May 9
CHINA:
Chinese court holds off ruling on Canadian's death penalty appeal
A Chinese court adjourned a hearing on a Canadian man's appeal against his
death sentence for drug smuggling without a decision Thursday in a case that
has deepened a diplomatic spat between Beijing and Ottawa.
Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, 36, was sentenced to death in January after a court
deemed his previous 15-year prison sentence too lenient.
His appeal hearing came a day after a top executive of Chinese telecom giant
Huawei, Meng Wanzhou, appeared in court in Canada to fight a US extradition bid
that triggered the diplomatic storm.
The Liaoning High People's Court in northeast China said in a statement that
"all procedural rights of appellant Schellenberg were guaranteed in accordance
with the law".
The trial has adjourned and the court will "select a day or time to pronounce
the sentence," it said without specifying.
His lawyer, Zhang Dongshuo, said it was "normal" for a sentence to be announced
at a different date or time.
Schellenberg's case is seen as potential leverage for Meng, who was arrested on
a US extradition request related to Iran sanctions violations -- a link that
Beijing has repeatedly denied.
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.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said that China had "chosen to
arbitrarily" sentence Schellenberg to death. His government has pleaded for
clemency.
Ottawa said Wednesday it was "extremely concerned that China has chosen to
apply the death penalty, a cruel and inhumane punishment".
Canadian officials planned to attend Thursday's hearing. The Canadian embassy
did not reply to a request for comment.
Schellenberg was originally sentenced to 15 years in prison and a 150,000 yuan
($22,000) forfeiture in November.
But following an appeal, the high court in Liaoning ruled in December that the
sentence was too lenient given the severity of his crimes.
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 national 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.
Kovrig and Spavor, meanwhile, have been denied access to lawyers and are
allowed only monthly consular visits.
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.
Meanwhile, Huawei's Meng was back in court in Vancouver on Wednesday, with her
lawyers arguing that the US case was politically motivated.
Her firm says she is innocent.
Huawei is also in the US crosshairs as Washington seeks to convince Western
nations to shun the telecom firm over security concerns.
The diplomatic row appears to have has spilled over into the economic arena:
China has banned Canadian canola and pork shipments worth billions of dollars.
Ottawa has pressed Washington -- which is locked in a trade dispute with China
-- to step up its pressure on behalf of the detained Canadians.
(source: dailymail.co.uk)
TAIWAN:
Taiwan passes laws to make Chinese spying punishable by death
Chinese spies will be subject to Taiwan's newly amended law under which they
could face the death penalty, local media reported on Wednesday. The
legislature passed revisions to the penal code on Tuesday to stipulate that
spies from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao committing acts of espionage
could be punished by life imprisonment or even death.
Until now, Chinese spies have only been given light sentences.
Those include Zhen Xiaojiang, a retired People's Liberation Army captain who
was found guilty in September 2015 of setting up a spy ring in Taiwan, but
received only a four-year prison sentence for violating the National Security
Act.
The legislature also approved amendments to the Classified National Security
Information Protection Act on Tuesday to increase the penalty of Taiwanese
citizens leaking or handing classified national security information to people
from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao.
China and Taiwan have been governed separately since Nationalist forces led by
Chiang Kai-shek lost a civil war on the mainland to Communist forces under Mao
Zedong in 1949. Beijing considers Taiwan as a renegade province awaiting
reunification, by force if necessary.
(source: mainichi.jp)
MAURITANIA:
Mauritanian blogger escaped the death penalty, but remains behind
bars----Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mkhaitir was convicted of apostasy in 2014.
Ould Mkhaitir was sentenced to death in 2014 over an opinion piece published
online.
Despite having his death sentence commuted more than a year ago, Mauritanian
blogger Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mkhaitir is still in prison.
Ould Mkhaitir was sentenced to death in 2014 over an opinion article published
on the website of the newspaper Aqlame. In the article, entitled “Religion,
Religiosity and Craftsmen”, Ould Mkhaitir criticised the role of religion in
Mauritania’s caste system, using stories from the lifetime of prophet Muhammad
to support his argument. The original article has since been taken down by
Aqlame, but is still available online.
