May 30
KENYA:
FORGET HUMAN RIGHTS----Execute culprits to win graft war, politician urges
Uhuru; Says Big Four agenda will never be realised given the level of
corruption in Kenya
A former MP aspirant in Embu yesterday urged President Uhuru Kenyatta to
disregard human rights provisions and let the military execute corruption
culprits.
John Mukunji, who contested for Manyatta MP in the last general election, said
perpetrators of corruption exploit the Constitution's provisions to escape
punishment and that is why there are unending scandals involving billions of
shillings.
He said the only way to end corruption is "to have one or two killed by firing
squad".
Mukunji said culprits use the money they steal to fight for freedom.
"We can never expect corruption to end unless the culprits are given capital
punishment, he said.
Mukunji asked the President to do away with his Big Four agenda of ensuring
food security, affordable housing, universal health and manufacturing and focus
on corruption.
Considering the manner in which corruption is deep-rooted in Kenya, Uhuru will
not get the funds to carry out his agenda, the politician said.
He said the proposed 1.5 % tax for affordable housing will go a country that
has been unable to fight corruption.
“My advice to the President is, ignore the issue of human rights for these
corrupt guys. Let’s not let someone who has stolen a billion be fined Sh500,000
or get anticipatory bail of Sh500,000 when the money is gone already".
Mukunji said chicken thieves are dealt very harshly in the country but those
who steal billions of money go scot free.
“We cannot win the fight against corruption at the courts of law in Kenya
unless the President handles it himself with the military and gets rid of
corrupt individuals."
(source: the-star.co.ke)
THAILAND:
Death penalty is no answer
Amendments to the criminal law to make severe sex crimes punishable by death
may cause some people to rejoice. Yet, it would be wrong to think that capital
punishment is a panacea for the long-standing problem.
In general, some rights activists recognise improvements in the amended law,
saying that the changes will facilitate the work of the police. The amendments
were published in the Royal Gazette on Monday.
The amended version introduced new elements including clear-cut definitions
between rape and a sexual offence known in Thai as anajan.
But Thai society should should be aware that it cannot pin its hopes on capital
punishment. Upgrading the penalty from imprisonment to death will not provide a
guarantee that incidents of rape or murder will decrease. On the contrary,
there are wide concerns that the threat of the death penalty could lead to
rapists killing their victims in order to silence them.
There is also a major flaw in the justice system as some suspects may end up as
scapegoats for others' crimes. Some may be forced to confess through torture
and the real culprits may be able to get away scot-free.
In fact, punishing rapists with death is a contentious issue that divides
society.
Over the past 2 years, some people have stepped up calls for the death sentence
for rapists following the rape-murder of young victims, including that of a
railway worker who killed a young passenger on a night train in 2014 in a case
that shocked the nation.
The appalling case prompted many people to sign up for a campaign that called
for "eye-for-an-eye" measures.
But, for one thing, such a tougher penalty, while not solving the problem, will
only further batter the country's already stained human rights record.
Thailand is among 58 countries that still has the death penalty. More than 140
countries have already abandoned capital punishment. Resorting to the death
sentence in rape-murder cases will mean the nation cannot honour the promise it
has made to the international community that it will scrap capital punishment.
Proponents of the punishment of death for convicted rapists really need to look
thoroughly into the real causes of the problem. Rape is a form of social
malady, so killing rapists will not end up preventing such crimes as long as
the root causes remain unsolved.
On the other hand, they should look into why several countries that have
decided to revoke the death penalty have done so without fearing that relaxing
the punishments will encourage rape.
In fact, society needs to look at preventiveness that may work better in
deterring rape. This means everyone in society must do their best to intensify
social and ethical measures, instill family values, and strengthen families.
Communities must work hard to get rid of the rape culture through education,
provide efficient surveillance systems and do away with the conditions that
make it easy for would-be rapists to commit these heinous crimes.
(source: Editorial, Bangkok Post)
PHILIPPINES:
Eleazar favors death penalty
Metro Manila police director Guillermo Eleazar on Wednesday said he was in
favor of death as the capital punishment for individuals engaged in drug
dealing.
“It will be a big deterrent for those who are involved in transacting big
volume of drugs,” said Eleazar.
But he said the death penalty was good but it must be in a holistic approach.
