| USA: Public Support for the Death Penalty Drops Below 50% for First Time in 45 Years
September 30, 2016: Public support for the death penalty fell by 7 percentage points in the last year, with fewer than half of Americans (49%) now saying they support the death penalty, according to a national Pew Research Center poll released on September 29. The poll marks the first time in 45 years that support for capital punishment polled below 50%, when a Gallup poll in released in November 1971 also reported that 49% of Americans supported the death penalty.
Support for the death penalty declined across every demographic group in the past year, with the largest decline coming among Independents (13 percentage points). Majorities of Blacks (63%), Hispanics (50%), 18-29 year-olds (51%), college graduates (51%), Democrats (58%), and people with no religious affiliation (50%) now oppose the death penalty and. While 72% of Republicans say they favor capital punishment, support for the death penalty among Republicans dropped 5 points in the past year.
source: DPIC |
| USA: Californians weigh competing death-penalty measures
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September 17, 2016: This November, Californians will decide between two competing ballot measures that will determine the future of capital punishment in the state.
With 750 people on California's death row, their executions stalled by the courts, nearly everyone agrees that California's system of capital punishment has been broken since 1978, when the state reinstated the death penalty after a six-year hiatus imposed by the state’s Supreme Court. There have been no executions since 2006, when a judge ruled that California’s method of lethal injection could constitute “cruel and unusual punishment,” and thus would violate both the U.S. and California constitutions.
In the past three decades, “California taxpayers have spent $5 billion [on death row inmates]," said law professor Paula Mitchell of Loyola Law School.
"The state has executed 13 people. Roughly 100 have died [of natural causes] on death row before their appeals were finished or before the state could execute them,” she added.
Proposition 62 would abolish the death penalty in California while the other – Proposition 66 – would strengthen it. But even though the two sides in the capital punishment debate seek very different outcomes, almost everyone agrees that the state's current system is broken.
source: VOA
|
| Japan: Bar federation’s declaration to call for abolition of death sentence
September 7, 2016: The Japan Federation of Bar Associations for the first time will clearly call for abolishing the death sentence in light of global trends against capital punishment and wrongful convictions of death-row inmates.
The federation until now has taken measures to spur public debate about eliminating the death sentence.
But in a draft declaration that will be submitted to a national human rights protection conference of members in Fukui city in October, the federation will push for reform of Japan’s criminal penalty system, including the annulment of the death sentence.
Although the draft touches upon the importance of providing support to crime victims, it also states, “Even if a horrible crime has been committed, people can change if they receive the appropriate treatment.”
source: Asahi |
| Mapped: The 58 countries that still have the death penalty
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September 1, 2016: As the map shows, every other European country has abolished it (Russia has abolished it in practice, and has not executed anyone since 1996). But in Belarus - often dubbed "Europe's last dictatorship" - it continues, with 12 executions taking place in the last seven years and more than 200 since 1990.
Just 4 countries considered to be industrialised still execute criminals: the
US, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan.
The most recent countries to abolish all capital punishment are Guinea (2016),
Nauru (2016), Congo (2015), Suriname (2015), Fiji (2015), Madagascar (2012),
Latvia (2012) and Gabon (2010).
The 58 countries that have the death penalty:
1--Botswana
2--Chad
3--Comoros
4--Democratic Republic of the Congo
5--Egypt
6--Equatorial Guinea
7--Ethiopia
8--Gambia
9--Lesotho
10-Libya
11-Nigeria
12-Somalia
13-Somaliland
14-South Sudan
15-Sudan
16-Uganda
17-Zimbabwe
18-Antigua and Barbuda
19-Bahamas
20-Barbados
21-Belize
22-Cuba
23-Dominica
24-Guatemala
25-Guyana
26-Jamaica
27-Saint Kitts and Nevis
28-Saint Lucia
29-Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
30-Trinidad and Tobago
31-United States
32-Afghanistan
33-Bahrain
34-Bangladesh
35-China
36-India
37-Indonesia
38-Iran
39-Iraq
40-Japan
41-Jordan
42-North Korea
43-Kuwait
44-Lebanon
45-Malaysia
46-Oman
47-Pakistan
48-Palestinian Territories
49-Qatar
50-Saudi Arabia
51-Singapore
52-Syria
53-Taiwan
54-Thailand
55-UAE
56-Vietnam
57-Yemen
58-Belarus
Total executions in 2015:
According to Amnesty International, 25 countries carried out at least 1,630 executions last year.