A court convicted him of “apostasy” and sentenced him to death under Article
306 of the Mauritanian Penal Code.
In April 2016, a court of appeal upheld his sentence and referred his case to
the Supreme Court, which then returned it to the appeal court for ”procedural
irregularities”. In November 2017 his death sentence was commuted and reduced
to two years in jail and a fine by the court of appeal. However, despite having
already served more than 2 years in prison, the authorities did not release
Ould Mkhaitir. Almost 18 months after the appeal court's decision to release
him, he remains behind bars.
On April 24, 2019 Mauritania's justice minister said that Mkhaitir was in
“temporary detention” and that “only the Supreme Court can rule on his fate.”
Article 306 of the Penal Code previously provided that if the convicted person
“repents” before his or her execution, the Mauritanian Supreme Court could
commute the death sentence to a jail sentence of between 3 months and 2 years,
and a fine.
But in April 2018, the Mauritanian National Assembly passed a law making the
death penalty mandatory for anyone convicted of “blasphemous speech” and acts
deemed “sacrilegious.”
“The timing of the enactment of the law just a few months after the court of
appeal ordered Mkhaïtir’s release appears to be related to his case,” Human
Rights Watch said in November 2018.
Critiques of racism and the caste system are taboo in Mauritania, and have
spurred many political and legal threats against journalists and activists in
recent years. In 1981, Mauritania became the last country on earth to
officially abolish slavery, and only criminalized the practice in 2007. But
since that time, UN officials and human rights workers have documented evidence
that thousands of people, many of them ethnic Haratines of black African
origin, are still enslaved, living in situations of forced labour, or otherwise
facing caste-based discrimination.
The Mauritanian government denies that slavery still exists in the country, and
many people like Ould Mkhaitir, who speak out against the practice and
discrimination against Haratines, have been jailed and prosecuted. Last
September, authorities jailed and charged activist Abdallahi Salem Ould Yali
with incitement to violence and racial hatred for posting messages in WhatsApp
group denouncing the plight and the marginalisation of his community.
(source: globalvoices.org)
IRELAND:
On this day: Easter Rising hero Con Colbert executed
May 8, 1916, marks the day 1916 Easter Rising hero Con Colbert was executed.
Dermot McEvoy looks back at his life story.
Cornelius (Con) Colbert was born in County Limerick in 1888 and educated at the
Christian Brothers’ School in North Richmond Street, Dublin, the same school
that produced Seán Heuston and Éamonn Ceannt. Although short in stature, he
made a big impression as he rose through the ranks, from the Fianna scouts to
Captain of F Company, Fourth Battalion, Inchicore. His personal life was
dominated by his Catholicism, his love of the Irish language, and his
abstinence from alcohol. (When asked why Irish rebellions always failed,
Colbert would reply: “Drink and want of discipline and loose talk.”)
Working in collaboration with Commandant Ceannt at the South Dublin Union,
Colbert’s objective on Easter Monday was to take Watkin’s Brewery in Ardee
Street, in the Cork Street area. His job was to cover Ceannt’s flank. Colbert
easily took the brewery but discovered that it held no real strategic
importance. Of this, he informed James Connolly and Connolly directed Colbert
to take his small unit of fewer than 20 men and join up with Captain Séamus
Murphy at the William Jameson—not to be confused with John Jameson—Distillery
on Marrowbone Lane, not far from the Guinness Brewery. There was intense
fighting with the British with Murphy and Colbert’s men inflicting casualties
without suffering any themselves. Suddenly on Saturday morning, the British
withdrew.
The spirits of the Volunteers were high as they believed that the Rising was
going in their favor. They were shocked when Thomas MacDonagh showed up on
Sunday to tell them of the surrender. Colbert was heartbroken and broke out in
tears. Colbert was taken so aback that he declared: “I do not know what to say
or think, but if what I think comes true, our cause is postponed to a future
generation…we must have been let down very badly as we have not had the support
of our people that we had expected.”
Colbert and Murphy were soon joined by Ceannt and the men from the South Dublin
Union and together they marched to St. Patrick’s Park to surrender. At Richmond
Barracks he was sorted by the G-men of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. At a
trial almost completely absent of evidence, Colbert was found guilty and
sentenced to death. His death penalty is one of the oddest because he had
fought a clean fight at Marrowbone Lane and, technically, was not even in
charge of the siege—Captain Murphy was.