“There must be some interventions, other interventions as well as safeguards in
order for it not to be abused and used against innocent people. In the case of
illegal drugs, it must be the big time members of the syndicates who are
actually distributing large amount of illegal drugs. They should be the one
covered the penalty,” added Eleazar.
Eleazar made the statement following the arrest of 65-year old suspected member
of drug syndicate caught with P10.2 million worth of shabu in Pateros late
Tuesday afternoon.
The National Capital Region Police Office arrested Angelo Reyes, alias “Litong
Pangit”, during police anti-drug operation along Alley 22 in Barangay Sta. Ana
around 5:30 pm.
Police recovered 1,500 grams of shabu, 10 bundles of P1,000 boodle money
equivalent to P1 million, a weighing scale, and a Toyoya Altis car used by the
suspect to deliver the illegal substance during the operation.
Prior to the police operation, the authorities placed the suspect under a
week-long surveillance following information about his illegal activity.
Eleazar said the suspect is connected to a group of Chinese nationals engaged
in the illegal drug trade operating in the southern part of Metro Manila and in
the province of Laguna.
“We will be conducting follow-up operations in order to find the other
suppliers of illegal drugs. We have some information and we will identify the
clients and the suppliers of the suspect,” he said.
The government under the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte is pushing
a measure bringing back the death penalty against criminal elements, especially
those engaged in drug trafficking.
Drug dealing and its use remain the serious concern of the government.
Late last week, government agents seized 146 kilos of shabu found at the
warehouse of Goldwin Commercial in Malabon City.
The contraband was part of a three 20-foot container van shipment of 51,000
kilos of tapioca starch from Cambodia exported by HKSTC Trading Co. Ltd.
abandoned at the Manila International Container Port in North Harbor last
March.
(source: manilastandard.net)
EGYPT:
The hangman of the Middle East: US-backed regime in Egypt hands down nearly
2,500 death sentences
Egypt’s US-backed dictatorship of Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has sentenced 2,443
people to death since coming to power in a bloody coup in 2013, according to a
report issued this week by the UK-based human rights group Reprieve.
Of those sentenced to die by hanging, 2,008, or 82 % of the total, were
convicted of political offenses.
A death penalty index tracking the use of the death penalty in Egypt and
identifying those faced with execution recorded cases up until September 23,
2018, when 77 of those on the country’s teeming death row faced imminent
execution as a result of convictions in criminal trials. Since then, at least
six of them have been put to death.
In total, 144 people have been executed by the Egyptian regime over the past
five years. This compares to a single execution carried out between the 2011
revolution that overthrew the 30-year-long US-backed dictatorship of Hosni
Mubarak and the July 3, 2013, coup led by General Sisi against the elected
government of President Mohammed Morsi. During this same interval, a total of
152 death sentences were recommended by the Egyptian courts, compared to the
nearly 2,500 issued since.
The death sentences have, in many cases, been handed down in mass trials in
which defendants are brought before drumhead military tribunals in which they
are denied all of the elementary rights to a fair trial including the right to
present an individual defense, representation by legal counsel and the ability
to call or examine witnesses.
The assembly line of state murder in Egypt begins with arbitrary arrest
followed by a period of “enforced disappearance” in which prisoners are held
incommunicado without charges and subjected to hideous torture until submitting
to signing a confession. They are then brought into cages in military courts
alongside dozens if not hundreds of others.
Under the regime’s “Assembly Law,” unlimited numbers of defendants can be tried
together on the theory that they were involved in a “joint enterprise” in the
alleged commission of a crime by a single individual. This has allowed the
handing down of the death penalty for thousands of people whose sole crime has
been to participate in peaceful protests against the regime.
Children have been subjected to this same treatment, tried for their lives
alongside adults. The Reprieve report found that at least 12 of those condemned
to hang were children at the time of their arrests, rounded up, tried and
sentenced in flagrant violation of international law. Thousands of such
children have been unlawfully arrested since the 2013 coup.
Among them is Ahmed Saddouma, who was dragged from his bed and taken from his
family’s home on the outskirts of Cairo by Egyptian police in March 2015. He
was held incommunicado for 80 days as his parents desperately searched for him.
During that time, he was subjected to continuous torture, savagely beaten with
metal bars and electrocuted all over his body until he signed a false
confession.