Nineteen Asian countries: Afghanistan (1), Bangladesh (4), China (exact number unknown), India (1), Indonesia (14), Iran (977+), Iraq (26+), Japan (3), Jordan (2), Malaysia (exact number unknown), North Korea (exact number unknown), Oman (2), Pakistan (326), Saudi Arabia (158+), Singapore (4), Taiwan (6), UAE (1), Vietnam (exact number unknown), and Yemen (8+).
Five African countries: Chad (10), Egypt (22+), Somalia (25+), South Sudan (5+), Sudan (3).
One American country: United States (28).
source: Telegraph |
| Iraq hangs 36 men over 2014 Camp Speicher massacre
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August 22, 2016: Iraq has hanged 36 men convicted over the 2014 massacre of hundreds of military recruits, government officials say. They had been found guilty of involvement in the "Speicher" massacre, named after a base near Tikrit where up to 1,700 recruits were kidnapped before being executed in a massacre claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group. "The executions of 36 convicted over the Speicher crime were carried out this morning in Nasiriyah prison," a spokesman for the governor's office in Dhiqar, the province of which Nasiriyah is the capital, told AFP.
Video images of the massacre that were made and released by the Islamic State showed killing on an industrial scale, with one man after another being shot in the head and pushed into the flowing waters of the Tigris River. Other victims were killed on land and buried in mass graves. Iraqi forces recaptured Tikrit from the Islamic State in 2015, and the riverbank became a site of pilgrimage, visited by relatives of victims from mainly Shiite southern Iraq.
source: Al Jazeera |
| Turkey PM steps back from calls for death penalty
August 16, 2016: Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Tuesday a fair trial would represent a harsher punishment for suspected coup plotters than the death penalty -- an apparent step back from threats to re-introduce capital punishment.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had suggested Turkey could bring back capital punishment -- abolished in 2004 as part of the country's reforms to join the European Union -- in the wake of the July 15 failed coup aimed at ousting him from power.
The threat stunned the EU, which makes the abolition of capital punishment an unnegotiable condition for joining the bloc.
"A person dies only once when executed," Yildirim told ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) MPs in parliament.
"There are tougher ways to die than the death (penalty) for them. That is an impartial and fair trial," Yildirim said.
source: France24 |
| USA: Delaware Supreme Court declares state's death penalty unconstitutional
August 5, 2016: The Delaware Supreme Court on August 2 declared the state's capital sentencing procedures unconstitutional, leaving Delaware without a valid death penalty statute. In the case of Benjamin Rauf v. State of Delaware, the court held that Delaware's death sentencing procedures violate the constitutional principles recently set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court's January 2016 decision in Hurst v. Florida. Four members of the Delaware high court ruled that the state's capital sentencing statute unconstitutionally empowers judges, rather than jurors, to decide whether the prosecution has proven the existence of aggravating circumstances that are considered in determining whether to impose for the death penalty.
source: DPIC |
| UK: The link between Brexit and the death penalty
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July 18, 2016: Immediately after the vote, commentators said it was about class - about professionals living and working in big cities, especially London (who voted Remain), versus working class people in smaller towns, especially in the north of England (who voted Leave).
So you would think that if you know that someone is working class and has a low income, you'd be able to confidently guess they voted Leave. But according to Stian Westlake, Head of Research at the think tank Nesta, this is not the case.
"If you look at someone's class status and their income, and you try and use that to guess whether or not they voted Remain, it turns out it's not that much better than guesswork. It gives you around 55% accuracy, and obviously a guess would give you 50% accuracy," Westlake says. "If you look at attitudes to questions such as, 'Do you think criminals should be publicly whipped?' or 'Are you in favour of the death penalty?' - those things are much better predictors, and you get over 70% accuracy," he says.