How Colbert got sentenced to death seems just to be an unlucky twist of fate.
The story is best related by Christopher Byrne, a 2nd Lieutenant under Colbert.
Byrne in his 1948 Witness Statement said that “Con Colbert and I were intimate
friends.” He goes on to state that: “I wish to record that Séamus Murphy was in
charge in Marrowbone Lane and Con was 2nd in command. The commands remained so
until the surrender.”
Here’s what Byrne had to say about the DMP sorting in Richmond Barracks:
“Séamus Murphy was in our batch and in full uniform, but he was not picked out.
The question of Colbert taking Murphy’s place does not arise at all, it was
just that good luck favored Murphy and he was deported with us to Knutsford.
Colbert and Murphy did not, and could not, exchange uniforms, as Colbert was a
very small sized man and Murphy was very tall and well-built. Murphy was a very
manly fellow and certainly would not shirk facing a court-martial and its
sentence had he been picked out for it. In my opinion, what saved Murphy’s life
was the fact that he was not very prominent before the Rising and was not, as
far as I know, known to the police. Against this, Colbert made himself very
prominent during the anti-recruiting campaign for the British Army that was
then in full swing before the Rising. He wore kilts and frequently pulled down
Union Jacks and recruiting posters and helped to break up meetings. He also
drilled the Fianna in the open.”
Colbert was more upset about the defeat—and the way the local Dubliners had
turned against the rebels—than he was about his death sentence. “We are all
ready to meet our God,” he said. “Now that we are defeated, outside the barrack
wall, the people whom we have tried to emancipate have demonstrated nothing but
hatred and contempt for us. We would be better off dead as life would be a
torture. We thank the mother of God for her kindness in her intercession for us
that we have had the time to prepare ourselves to meet our Redeemer.”
Unlike some of the other rebels, he did not want to meet with his relatives. He
wrote his sister Lila that: “I did not call you to this jail…I felt it would
grieve us both too much.”
He did meet up with Mrs. Séamus Murphy, wife of the man in charge of Marrowbone
Lane, who was also being detained at Kilmainham. He told her: “I am one of the
lucky ones…I am proud to die for such a cause. I will be passing away at the
dawning of the day.” When Mrs. Murphy asked of the fate of Éamonn Ceannt,
Colbert replied: “He has drawn the lucky lot as well.”
According to Christopher Byrne: “He cut all the buttons off his tunic and gave
them to Mrs. Murphy, and gave her his watch for me. Father Morrissey was with
him up to the time he died. Con got a pin from the priest and scratched
something in Irish on the watch and put the date on it.”
Father Augustine tells a touching story of how Colbert told the soldier
preparing him for execution that he should pin the white square higher to cover
his heart, making it easier for the firing squad. The soldier was so moved he
asked to shake Colbert’s hand, then gently tied his hands behind his back and
blindfolded him.
Father Augustine said that Colbert’s “lips were moving in prayer” as he marched
to the Breaker’s Yard. He was executed between 3:45 and 4:05 a.m. on May 8th.
Con Colbert’s biggest crime seems to be that he loved Ireland and was known to
the G-men of the DMP. It was a fate that would result in his very unlucky
death.
(source: Dermot McEvoy is the author of the "The 13th Apostle: A Novel of a
Dublin Family", "Michael Collins, and the Irish Uprising" and "Irish
Miscellany" (Skyhorse Publishing)----irishcentral.com)
IRAQ:
Iraq to hang ISIS member who raped Ezidi woman, killed Iraqi soldiers
A local Iraqi court on Thursday sentenced a convicted Islamic State member to
death for killing multiple Iraqi soldiers and for the rape of a Yezidi (Ezidi)
girl in Nineveh.
The Iraqi Higher Judicial Council in a statement said that the Nineveh Criminal
Court issued a “death sentence on a man convicted of belonging to the Da’esh
[ISIS] terrorist gang, terrorist involvement in the murder of men, and abuses…”
The statement did not specify the identity of the defendant nor the date of his
arrest.