“It is a political trial based on trumped-up charges,” the boy’s father, Khaled
Mostafa Saddouma, told Middle East Eye. “I saw marks of torture on his body,
which he said happened during interrogations.”
Even though the crime to which he confessed, the attempted assassination of a
judge, took place three weeks after he had been seized by the police, he was
convicted and sentenced to death in a mass trial of 30 people. It appears that
his only real “crime” was participating in a protest together with fellow
members of a group of football fans known as the Ultras.
Also sentenced to die for a crime he was alleged to have committed at the age
of 17 and while a high school student is Karim Hemeida Youssef, whose June 22
sentencing was not included in the data compiled by Reprieve.
Arrested in January 2016, he also was subjected to “enforced disappearance” for
42 days during which he was tortured into confessing to taking part in an
attack on a Cairo hotel.
“When he denied the charges, a security officer electrocuted him repeatedly all
over his body until he was forced to confess,” his father told Middle East Eye
.
At least 32 women have also been condemned to death under Sisi’s reign,
according to Reprieve.
The abysmal conditions in Egypt’s prisons are claiming more victims than the
hangman’s noose. Since the coming to power of Sisi, at least 60,000 people have
been imprisoned on political charges, jailed under hellish conditions of severe
overcrowding, lack of sanitation and denial of medical care.
Defendants in mass trial
According to the London-based Arab Organization for Human Rights, nearly 800
detainees have died in Egyptian jails since the 2013 coup, most as the result
of medical negligence.
“Egyptian prisons have turned into execution compounds taking the lives of
their detainees by denying them the right to the medical care they need and
providing a fertile environment for diseases and epidemics to spread inside the
detention centers due to the lack of hygiene, pollution and overcrowding,” the
group said.
It said that there had been 20 such deaths so far in 2019, including 15
detainees charged based on their political opposition to the regime.
Egyptian security forces, meanwhile, are carrying out violent repression
against the civilian population in the northern Sinai Peninsula that amounts to
war crimes, according to a report issued on Tuesday by Human Rights Watch
(HRW).
The 134-page report documents arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances,
torture, extra-judicial killings, and mass evictions, as well as air and ground
assaults against civilian populations.
The report states that children as young as 12 have been rounded up in mass
sweeps of the region and held in secret prisons.
The area is subject to a demilitarization treaty between Egypt and Israel, but
the Israeli government has not only allowed a massive Egyptian military
deployment, ostensibly in a campaign to eradicate the Islamic State of Iraq and
Syria (ISIS), but has itself participated in airstrikes in the region.
The HRW report called upon the US government to “halt all military and security
assistance to Egypt,” while indicating that Washington’s support for the regime
implicated it in war crimes.
Washington is the foremost backer of the blood-stained dictatorship in Cairo,
with the US Congress approving the Trump administration’s request for $3
billion in aid to the Sisi regime, with another $1.4 billion in the pipeline
for 2020.
This aid has gone to the purchase of F-16 fighter jets, M1A1 Abrams battle
tanks, Apache attack helicopters and Humvees, all of which have been unleashed
upon the population of the Sinai Peninsula. Also included in this package are
cluster bomb munitions, banned by most countries because of their lethal
effects on civilian populations and, in particular, children.
The US Central Command has also resumed “Operation Bright Star,” a major
military exercise begun under the Mubarak dictatorship, which focuses on
training Egyptian forces for “irregular warfare.”
The US State Department dismissed the HRW report, insisting that US military
aid had “long played a central role in Egypt’s economic and military
development, and in furthering regional stability.” It added that the
assistance was aimed at “countering the Iranian regime’s dangerous activities”
in the region.
The US military’s aid to Egypt’s armed forces have implicated it in war crimes
Similarly, a Pentagon spokesman insisted that “The US strategic
military-to-military relationship with Egypt remains unchanged.”
US President Donald Trump, who praised General Sisi during his visit last month
to the White House for doing “a fantastic job in a very difficult situation,”
has since announced that he will formally brand the Muslim Brotherhood, which
backed the overthrown Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, as a “terrorist
organization.”
This classification of an organization that Washington utilized over a long
period in the Middle East to counter the influence of socialist and
left-nationalist political forces has the sole purpose of legitimizing the mass
murder being carried out by the Egyptian regime.
Washington backs Sisi precisely because of his role in ruthlessly suppressing
the revolutionary movement of workers and young people that toppled Mubarak in
2011 and threatened to spread throughout the region, undermining the strategic
interests of US imperialism.