Izvor: BBC |
| Serbia: Police union have filed a request to the top of the government to return the death penalty!
July 11, 2016: Yesterday's monstrous murder shocked Serbia. Yesterday, Vladica Rajkovic raped and killed three years old girl Angela from a village near Zajecar.
On that occasion Union of Police employees gave a statement in which they proposed to the very top of the Serbian government introducing the death penalty for these types of crimes.
"Urgent adoption of a law that will apply the death penalty for every cruel and monstrous murderer " - said in their statement.
See the official letter to the media.
source: Pink |
| USA: In party platform, Democrats call for end to death penalty
July 3, 2016: The latest draft of the party's platform, released Friday, says the death penalty "has proven to be a cruel and unusual form of punishment" that "has no place in the United States of America."
The inclusion of the provision represents a victory of sorts for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders -- a longtime opponent of the punishment who has said he is remaining in the presidential race in order to fight for progressive causes.
Sanders offered mild praise for the platform Friday evening, tweeting, "The Democratic Platform includes some accomplishments that will begin to move this country in the right direction."
Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has supported the death penalty in the past, albeit on a limited basis, suggesting that there could be cases for "very limited use" of the punishment in "horrific" terrorist crimes.
izvor: CNN |
| World congress against the death penalty renews call for global moratorium, Pope sends message
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June 28, 2016: Delegates to the Sixth World Congress Against the Death Penalty, held in Oslo, Norway from June 21 to June 23, 2016, have renewed the organization's call for a global moratorium on capital punishment. The event, attended by more than 1300 representatives from 80 countries, featured discussions by death penalty stakeholders from around the world. Participants included human rights officials from the United Nations and European Union, as well as Justice Ministers from both abolitionist and retentionist countries, Nobel Peace Prize laureates, global death-row exonerees, non-governmental human rights organizations, attorneys, journalists, and activists from dozens of countries. On Wednesday, June 22, Pope Francis addressed the Congress in a video message, in which he reiterated his support for abolition of the death penalty. He said the death penalty is not “consonant with any just purpose of punishment," and that "It does not render justice to victims, but instead fosters vengeance. The commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' has absolute value and applies both to the innocent and to the guilty."
source: DPIC |
| Pope Francis: video message to Death Penalty conference
|
June 22, 2016: Pope Francis has sent a video message to the participants in the Sixth World Conference Against the Death Penalty, taking place this week in Oslo, Norway. The Holy Father put his message in the key of the Year of Mercy, saying, “The Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy is an auspicious occasion for promoting worldwide ever more evolved forms of respect for the life and dignity of each person.” Pope Francis goes on to say, “It must not be forgotten that the inviolable and God-given right to life also belongs to the criminal.”
Message of His Holiness Pope Francis
Sixth World Congress Against the Death Penalty
Oslo, 21-23 June 2016
I greet the organizers of this World Congress against the death penalty, the group of countries supporting it, particularly Norway as its host country, and all those representatives of governments, international organizations and civil society taking part in it. I likewise express my personal appreciation, along with that of men and women of goodwill, for your commitment to a world free of the death penalty.
One sign of hope is that public opinion is manifesting a growing opposition to the death penalty, even as a means of legitimate social defence. Indeed, nowadays the death penalty is unacceptable, however grave the crime of the convicted person. It is an offence to the inviolability of life and to the dignity of the human person; it likewise contradicts God’s plan for individuals and society, and his merciful justice. Nor is it consonant with any just purpose of punishment. It does not render justice to victims, but instead fosters vengeance. The commandment “Thou shalt not kill” has absolute value and applies both to the innocent and to the guilty.
The Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy is an auspicious occasion for promoting worldwide ever more evolved forms of respect for the life and dignity of each person. It must not be forgotten that the inviolable and God-given right to life also belongs to the criminal.