“The terrorist was wearing an Afghan uniform…and worked as an intelligence
element within the terrorist organization to inform on citizens,” the statement
added.
The Iraqi judiciary claimed that the sentenced man “took part in the battles in
Zummar district [in Nineveh], killed five members of the security forces, and
raped a woman from the Ezidi sect.”
The judicial authorities said the sentence was handed down to the man “based on
his clear and frank confession before the court and the statements of
witnesses” and in accordance with Iraq’s anti-terrorism law.
Since declaring military victory over the Islamic State in late 2017 following
a devastating three-year war, Iraq has accelerated the pace of prosecutions
against suspected members of the militant group.
Authorities have yet to disclose the number of terrorism suspects in Iraqi
prisons and the number of people facing execution or life imprisonment related
to terrorism charges.
International humanitarian and human rights organizations, including the United
Nations and Human Rights Watch (HRW), say efforts by Iraqi authorities to speed
up the implementation of death sentences could lead to the execution of
innocent people, especially with the nation’s poor standards of criminal
justice.
The emergence of the Islamic State and its violent assault on Sinjar (Shingal)
in 2014 led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of members of the
Ezidi religious minority, whom the extremist group considered heretics. Most of
them fled to the Kurdistan Region, while others resettled in neighboring
countries in the region or Western states.
Others were not as lucky and remained stranded in the war zone, where they
experienced atrocities and mass executions at the hands of the Islamic State
for years. Militants subjected women and girls to sexual slavery, kidnapped
children, forced religious conversions, executed scores of men, and abused,
sold, and trafficked women across areas they controlled in Iraq and Syria.
Before the 2014 attack, there were roughly 550,000 Ezidis in the Kurdistan
Region and Iraq. As the terrorist group took over large swaths of territory in
Nineveh, 360,000 Ezidis escaped and found refuge elsewhere, according to the
Kurdistan Region’s Ezidi Rescue Office.
(source: kurdistan24.net)
IRAN:
Iran Regime Hangs Drug Users, While IRGC Are Drug Pushers
The Iranian Regime secretly hanged 4 prisoners on drug-related charges in the
Central Prison of Arak late last month.
The four prisoners executed on April 29 were Seyed Hamidreza Hosseinkhani, 37,
Majid Kazemi, 42, Mohammad Hemmati, 26, and Mohammad Davoudabadi, 26.
This was just 1 day after university student Mohammad Bameri, 24, was executed
for drug smuggling in the Central Prison of Kerman in order to earn a living.
On April 27, Kamal Shahbakhsh was hanged in the same prison on drug-related
charges, while 2 Baluch prisoners - Dorhan Heydari and Mirhan Shah Ghasemi –
were executed in Evin prison on murder and drug-related charges.
Now, while sentencing people to death for non-violent crimes is a violation of
international law, it is even more disturbing when you realise who is
responsible for distributing these drugs in Iran.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) is responsible for the
trafficking of drugs inside and outside of Iran, with the dual purpose of
raising money for their malign activities and increasing the repressive
atmosphere inside of the country.
International sources report that the IRGC has made millions of dollars from
the drug trade alone. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports that
roughly 40% of the drugs that pass through the IRGC remain in Iran, while the
remaining 60% is sent abroad to the Middle East and Europe.
In fact, twice in late March, Iranian boats were caught smuggling heroin. On
March 20, the Indian Coast Guard arrested nine IRGC crewmembers and seized
about 100 kilograms of heroin, while on March 24 the Sri Lanka Coast Guards
seized heroin worth “more than 1 billion rupees”.
The IRGC needs this drug trade, especially in the wake of US sanctions, in
order to gather the money to fund terrorist groups across the Middle East,
continue its ballistic missile program, and increasing repression of the
Iranian people.
In light of this, it seems at best hypocritical that the Iranian Regime will
put people to death on drug charges whilst being the biggest drug pushers in
the country, while at worst it is a genocide of those most likely to overthrow
the Regime (i.e. the poor, the young, the repressed).
Of course, the Iranian Regime will never change its ways. It’s the largest
executioner per capita in the world, with at least 253 people executed in 2018
and at least 3,500 since 2013, when supposed the moderate Hassan Rouhani became
President.