The police state repression undertaken by the Cairo regime with Washington’s
backing is only postponing a revolutionary reckoning with the Egyptian working
class. Under conditions in which 40 % of the population subsists on less than
$2 a day, while inflation and the elimination of subsidies to meet the demands
of the IMF are slashing the living standards of masses of workers, a new
eruption of class battles is inevitable.
Workers who rose up in the textile mill towns of the Nile Delta, the Egyptian
ports and in Cairo itself to overthrow Mubarak, will be impelled once again
onto the road of struggle. The lessons of the betrayal of the Egyptian
revolution of 2011 must be assimilated and a new revolutionary leadership built
in the working class as a section of the International Committee of the Fourth
International.
(source: World Socialist Web Site)
JORDAN:
Death penalty to Egyptian expatriate for killing Jordanian citizen in Madaba in
June 2016
The Grand Criminal Court has sentenced on Wednesday, May 29, 2019, an Egyptian
expatriate to death for killing a Jordanian citizen in Madaba in June 2016
after agreeing with the victim's wife, who had an illegitimate relationship
with the killer.
The Court had also sentenced the wife to hard labor after being accused of
complicity in the murder.
Prior to the date of the murder, the Syrian wife, who planned with the killer
to carry out the crime, had given him JD 300 to buy a pistol in order to kill
the victim.
The criminal had indeed bought the pistol and since he already knows the
victim, he asked him to get into his car and go on a ride with him.
The killer then shot the victim in the head, where he died immediately for a
skull fracture and brain damage.
The criminal was convicted of premeditated murder by Judge Ibrahim Abu Shamma,
in the presence of the 2 civilian Judges Anwar Abu Eid, Tariq Al-Rasheed and
the Court's Prosecutor Afif Khawaldeh.
(source: royanews.tv)
IRAQ:
France Hands ISIS Suspects to Iraq, Which Sentences Them to Hang
The 7 French citizens, wearing sandals and yellow jumpsuits, were brought
before an Iraqi judge in a Baghdad courtroom this week to answer for their
offense: joining the Islamic State.
Each admitted to having thrown in his lot with the militants, working as tax
collector, Arabic teacher, military trainer, chicken seller, medical aide or
fighter.
If there was evidence that any had committed a violent crime, it was never
presented. Most had not even seen a lawyer until moments before being escorted
into the courtroom.
And yet after 7 trials over 4 days, Judge Ahmed Mohamed Ali delivered 7
identical sentences: death by hanging.
The Frenchmen were among the roughly 4,000 foreigners captured in Syria and
Iraq after the rout of ISIS, and they pose an international dilemma: Most of
their home countries don’t want them back.
The trials have drawn world attention as a test of whether Iraqi courts can
meet international standards for a fair trial, and provide a just solution to
one of the most vexing problems left in the aftermath of the battle against the
Islamic State: what to do with its legions of followers.
If the 1st week was any indication, the legal process in Iraq will be swift,
and unvarying.
“The penalty is the death sentence, whether they fought or not,” Judge Ali said
in a brief interview after court adjourned on Monday. He also sentenced an 8th
defendant, a Tunisian who is a resident of France, to death.
In the first batch of 12 cases that began on Sunday, France, a country that
prides itself as a champion of human rights and opponent of the death penalty,
essentially outsourced the judicial process to Iraq.
The French foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said Wednesday that there were
450 French citizens affiliated with the Islamic State being held in camps in
northeastern Syria. But with memories still fresh of the terrorist attacks in
Paris in 2015, in Nice in 2016 and Trèbes in 2018, polls show that a vast
majority of French people do not want these citizens returned, even if they
were to be detained and tried.
One problem, said Jean-Charles Brisard, the head of the Center for the Analysis
of Terrorism in Paris, is that sometimes “there’s not enough proof” to convict
them in French courts.
So France, which has sometimes refused to return foreigners to face justice in
countries that use torture and the death penalty, has turned its citizens over
to a legal system in which due process rights are significantly weaker and the
death penalty is common.
International legal experts say Iraq’s terrorism prosecutions are intrinsically
flawed: Confessions are sometimes obtained through torture or coercion, some
judges are biased, and defendants routinely lack adequate legal counsel.