Today I would encourage all to work not only for the abolition of the death penalty, but also for the improvement of prison conditions, so that they fully respect the human dignity of those incarcerated. “Rendering justice” does not mean seeking punishment for its own sake, but ensuring that the basic purpose of all punishment is the rehabilitation of the offender. The question must be dealt with within the larger framework of a system of penal justice open to the possibility of the guilty party’s reinsertion in society. There is no fitting punishment without hope! Punishment for its own sake, without room for hope, is a form of torture, not of punishment.
I trust that this Congress can give new impulse to the effort to abolish capital punishment. For this reason, I encourage all taking part to carry on this great initiative and I assure them of my prayers.
source: Radio Vatican |
| China has scaled down death penalty, Government report says
June 16, 2016: China says that it has scaled down its use of capital punishment since 2012 and second trials of death penalty cases have all been conducted in open courts. The country has also put tighter checks on the death penalty, according to a government report on its 2012-2015 human rights action plan.
An oversight office to review death penalty cases was established in 2012 in an effort to increase checks on legal procedures related to the death penalty.
A criminal law amendment adopted last year cancelled the death penalties for nine crimes, reducing the number of crimes eligible for the death penalty from 55 to 46.
The nine crimes include smuggling weapons, ammunition, nuclear materials or counterfeit currency; counterfeiting currency; raising funds by means of fraud; arranging for or forcing another person to engage in prostitution; obstructing a police officer or a person on duty from performing his duties; and fabricating rumors to mislead others during wartime.
source: Hands off Cain |
| Egypt: 26 sentenced to death, 21 to life in prisonfor Aswan violence
June 10, 2016 : Twenty-six people were sentenced to death and 21 to life in prison for involvement in tribal violence in Aswan two years ago.
The case, heard by Qena Criminal Court, involved 163 defendants, of whom: 100 were found innocent, 26 were sentenced to death, 21 were sentenced to life in prison, three were sentenced to 15 years in prison, 10 were sentenced to three years, three were sentenced to 10 years and two were sentenced to two years.
The defendants were convicted of a number of charges, including murder, inciting violence, theft, abduction, attacking police personnel, illegal arms possession and the destruction of public and private property in connection to violence that erupted between the Dabodeya and Hilail tribes in early 2014.
At least 28 people died, hundreds more were injured and several buildings were destroyed in the violent clashes, which began after a fight between school children.
source: Hands off Cain |
| Abolition of death penalty in Nauru
June 4, 2016: Statement by the Spokesperson on the abolition of death penalty and decriminalisation of homosexuality in Nauru:
The recent amendments to Nauru's Criminal code abolishing the death penalty and decriminalising homosexuality send a strong signal to other countries in the Pacific region that are yet to do so.
In abolishing the death penalty, Nauru has demonstrated its belief, shared by the European Union as well as many other countries worldwide, in the inherent dignity of all human beings and the inviolability of the human person. The death penalty cannot be justified under any circumstances.
source: Scoop |
| "Cells of death" are becoming a museum
May 29, 2016: In 11 cells deep below ground level in the County prison death row prisoners used to countdown the days on death row. In this prision, the last execution was carried out 47 years ago.
In the basement of the Belgrade County prison, where death penalties were carried out, very few people has entered since the last execution was carried out 47 years ago.
Today, these prison cells are in very bad condition. They are neglected, dilapidated, and in a long time they even did not have electricity. However, soon it will be different. A good part of the atmosphere in "death cells" will be able to experience all of those who are interested. It is planned for the next year that these basement cells become a museum and it will also host the guns and ammunition that were used at the time of execution. The exibit will also include heavy iron handcuffs and leg irons.
RTS, Belgrade Chronicle
source: Politika |
| Marco Pannella, President of Hands off Cain and leader of the Radical Party, is not with us anymore
May 24, 2016: Marco Pannella, leader of the Radical Party, Founder and President of Hands Off Cain, died in Rome last thursday at the age of 86, after a long illness.
He conceived, with Hands Off Cain, the battle for a universal moratorium on executions. The plan had its first major success in 2007, with the majority vote of the UN resolution against the death penalty.
The struggle continues, to get to the definitive abolition not only of capital punishment, but also of the "death penalty in disguise", as Pope Francis has defined life imprisonment.
