morolkandi
village, Chunnu Morol, 50, son of Siddique Morol, Swapna Begum, 45, wife of
Chunnu Morol, and Selim Chowkidar, 37, son of Jasim Chowkidar of Ahmed
Chowkidar Kandi village.
According to the prosecution, victim Rima Aktar, 13, daughter of Ilias
Chowkidar, went missing on 11 September 2017.
Her body was recovered from an abandoned place at the village with injury marks
to the neck and chest 2 days later.
The victim's father filed a case with Zanjira police station on 14 September.
The male convicts raped the girl while Swapna abetted the crime. Later, they
killed Rima, the prosecution added.
(source: prothomalo.com)
IRAQ:
More than 500 foreign IS members convicted in Iraq: court----Hundreds of people
have been convicted in Iraq of joining the Islamic State group
The Iraqi judiciary has tried and sentenced more than 500 foreigners since the
start of 2018 for joining the Islamic State group, the country's Supreme Court
announced on Wednesday.
It said "514 verdicts were issued, for both men and women, while another 202
accused are still being interrogated and 44 are still being tried."
Another 11 were acquitted and released, it said.
The statement referred to "different nationalities" but did not list any
specific countries.
It said interrogations were taking about six months for those simply accused of
IS membership, but anyone accused of actively taking part in the jihadist
group's operations could be questioned for up to a year.
Iraq declared victory over IS in late 2017 and began trying foreigners accused
of joining the jihadist faction the following year. It has condemned many to
life in prison, including 58-year-old Frenchman Lahcen Ammar Gueboudj and 2
other French nationals.
It has also issued death sentences for other foreign IS members, although they
have not yet been carried out.
Among those awaiting trial in Baghdad are 12 accused French IS members, who
were caught in Syria and transferred to Iraqi custody in February. Government
source have told AFP that Baghdad would be willing to try all foreigners
currently held in Kurdish detention in northeast Syria for a price. Around
1,000 suspected foreign IS fighters are in detention in northeast Syria, in
addition to around 9,000 foreign women and children in camps there.
Rights groups including Human Rights Watch have criticised the trials, which
they say often rely on circumstantial evidence or confessions obtained under
torture.
Wednesday's statement by the court "urged all trials of foreign terrorists to
be moved to Baghdad, as most of the embassies are in the capital and so embassy
representatives from the terrorists' countries can attend the sessions."
Iraq has also already tried thousands of its own nationals arrested on home
soil for joining IS, including women.
It has begun trial proceedings for nearly 900 Iraqis repatriated from Syria and
sentenced four to death last month under its counter-terrorism law. The country
remains in the top 5 "executioner" nations in the world, according to an
Amnesty International report released last month.
The number of death sentences issued by Iraqi courts more than quadrupled from
65 in 2017 to at least 271 last year.
But fewer were actually carried out, according to Amnesty, with 52 executions
in 2018 compared to 125 in 2017.
(source: al-monitor.com)
IRAN----executions
Iran secretly hangs 4 men on drug related charges in Arak Prison
Iran secretly hanged 4 prisoners on drug related charges in Central Prison of
Arak.
The 4 prisoners executed on April 29 are identified as Seyed Hamidreza
Hosseinkhani, 37, Majid Kazemi, 42, Mohammad Hemmati, 26, and Mohammad
Davoudabadi, 26.
On the same day, 2 17-year-old boys in Iran were also executed on charges of
rape and robbery, after a trial that appears to have seriously breached
fundamental due process guarantees.
This came just one day after the execution on drug charges of a university
student in Central Prison of Kerman.
According to Baluchi human rights activists, 24-year-old Mohammad Bameri was
from an empoverished family, who resorted to drug smuggling to earn a living
and pay for university expenses.
A prisoner identified as Kamal Shahbakhsh was hanged also on drug related
charges earlier in this facility.
On the same day, another prisoner was executed in Sanandaj, west of Iran,
despite his family and human rights activist’s attempts to have the execution
stopped.
The victim, Mohammad Irani who had been found guilty of murder, was hanged
while he was on hunger strike with his lips and eyelid sewn to protest against
the execution sentence.
In Iran a convicted murderer has no right to seek pardon or commutation from
the state, though this right is protected by Article 6(4) of the ICCPR. The
family of a murder victim has the right either to insist on execution or to
pardon the killer and receive financial compensation.
The Iranian authorities contend that qesas – the sentence for convicted
murderers – is not execution, despite the fact that people sentenced to qesas
are put to death by the state. This contention is not accepted in international
law. The vast majority of child offenders on death row in Iran have been
sentenced to qesas for murder.
In another development four prisoners were executed on April 27 in Central
prison of Shiraz.
The state-run ROKNA news agency reported the execution of 2 men, identified
only as Kaveh and Habib on charges of rape and robbery. The state-run media did
not mentioned where the executions conducted but speculation is rife that he
has been taken to Evin prison.
Reports obtained from inside Iran indicate that two Baluch prisoners were also
executed that day in the same prison. The victims, Dorhan Heydari and Mirhan
Shah Ghasemi had been sentenced to death on murder and drug related charges.
The Iranian regime has one of the worst human rights records in the world. Year
after year, it holds the record of the number of executions per capita.