“You can’t outsource a trial that suspends fundamental trial rights, if the
trial is unfair and the punishment is disproportionate,” said Andrew Clapham,
professor of international law at the Graduate Institute for International and
Development Studies in Geneva.
Government-appointed lawyers earn just $25 for taking a terrorism case from
trial to appeals. In the cases this week, one lawyer said she had not seen her
client’s file until the defendant entered the courtroom; others said they had
just five or 10 minutes to review the case and discuss it with their clients
beforehand.
Iraq’s antiterrorism law is a catchall that criminalizes membership in a
terrorist organization, so the ISIS cook may face the same penalty as the bomb
maker: life imprisonment or death. The law’s vagueness means that people are
not held accountable for their specific crimes, human rights experts say. So if
any of the defendants convicted this week committed murder, torture or rape,
the subjects never arose in the trials.
Iraq is keenly aware of the spotlight and outfitted a new courtroom for the
occasion. A panel of three judges, in black robes with white trim, sat on a
platform beneath a flat-screen TV, which featured slick videos of the
allegations against each suspect set to rousing music.
After Iraq’s 10-minute trials of Iraqi ISIS suspects last year, Judge Ali’s
two-hour trials seemed unrushed and deliberate by comparison. He allowed the
defendants and their lawyers ample time to present their cases. Sometimes he
even stopped the lawyers from asking questions that could harm their clients’
defense.
However, he had no compunction about invoking the death penalty. Iraq ranked in
the top five countries that most frequently carried out the death penalty in
2018, according to Amnesty International. Its liberal use of capital punishment
appears to violate international covenants, which Iraq has signed, that reserve
the death penalty for only the most serious crimes, like murder.
Some 514 foreign ISIS suspects were tried in Iraqi courts in 2018 and the first
4 months of 2019, according to the Supreme Judicial Council. A spokesman said
the council did not have records of how many had received the death penalty or
how many had been executed.
If any of the defendants convicted this week committed murder, torture or rape,
the subjects never arose in the trials.
Subscribe for original insights, commentary and discussions on the major news
stories of the week, from columnists Max Fisher and Amanda Taub.
Iraq has also been criticized by human rights advocates for sometimes allowing
confessions obtained under torture to be used as evidence.
One of the French defendants said he had been tortured into writing his
confession. During his trial on Monday, Fodhil Tahar Aouidate, a native of
Roubaix, France, lifted up his shirt and showed black marks on his stomach to
the judge and then turned and showed them to the courtroom.
Judge Ali adjourned Mr. Aouidate’s trial until his allegations could be
evaluated by a medical team. He is to return to court on Sunday. Another
defendant, Mohammed Hassan Mohammed Berriri, said Wednesday that he had seen
people tortured and beaten and to avoid that, “I will say anything.”
On Sunday, after death sentences were handed down in the first three cases, the
French Foreign Ministry said in a statement that “France respects the Iraqi
authorities’ sovereignty,” but added that “France is opposed, on principle, to
the death penalty, anytime and anywhere.”
Under Iraqi law, defendants have the right to appeal and the president must
sign off before an execution is carried out. On Tuesday, Mr. Le Drian, the
French foreign minister, said he had discussed the death-penalty issue with the
Iraqi president, Barham Salih.
Even if the French-Iraqi partnership is deemed a success, there are obstacles
to scaling it up for the remaining 3,000 foreign detainees in Syria from about
80 countries.
Several countries are in talks with the Iraqi government about transferring the
detainees in Syria to Iraq for trial. Iraq is willing to handle the remaining
cases but wants the suspects’ home countries to pay the costs of the court and
prisons. There have been reports that Iraq is asking more than $1 million per
detainee.
Several European countries are discussing the creation of an international
tribunal to try ISIS suspects, but experts consider such a body overly
expensive, of limited use and unrealistic.
The Kurdish authorities in northeastern Syria have suggested building a
courthouse there to try foreign Islamic State prisoners but the location is in
a war zone with no clear sovereignty.
Jeanine Hennis Plasschaert, the United Nations special representative for Iraq,
said that ultimately countries “bear primary responsibility for their own
nationals, including the treatment of their citizens in accordance with
international law.”
“One would expect and hope that individual states take back their nationals to
process, prosecute, and deradicalize them,” she said.