His vision, his way of thinking, of feeling, and of being will be for us an inexhaustible source of inspiration and action. Thanks for everything. Ciao Marco!
source: Hands off Cain |
| The Black Chronicle
May 23, 2016: The execution room in the Belgrade Central Prison was shown in a TV programme (The Black Chronicle, TV Pink, May 5). |
| Israel plans death penalty for Palestinian militants
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May 21, 2016: Israel is poised to introduce the death penalty for Palestinian militants after Benjamin Netanyahu invited an ultranationalist party to join his coalition government.
The right-winger Avigdor Lieberman made capital punishment a key demand in negotiations this week for his party to shore up Mr Netanyahu’s coalition, with Mr Lieberman handed the defence portfolio. Sources from Mr Lieberman’s Yisrael Beteinu party and the ruling Likud said that the prime minister had agreed.
It would be a major policy shift for Israel, which has only ever executed one person: the Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann, who was hanged in 1962 for genocide. Mr Lieberman hopes to apply the death penalty, via a military order, to Palestinian militants from in the occupied West Bank. Israeli citizens would not be affected.
The proposal has drawn fierce opposition from the centre-left. “There’s nothing like it in the world,” Yehuda Weinstein, who stepped down as attorney-general in January, said. “There are no countries that added the death penalty to the book of law, only ones that took it off.”
Israel does not have the death penalty for murder. It is technically on the books only for genocide and crimes against humanity.
Legislation to make executions easier is typically voted down by a wide majority in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. Mr Lieberman’s party introduced one such bill last year — it was rejected on its first reading by 94 votes to six. However, by using military orders to apply the death penalty, Mr Lieberman could bypass the Knesset.
source: The Australian |
| Pfizer blocks the use of its drugs in executions
May 13, 2016: The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced on Friday that it had imposed sweeping controls on the distribution of its products to ensure that none are used in lethal injections, a step that closes off the last remaining open-market source of drugs used in executions.
More than 20 American and European drug companies have already adopted such restrictions, citing either moral or business reasons. Nonetheless, the decision from one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical manufacturers is seen as a milestone.
“Pfizer makes its products to enhance and save the lives of the patients we serve,” the company said in Friday’s statement, and “strongly objects to the use of its products as lethal injections for capital punishment.”
Pfizer said it would restrict the sale to selected wholesalers of seven products that could be used in executions. The distributors must certify that they will not resell the drugs to corrections departments and will be closely monitored.
source: NYT |
| Saudi Arabia carries out 90th execution of year
May 6, 2016: Saudi Arabia beheaded a citizen convicted of murder taking the number of people executed in the Kingdom this year to 90.
Mufreh Al Harissi was found guilty of stabbing to death a fellow Saudi during a dispute, the interior ministry said in a statement published by the SPA news agency.
The sentence was carried out in the south-western Jazan province.
source: Hands off Cain |
| Nearly 9 out of 10 in Taiwan want to keep death penalty
|
April 27, 2016: Out of every 10 people in Taiwan, there are nearly 9 who oppose the idea of abolishing capital punishment, mainly because they think such a move would undermine public order and deprive the authorities of a deterrent to would-be criminals, according to a poll released Thursday.
The survey by the Cabinet's National Development Council (NDC) found that 87.9 percent of Taiwanese want the death penalty to be retained, 4.8 percent are against it, and 7.3 percent have no clear position on the issue.
The people who supported the abolition of the death penalty, however, said they did not think it was an effective deterrent and that it was a violation of human rights, according to the poll. The government has no right to deprive people of the right of life, those people argued.
The poll was conducted amid renewed debate over the death penalty after a 4-year-old girl was decapitated by a 33-year-old man in Taipei on March 28. It was the second random, brutal child killing case in Taipei in less than a year.
source: Focus Taiwan |
| China will execute for bribes worth over $460,000
April 20, 2016: Corruption cases involving 3 million yuan ($463,000) or more may incur the death penalty in future, Chinese authorities ruled Monday, signalling that officials could be executed for graft.
A two-year suspended death sentence may be issued if there are mitigating factors, according to the judicial document. In practice, courts tend to be more lenient when sentencing those who have cooperated during the investigation.