Also on April 29, 2 17-year-old boys were executed for rape and robbery after a
trial that appears to have breached fundamental due process guarantees, while
another man convicted of murder, Mohammad Irani, was while on hunger strike to
protest his conviction.
On April 27, 4 prisoners were executed in the Central prison of Shiraz and 2
men were executed in Evin prison.
(source: ncr-iran.org)
*********************
Iran Both Denies and Defends Juvenile Executions as Hardline Practices Grow
Iran’s judiciary responded on Tuesday to the widespread outcry regarding the
latest incidence of the Islamic Republic violating international law with the
execution of persons who were under the age of 18 at the time of their alleged
crimes. This practice is conclusively banned by the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, both
of which Iran has signed. Yet the Islamic Republic remains one of the only
countries in the world to still carry regularly with such executions.
The latest victims of that practice have been identified as Mehdi Sohrabifar
and Amin Sedaghat. Both were hanged on April 25, a day after being transferred
to a new prison without explanation. It appears that neither of the boys was
informed of his death sentence ahead of time, and both were flogged before
being sent to the gallows. The pending execution was also reportedly kept
secret from their families, who were given an opportunity to visit the
prisoners after the transfer but were still not informed of the death sentence
until after it had been carried out.
This somewhat unusual level of secrecy may have been intended to compensate for
the judiciary declining to adhere to its usual practice of deflecting some
domestic and international backlash by keeping juvenile death row inmates in
detention until they have surpassed the age of 18. In the case of Sohrabifar
and Sedaghat, both boys were still 17 when they were executed for crimes they
are alleged to have committed when only 15. However, the judiciary initially
sought to conceal this fact by keeping the death sentences secret, and then
later by simply denying multiple reports regarding the boys’ ages.
According to Iran Human Rights, judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmeili even
went beyond denying the specific details of this case, in an apparent effort to
cast doubt upon all reports of Iran’s juvenile executions. “Juveniles cannot
commit these kinds of crimes,” he declared in a press conference. Accordingly,
Esmeili also insisted that Sohrabifar and Sedaghat were above the
internationally recognized age of majority not only when they were hanged last
month but also when they supposedly committed rape and robbery 2 years earlier.
The judiciary’s claims spurred predictable rebuttals, including those which
cited the 2 youths’ legal documents in order to demonstrate that they were
indeed young teenagers at the time of both their arrest and their execution.
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of Iran Human Rights, also challenged the
Iranian regime to explain why it refuses to make the practice of juvenile
execution illegal, “if people below the age of 17 or 18, as Mr Esmeili says,
cannot commit serious violent crimes.”
Previously, Tehran has acknowledged the juvenile status of persons who were
condemned to death, but has insisted that they were sufficiently “mature” at
the time of the crimes to justify capital punishment. Iranian law allows for
children to be held legally responsible at as young as 13 if they are boys, and
as young as nine if they are girls.
At various times over the past several years, the implementation of juvenile
death sentences has been delayed and the cases reviewed, apparently in response
to pressure from international human rights groups and foreign governments. But
in almost every case, the sentence has been upheld and ultimately carried out.
The latest estimates indicate that 100 juvenile offenders have been put to
death in Iran since 1990, but the aforementioned practices of secrecy and
denial suggest that the actual number could be significantly higher.
At the same time, the judiciary’s newest talking points insisting upon the
impossibility of violent crimes among youthful offenders, it seems as if the
regime may now be committed to the claim that the number is effectively zero.
But assuming that the judiciary cannot conceal the evidence of such executions
being carried out, Esmeili’s talking point threatens to lend credence to claims
about the potential innocence of some of the young defendants.
Those claims have certainly been made in the case of Sohrabifar and Sedaghat,
on account of their having been beaten in custody and systematically denied due
process. In condemning the executions last Friday, United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet stated that they were
“particularly outrageous because both boys were reportedly subjected to
ill-treatment and a flawed legal process.” The boys initially denied all
charges, but were detained for two months during which confessions may have
been extracted using torture.