On Monday, when Judge Ali asked Mustapha Merzoughi, 37, to explain how and why
he had journeyed to Syria, the stocky Frenchman at first said nothing. Then he
almost spit out his words.
“I did stupid things, I regret it,” he said. “But I did not kill anyone. I did
not want to commit any crime. I know I made a big mistake by joining a
terrorist organization. I know you will give me the death penalty.”
When the hearing was over and he had sentenced Mr. Merzoughi to death, Judge
Ali was asked if the defendants’ repeated declarations of regret were taken
into account.
“Anyone who commits a crime will be feeling that kind of regret, but that’s not
enough to drop the charges,” he said. “There are the victims, thousands of
victims, Yazidis who were captured and sold at markets as slaves. Who would
agree to join an organization that committed these kinds of crimes?”
(source: New York Times)
*************************
Concern Mounts as Iraq Sentences More French IS Fighters to Death
Rights groups are raising concerns about the lack of due process for hundreds
of suspected IS fighters in Iraqi prisons as Baghdad this week condemned 6
French Islamic State members to death.
An Iraqi court on Tuesday issued capital punishment to 2 French nationals who
were found guilty of membership in the IS terror group. Another 4 French former
jihadists were sentenced to death earlier this week.
London-based human rights organization Amnesty International charged it was
"extremely concerned" the process could be used as retribution rather than
justice for about 20,000 Iraqis and foreign nationals held in Iraq and awaiting
trial on charges of committing crimes on behalf of IS and other jihadist
groups.
"We're very concerned about the sheer number of people that have been arrested
and detained by Iraqi authorities and certainly the rapid movement of the
judicial system in just trying them, and in many cases sentencing them,"
Philippe Nassif, the Middle East and North Africa advocacy director at Amnesty
International, told VOA in a telephone interview. "Several thousands of them
have been sentenced to death. That's a really big concern."
Nassif said the unwillingness of countries to take back their citizens who
joined IS and try them at home has added to the rapid executions. He added that
many who are detained by Iraq have potentially committed crimes against
civilians in Iraq and Syria, but many of the details remains unclear due to a
lack of transparency and accountability in the swift trial process.
"We don't know what exact crimes these individuals have committed because they
are tried within 10 minutes and they are sent to be executed, and we've never
had the opportunity to find out what it is that they did," he said, adding the
U.S. and European Union should step up efforts to help the Iraqi judicial body
in facing this "gigantic problem."
The six French men — identified as Kévin Gonot, Léonard Lopez, Salim Machou,
Mustapha Merzoughi, Karam el-Harchaoui and Brahim Nejara — have 30 days to
appeal their death sentences. They are among six other French citizens handed
over to Iraq by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces after their capture in
the operation against IS.
France's reaction
France on Monday said it has informed its embassy in Baghdad to take "the
necessary steps" to prevent Iraq from carrying out the sentences, reiterating
its opposition to capital punishment while at the same time asking for
accountability for IS crimes.
"France is opposed in principle to the death penalty at all times and in all
places," the country's foreign ministry said in a statement.
Iraq began trying suspected IS local and foreign members shortly after
declaring its final victory over IS in December 2017.
Earlier this month, the Iraqi judiciary said it had sentenced 514 suspected IS
foreign fighters and acquitted 11 others since the start of 2018.
Iraqi officials in the past have said they will continue to hold the individual
foreign fighters liable for damages in a fair process, rejecting accusations
against the Iraqi judiciary.
In March, the speaker of Iraq's Council of Representatives said his country
should be compensated monetarily as well.
"The Iraqi parliament will formally demand all countries whose citizens have
either committed crimes inside Iraq [or] brought damage and harm to the Iraqi
people ... bring those criminals to justice and compensate Iraq for the crimes
they did to Iraq and the Iraqi people," Mohammed al-Halbousi told reporters in
Washington.
Foreign fighters
Both the Iraqi government and U.S.-backed SDF have complained about the burden
of holding hundreds of foreign fighters and their families after IS lost its
self-proclaimed physical caliphate across Iraq and Syria.
Some experts say Iraqi courts could provide a window for Western countries as
they grapple with the issue of what to do with IS foreign fighters.
The United States' current position is that jihadists ought to be tried in
their home countries. But the United Kingdom and France have been reluctant to
agree to such an arrangement.