The ruling was jointly issued by the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate.
Under President Xi Jinping the country has waged a much-publicized anti-corruption campaign vowing to target both powerful “tigers” and low-level “flies,” but no Communist Party official is known to have been put to death for the offense since Xi took office.
source: Xinhua |
| Rights groups set 'priorities' for next UN chief
April 13, 2016: Rights groups say the next leader must strike a new deal for refugees and end the death penalty. This week, eight candidates for the top job will outline their vision for the role at the UN General Assembly.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and four other rights groups have listed eight priorities for the next UN secretary-general, who will be elected later this year to replace Ban Ki-moon.
Among the other priorities, candidates were urged to promise to work towards abolishing the death penalty during their term, after a recent Amnesty report showed that executions worldwide rose by more than half in 2015, compared to the previous year.
The surge was largely due to Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia carrying out more killings, but China and the United States also regularly resort to the death penalty.
source: DW |
| Dramatic increase in executions in 2015
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April 6, 2016: Amnesty International reports that there was a dramatic 54 percent increase in executions globally in 2015, with Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia responsible for nearly 90 percent of the killings.
The human rights organization said that the figure of at least 1,634 people executed last year — up from 1,061 in 2014 — does not include executions in China where data on the death penalty is considered a state secret.
Amnesty International's Secretary General Salil Shetty told several reporters on Tuesday that for China "our estimate is that they execute as much as the rest of the world."
He said China is currently reviewing crimes punishable by the death penalty so there is "a slim ray of hope" that the number of executions may be reduced.
On the upside, Shetty said, four countries abolished the death penalty for all crimes in 2015 — Republic of Congo, Fiji, Madagascar and Surinam — bringing the global total of countries now banning executions to 102.
Other countries have also made progress: Mongolia is set to abolish the death penalty this year, China and Vietnam reduced the number of offenses that can be punished by death, and Malaysia announced legislative reforms to review the country's mandatory death penalty laws, Amnesty said.
In addition, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Kenya and South Korea considered legislation to abolish the death penalty, it said.
When Amnesty International began campaigning against the death penalty in 1977, only 16 countries had fully abolished the death penalty.
"The overall trend is very clear," Shetty said, "more than half the world's nations have abolished the death penalty."
According to the report, the number of executions recorded in Saudi Arabia increased by 76 percent to 158. Executions in Iran rose 31 percent to 977. and the 326 executions in Pakistan were the highest ever recorded by Amnesty International.
Amnesty said it received information that both Iran and Pakistan executed people in 2015 who were under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed, and it said juveniles face the death sentence in several other countries.
In the United States, 28 people were executed in 2015, nearly half in Texas, the most active death penalty state, which put 13 people to death, the report said. Missouri executed six people, Georgia five, Florida two and Oklahoma and Virginia one each. Amnesty said 60 percent of those executed were black or Hispanic, double their percentage in the population.
On the plus side, Amnesty pointed to the governor of Pennsylvania establishing a moratorium on executions last year and the legislature in Nebraska overriding the governor's veto of a bill abolishing the death penalty.
source: AI |
| The 13 countries where being an atheist is punishable by death
April 1, 2016: It’s often said that the world is becoming an increasingly secular place. Just last week David Cameron sparked backlash when he used his Easter message to describe the UK as “a Christian country”. Critics pointed out that just 30 per cent of people in the UK describe themselves as religious, making Britain one of the least religious countries in the world.
However, despite the prevalance of atheism and humanism in the UK, many may be surprised to know that having no faith can be a life or death matter around the world. In thirteen countries, you can be sentenced to death for not having a faith:
1. Afghanistan
2. Iran
3. Malaysia
4. Maldives
5. Mauritania
6. Nigeria
7. Pakistan
8. Qatar
9. Saudi Arabia
10. Somalia
11. Sudan
12. United Arab Emirates
13. Yemen
source: Independent
|
| Japan executes two death row inmates
|
March 26, 2016: Japan executed two death row prisoners on Friday, the justice ministry said.