In any event, the worldwide illegality of juvenile executions is clear
regardless of the nature or the veracity of the charges against them. Yet Iran
shows no sign of compromising on this issue, and may in fact be ramping up the
practice. Iran Human Rights Monitor notes that there have been unconfirmed
reports of a third such execution having already taken place this year. By
comparison, only three juvenile offenders are known to have been executed in
the entirety of 2018, and all of them had been held in prison until an age of
majority.
Iran’s reputation for juvenile executions is an outgrowth of its approach to
the death penalty in general. Only China puts more criminals to death, and when
researchers control for population Iran consistently secures the title of the
country with the world’s highest rate of executions. This was true last year
even though the Iranian judiciary achieved a significant reduction by vacating
the death penalty for many non-violent drug offenders. But the regime’s
commitment to this legal reform is coming into doubt at the same time that its
commitment to juvenile executions seems firm.
IHRM reported on Tuesday that four alleged drug criminals had been executed in
Arak Central Prison on a single day. If these killings mark the resumption of
ultra-hardline drug policies, it would not come as a surprise to many people
who are familiar with the Iranian judiciary. In March, that body came under the
control of Ebrahim Raisi, a conservative cleric with a long history of human
rights abuses, including a leading role in the execution of approximately
30,000 political prisoners in 1988. His appointment by Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei was widely condemned, as well as being viewed as a likely precursor to
even worse crackdowns and abuses across the Islamic Republic.
At the end of April, Raisi in turn appointed Ali Alghasi-Mehr as the general
prosecutor for Tehran. As the Center for Human Rights in Iran explained on
Tuesday, “Alghasi-Mehr has taken an extremely hardline approach to criminal
justice” throughout his career, “including by advocating public executions and
amputations as a means of punishment.” What’s more, the new general prosecutor
has defended ignoring not only international human rights documents but also
Iran’s own established legal practices for the sake of prioritizing executions.
The rate of executions in the Islamic Republic would no doubt be even higher
th.an it is if not for the Islamic practice of qisas, which allows victims’
families to forgive a condemned criminal and vacate his or her death sentence
in exchange for “blood money.” But last August, Alghasi-Mehr specifically
called for the death penalty to be carried out on nine men “even though they
have been pardoned by the victims’ family.”
In June 2015, Alghasi-Mehr also claimed that there is public support for public
execution, another practice that Iran insists on continuing despite
condemnation from human rights groups both at home and abroad. Critics of
public hangings tend to describe them as having intimidation as their primary
role. And the escalating practice of such intimidation would be in line with
what is generally expected on the basis of ongoing trends and the recent
changes in leadership of the Iranian judiciary.
(source: irannewsupdate.com)
**************************
Quash Death Sentences of Ahwazi Arab Men (Iran: UA 61.19)
Abdullah Karmollah Chab and Ghassem Abdullah, from Iran’s Ahwazi Arab minority,
are facing the death penalty following a grossly unfair trial. “Confessions”
they have said were obtained under torture and other ill-treatment, including
electric shocks and mock executions, were used to convict them. Their cases are
before the Supreme Court.
Write a letter in your own words or using the sample below as a guide to one or
both government officials listed. You can also email, fax, call or Tweet them.
Head of the Judiciary Ebrahim Raisi
C/o Permanent Mission of Iran to the UN
Chemin du Petit-Saconnex 28
1209 Geneva, Switzerland
H.E. Gholamali Khoshroo
Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran
622 Third Avenue, 34th Floor
New York, NY 10017
Phone: 212 687-2020 I Fax: 212 867 7086
Email: i...@un.int
Twitter: @Iran_UN
Salutation: Dear Ambassador
Dear Mr Raisi,
Abdullah Karmollah Chab and Ghassem Abdullah, Sunni Muslims from Iran’s Ahwazi
Arab minority, are on death row following a grossly unfair trial which relied
on “confessions” they say were obtained under torture and other ill-treatment.
They have been convicted of “enmity against God” (moharebeh) in connection with
an armed attack on a Shi’a religious ceremony in Safiabad, Khuzestan province,
on 16 October 2015, which left two people dead. They have denied any
involvement in the attack. Their lawyers have said there is no evidence linking
them to the attack and have identified inconsistencies between the
“confessions” that led to their convictions and the accounts of eyewitnesses
present at the scene of the crime. They have been given extremely limited
access to their families through irregular telephone calls and only one visit.