"The official French statement condemning the death sentences given to these
individuals was largely to soothe its EU allies who are against the death
penalty," said Watheq al-Hashimi, director of the Iraqi Group for Strategic
Studies, a Baghdad-based group that advises the Iraqi government.
While fundamentally against capital punishment, "in reality France would like
to see Iraq try more French citizens who have joined IS," al-Hashimi added.
He said the trial of all IS foreign fighters could be a lengthy and expensive
process requiring international assistance.
"Iraqi authorities are overwhelmed with the large number of IS foreign fighters
detained in Iraq. Logistically, Iraq can't keep these individuals for a long
time. For one thing, prisons are overcrowded. That's why Iraq has offered to
try all IS foreign fighters for about $1.8 billion. But no response has been
received yet from the international community."
(source: voanews.com)
IRAN:
Juvenile Offender Danial Zeinolabedini in Danger of Execution
According to information received by IHR, the death row juvenile offender
Danial Zeinolabedini might be in danger of execution. Unofficial sources have
told Danial's family that he will be executed after Ramadan, Muslims’ month of
fasting, which ends in the first week of June. Danial Zeinolabedini is a
juvenile offender whose death sentence has been upheld by the Iranian Supreme
Court. Danial was born on August 9, 2000. He allegedly committed murder on
September 22, 2017, when he was 17 years old. According to his relatives, he
did not commit the murder and is innocent.
According to IHR sources, Danial Zeinolabedini is scheduled to be executed
after Ramadan, Muslims’ month of fasting, which ends in the 1st week of June.
Danial was along with 3 others charged with murdering a man identified as
Sadegh Barmaki. Forensics announced that Mr Barmaki had died as a result of
burn injuries. Danial has repeatedly said that he did not play a role in
causing the burn injuries. However, the judge’s understanding is that Mr
Barmaki was killed before his body was set on fire.
Nevertheless, Danial is a juvenile offender. Under the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Iran has ratified, the Iranian
authorities have an obligation to not issue the death sentence for offenses
committed under the age of 18. However, at least 7 juveniles were executed in
2018 and so far in 2019, at least 2 juvenile offenders have been executed in
Iran.
Under Article 91 of the Islamic Penal Code which was added to the Iranian law 6
years ago, judges are allowed to issue alternative verdicts for the minors. The
juvenile offenders whom a judge considers not mature enough to realize the
nature of the crime committed can face prison terms. Danial’s lawyer, Asoo
Arya, had previously told IHR this client is underage. The lawyer said:
"According to Article 91 of Iran’s Islamic Penal Code, execution of people
under 18 years old is not allowed unless the court recognizes the defendant as
a mature person by sending him/her to forensics. My client has not been sent to
forensics.”
However, according to Article 91 of Iran's revised Islamic Penal Code, it is up
to the presiding judge's discretion to deem the juvenile mature enough to
understand the nature of the offense: "In the cases of offenses punishable by
hadd or qisas, if mature people under eighteen years do not realize the nature
of the crime committed or its prohibition, or if there is uncertainty about
their full mental development, according to their age, they shall be sentenced
to the punishments prescribed in this chapter." Otherwise, the Islamic Penal
Code puts the age of criminal responsibility for males at 15 and 9 for females.
The article has not led to a decrease in the execution of juvenile offenders.
From the application of article 91 in 2013 to the end of 2018, at least 42
juvenile offenders have been hanged in Iranian prisons.
(source: Iran Human Rights)
FRANCE:
Civil society weighs in as Iraq vows to execute French citizens----Activists,
lawyers call out French government for failing to protect suspected ISIL
members sentenced to death in Iraq.
Activists and lawyers have pleaded with the French government to recognise
flaws in Iraq's justice system after two more of its citizens accused of ISIL
membership were given the death penalty, bringing the total to 6.
The executions could be carried out at the end of the week.
"We have information from Iraqi lawyers who do not want to take on these cases
on because it's too dangerous for them," Raphael Chenuil-Hazan, Executive
Director of the French NGO Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM) told Al
Jazeera.
Human rights groups accuse the Iraqi government of conducting thousands of
unfair trials against those suspected to be members of the Islamic State of
Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS).
A report from Human Rights Watch said the trials are based on limited criminal
evidence, often relying solely on a defendant's forced confession.
Defence lawyers have reported threats to them and their families for providing
legal aid to ISIL suspects.