According to Amnesty International, at least 253 people were executed in 2018
in Iran, while the number is over 3,500 since 2013, when supposed moderate
Hassan Rouhani took power.
*********************
Man Hanged at Maragheh Prison
A man was executed at Maragheh Prison for murder charges last Saturday.
According to a report of Kurdistan Center for Democracy and Human Rights,
confirmed by IHR, a prisoner was hanged at Iranian northwestern city of
Maragheh’s prison. The prisoner has been identified as Shahin Samadi, 34, from
the city of Naghadeh.
Shahin “had been held in prison for 4 years. He could not win the consent of
the plaintiffs and thus, his execution verdict was carried out,” a
well-informed source said.
According to the Iranian Islamic Penal Code (IPC) murder is punishable by qisas
which means “retribution in kind” or retaliation. In this way, the State
effectively puts the responsibility of the death sentence for murder on the
shoulders of the victim’s family. In qisas cases, the plaintiff has the
possibility to forgive or demand diya (blood money).
Of note, Shahin emphasises in the court that he only pushed the victim and had
no intention to kill him. There is a lack of a classification of murder by
degree in Iran which results in issuing a death sentence for any kind of murder
regardless of intensity and intent.
According to the Iran Human Rights statistic department, at least 273 people
were executed in Iran in 2018. At least 188 of them executed for murder
charges.
**********************
IHR Responds to Iranian Judiciary’s Denial of Juvenile Executions
Spokesperson for Iranian Judiciary, Gholamhossein Esmaeili, said earlier today
that the 2 juveniles who were executed on April 25, 2019, were not under 17 at
the time of committing the crime. “Juveniles cannot commit these kinds of
crimes,” he said in a press conference with the presence of Iranian media
representatives.
In response to his claim, IHR published documents proving both juveniles were
under 17 at the time of the alleged offense.
IHR’s director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, said: “If people below the age of 17 or
18, as Mr Esmeili says, cannot commit serious violent crimes, then why the
Islamic Republic does not abolish the death penalty for people under 18? Around
40 juvenile offenders have been executed during the last 5 years in Iran. Most
of them were between 15 to 18 at the time of the alleged crime.” He added:
“Iran is the biggest juvenile executioner in the world. Iranian judiciary is
nontransparent and does not announce more than 70 % of the executions in the
country. They are not accountable and don’t respond to the reports of the human
rights violations in Iran.”
On the morning of Thursday, April 25 2019, 2 juvenile offenders were executed
at Shiraz Central Prison, also known as Adel-Abad Prison. IHR could identify
them as Mehdi Sohrabi and Amin Sedaghat. Amnesty International had first
reported about the aforementioned juvenile executions. IHR could confirm the
fact, adding that one of the juveniles was in addition suffering from a mental
disability.
However, according to the reports published by the Iranian media, Gholamhossein
Esmaeili denied the fact that Mehdi and Amin were under 17 at the time of the
crime. He told the human rights organizations’ reports are lies.
On the contrary to his claim and to prove who lies about the facts, IHR
publishes documents proving both juveniles were under 17 at the time of the
crime. Mehdi Sohrabifar was born on October 29, 2001, and Amin Sedaghat was
born on September 28, 2001. The 2 cousins were arrested in the spring of 2017
for an alleged rape and robbery case.
(source for all: Iran Human Rights)
PHILIPPINES:
Duterte Youth wants death penalty for heinous crimes----Duterte Youth, one of
the party-list groups in the 2019 polls, claims the death penalty would deter
crime, though there is no strong evidence to back this
Party-list group Duterte Youth would push for the revival of the death penalty
for heinous crimes if it wins a seat in the House of Representatives in the
2019 midterm elections.
Duterte Youth president Billy Villareal said on Tuesday, May 7, that the group
is "determined" to sponsor a bill in the House seeking to revive the death
penalty, a punishment backed by President Rodrigo Duterte.
"We will sponsor the bill for the return of the death penalty in our country,
specifically for rapists, heinous crimes, and terrorists. These crimes are not
accidents, these are crimes that directly and intentionally assault our women,
our people, and our country," Villareal said.
He cited the gruesome murder of Cebu teen Christine Silawan last March as an
example.
Villareal also claimed that there are "so many" criminals committing heinous
acts because the Philippines does not have the death penalty.
Various studies and the experiences of other countries have repeatedly shown,
however, that there is no strong evidence that the death penalty deters crime.
In addition, data from the Philippines showed that the death penalty was
error-prone and largely anti-poor.
'Questionable' advocacies
Election watchdog Kontra Daya earlier questioned the advocacies of Duterte
Youth, saying the group does not seem to truly represent the concerns of young
Filipinos. (READ: Poll watchdog asks Comelec to look into Duterte Youth's party
list campaign)
The group's chair, National Youth Commission Chairman Ronald Cardema, earlier
found himself in hot water after he proposed that "all rebellious
anti-government scholars" should have their government scholarships removed.
Cardema also asked Sangguniang Kabataan officials nationwide to "fight" leftist
youth groups.
Duterte Youth issued its statement on Tuesday as it said a Pulse Asia survey in
April indicated it would get a House seat. The survey showed the group
garnering 1% of voters' preference, which would give it 1 seat in the 2nd round
of seat allocation.
(source: Rappler.com)
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