On 9 April 2019, they were transferred to a ministry of intelligence detention
center in Hamedan, Hamedan province, where they have been denied access to
their families.
Both men have said they were subjected to months of torture in detention
including by being beaten and given electric shocks. Abdullah Karmollah Chab
has said his interrogators hung him upside down for 11 days and subjected him
to mock executions, saying they would execute and bury him in an unmarked
grave. For 3 mornings in a row, according to him, they woke him, put a sack
over his head and a noose around his neck, and told him that if he “confessed”
he would not be executed. He refused, saying he was innocent. On the third day,
he said he heard one of the interrogators say: “Just let him go. If he had
anything to confess he would have done so by now.” Iran’s Supreme Court later
quashed the conviction and sentence due to lack of evidence and flawed
investigations and ordered a retrial. On 6 July 2017, they were sentenced to
death again. The case is now again before the Supreme Court for appeal.
I urge you to quash Abdullah Karmollah Chab and Ghassem Abdullah’s convictions
and death sentences; and release them unless there is sufficient evidence, not
obtained through torture or other ill-treatment, to charge them with a
recognizable criminal offense. In addition, I urge you to grant them a fair
trial, without recourse to the death penalty. I urge you to provide them with
ongoing access to their families and lawyers. I also urge you to ensure that
they are protected from torture and other ill-treatment, and to order an
independent and impartial investigation into their torture allegations,
bringing to justice anyone responsible.
Yours sincerely,
(source: Amnesty International)
PAKISTAN:
Government of Pakistan must repeal its blasphemy laws
Responding to the reports that Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman freed
from death row in 2018, has left Pakistan and arrived in Canada, Amnesty
International’s Deputy South Asia Director Omar Waraich said:
“If the news is true, it’s a great relief that Asia Bibi and her family are
safe. She should never have been imprisoned in the first place, let alone faced
the death penalty. That she then had to endure the repeated threats to her
life, even after being acquitted, only compounds the injustice. This case
illustrates the dangers of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws and the urgent need to
repeal them.”
Background
Asia Bibi is a Christian farm worker, who was sentenced to death for blasphemy
in 2010. After an eight year ordeal, Pakistan’s Supreme Court acquitted her of
all charges and released her in October 2018. Following which Pakistan’s
government insisted the Supreme Court to hear a “review petition” in her case.
On 29 January 2019, the Supreme Court dismissed the review petition and upheld
its acquittal. Asia Bibi received repeated death threats from religious
extremists in Pakistan, following the Supreme Courts orders.
Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are broad, vague and coercive. They have
disproportionately targeted religious minorities, including in false cases
brought forward to pursue personal vendettas.
(source: Amnesty International)
INDIA:
Patna: 20-year-old to hang for minor's rape, murder
A special Pocso court in Siwan on Wednesday sentenced to death a 20-year-old
Mohammad Ziauddin alias Dhannu, for raping and murdering a four-year-old girl
in 2018.
The girl's partially burned body was found buried in a maize field with her
underwear stuffed in her mouth. The crime took place at Idmali village under
Barhariya police station in Siwan district.
Special public prosecutor Naresh Kumar Singh said capital punishment was
pronounced by ADJ-I Vinod Kumar Shukla, after a speedy trial in the case under
Section 376AB of IPC under which there is provision for death penalty for
raping a girl under 12 years of age.
Siwan SP Naveen Chandra Jha said the convict had strangulated her after raping
her on night of August 25, 2018. He said the girl had gone to attend a marriage
next to her home.
"One of her eyes was also gouged out by the convict while committing the crime.
Ziauddin was a daily wager who was working to erect a tent for the marriage. He
had carried the girl to a secluded place and raped her taking advantage of the
dark," Jha said. "Chargesheet was filed in the case by police on September 30
and trial begun in the 1st week of November," he added.
Jha said forensic evidence played key role in the conviction. "Blood stains on
Ziauddin's trousers matched with the girl while semen samples collected from
her clothes also matched with his. Two of his fellow workers stood strongly by
their statement about spotting the girl with Ziauddin before her
disappearance," he said.
Ziauddin was arrested within hours of the crime.
(source: The Times of India)
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