Iraq's justice system aside, Chenuil-Hazan said the French government has a
responsibility to protect its citizens from the death penalty, which has been
outlawed in France since 1981.
"Whatever they have done and whatever they have been accused of, France has a
responsibility to support its citizens ... especially when they face the death
penalty in another part of the world," said Chenuil-Hazan.
Foreign Minister Jean Yves Le Drian told French radio on Tuesday that he had
been in contact with Iraqi President Barham Salih, and that the government was
"multiplying efforts to avoid the death penalty."
"We are absolutely against the death penalty," Le Drian told French radio
station France Inter. But, he added, "These terrorists ... need to be tried
where they committed their crimes. It's the Iraqi justice system that will
decide on them."
Violating international human rights
Lawyers said international human rights were at stake, stating that if the
deaths are carried out, France and Iraq would be responsible for violating
citizens' "right to life" as outlined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of
Human Rights.
"France has the means to bring back our citizens and they know how to do it,"
Vincent Brengarth, a lawyer with the Paris-based law firm Bourdon & Associates
told Al Jazeera. "But the fact is the state has exposed these people to the
risk of the death penalty even though this sanction has been abolished and
clearly contradicts international law."
Iraq sentences 2 more French ISIL members to death
Last year, Brengarth and his colleague William Bourdon travelled to Baghdad to
represent Melina Boughedir, a 27-year-old French national suspected of ISIL
involvement.
Boughedir was eventually found guilty of "terrorism" and sentenced to 20 years
in prison. She is currently being held in an Iraqi cell with her two-year-old
daughter.
While in Baghdad, Brengarth says he saw multiple flaws in the Iraqi justice
system.
"We saw that the right to defence wasn't really being taken into account," said
Brengarth who recounted witnessing people being sentenced to the death penalty
after less than an hour of trial. "France has a responsibility ... it's
abnormal that we cannot guarantee our citizens' these minimal rights."
The six French citizens sentenced to death are among more than a dozen captured
by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in January and handed over to
Iraq.
SDF forces have transferred hundreds of Iraqi and foreign detainees to Iraq in
recent months, where trials are ongoing.
Iraq has taken a hardline position against those suspected of ISIL involvement
after the group spent 3 years in control of 1/3 of the country.
As ISIL continues to lose territory, the Iraqi government has rushed to punish
anyone suspected of ISIL involvement, with thousands awaiting trial.
Earlier this month, Sweden proposed setting up an international tribunal to
prosecute those suspected of joining ISIL.
If implemented, the tribunal would model similar systems set up after the 1994
Rwandan Genocide and wars in the former Yugoslavia. The talks, however, have
yet to lead to any concrete measures.
A 'complicated' issue for French citizens
The question of what to do with suspected French ISIL fighters is a sensitive
subject in France.
A wave of recent attacks are still on people's minds, particularly the November
2015 Paris attacks that killed 130 people and were claimed by ISIL.
According to a poll conducted in early March, 82 percent of French citizens
said they thought those suspected of ISIL involvement should be tried in Syria
and Iraq.
"They said they wanted to die for their cause," Karine Dubus, a 44-year-old
restaurant manager told Al Jazeera. "It was their choice to go to Syria, so now
they have to accept their choice ... but I get that it's complicated."
Michelle Meilleur, a 65-year-old retiree living in northeast Paris, shared a
similar sentiment.
"They left knowing what they were doing," Meilleur told Al Jazeera. "I think it
would make sense for them to be tried over there...and I think my opinion
reflects the majority of the French population."
According to French government figures, up to 1,700 French nationals travelled
to Syria and Iraq between 2014 and 2018 to join ISIL.
One French national awaiting sentencing in Iraq, 32-year-old Fodil Tahar
Aouidate, was seen in a video posted by ISIL shortly after the November 2015
attacks. In the video, he said it was his "great pleasure and joy to see these
unbelievers suffer as we suffer here".
Many French citizens say they are concerned that if the suspects are brought
back to France, there won't be enough evidence or witnesses available to bring
them to trial.
Still, some insist they should be repatriated and tried in their home country.
"They're French and they need to be tried by the French justice system," Kenza
Dumay, a 22-year-old student. "Maybe they did terrible things, but they at
least deserve the right to be tried by a fair justice system ... one that won't
send them straight to their death."
(source: Al Jazeera News)
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