Convicted murderers Yasutoshi Kamata and Junko Yoshida were executed by hanging, bringing the total number of people put to death since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe came to power in 2012 to 16.
Yoshida, 56, killed two men in the late 1990s as part of a plot to obtain insurance money, the justice ministry said. She is the fifth woman to be executed in more than 60 years.
Kamata, 75, was convicted of murdering four women between 1985 and 1994 -- and a nine-year-old girl.
Justice Minister Mitsuhide Iwaki, who authorised the executions, said they had committed "extremely heinous" crimes that "took the precious lives of the victims for very selfish reasons".
Japan and the United States are the only wealthy democracies that still use capital punishment, and rights group Amnesty International said Tokyo's decision was a step backwards.
The death penalty has overwhelming public support in Japan, according to surveys, despite repeated protests from European governments and human rights groups.
Advocacy groups say Japan's system is cruel because inmates can wait for their executions for many years in solitary confinement and are only told of their impending death a few hours ahead of time.
source: AFP |
| Russian Duma deputies propose death penalty for terrorists
March 25, 2016: A number of Russian Duma deputies have proposed a bill that would introduce the death penalty for terrorism-related crimes.
The bill was introduced by A Just Russia political party leader Sergei Mironov and two other deputies. “The goal of rehabilitation for such criminals … cannot be achieved, and the punishment has to be adequate to the threat their deeds pose to society and serve as a warning [to others],” Mironov said in a statement published on the party's website.
Although a provision in Russia's Criminal Code allows capital punishment for serious crimes, a moratorium has been in place since 1996.
In 2009, the Constitutional Court extended the moratorium and ruled that no court in the country has the right to sentence anyone to death.
source: The Moscow Times
|
| German state Hesse to finally get rid of death penalty
|
March 20, 2016: In the wake of the Second World War, Germany wrote a new Constitution with reforms intended to shake off its violent Nazi past, including to clearly define where the country newly stood on the death penalty.
"Capital punishment is abolished," states Article 102 simply, with no further explanation.
The Constitution, or Grundgesetz, was signed in 1949, but just three years before, the state of Hesse apparently had its own ideas about capital punishment.
"For especially severe crimes, the sentence can be death," dictates Article 21 of Hesse's state constitution, written in 1946.
Now, 70 years later, Hesse is at last working to clear up this inconsistency.
When the Grundgesetz was approved, it immediately superseded the state law, thus making Article 21 essentially irrelevant.
Hesse's state legislators met this week to discuss reforming the constitution, which would also include changes like lowering the minimum age of voting in state elections from 21 to 18 - something else unusual to Hesse.
To finalize the reform, Hesse will have to put forth a referendum to the people.
In Europe, only Belarus maintains the death penalty in both law and practice, while 102 countries worldwide have abolished it.
source: The Local |
| Iran’s execution of juvenile offenders draws concern of UN rights expert
March 15, 2016: An independent United Nations human rights expert today raised continuing serious concerns about the extremely high rate of executions, especially for juvenile offenders, and fundamental flaws in the administration of justice in Iran.
Iran executed at least 966 prisoners in 2015, the highest such rate in 10 years, Ahmed Shaheed, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in that country, said as he presented his latest report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. “With at least 16 juvenile offenders reportedly hanged between 2014 [and] 2015, Iran remains one of a few countries still resorting to this practice despite a strict prohibition against it under international law,” Mr. Shaheed said, urging Iranian officials to “put aside efforts at piecemeal reform in this area and ensure, once and for all, that no boy or girl who commits a crime under the age of 18 is ever put to death.”
source: UN |
| Iran sentences billionaire to death for corruption
March 8, 2016: Billionaire Iranian businessman Babak Zanjani has been sentenced to death for corruption, justice officials say.
He was arrested in December 2013 after accusations that he withheld billions in oil revenue channelled through his companies. He denies the allegations.
Zanjani, 42, was convicted of fraud and economic crimes, a judiciary spokesperson said at a press briefing.
One of Iran's richest men, Zanjani was blacklisted by the US and EU for helping Iran evade oil sanctions.
Zanjani had acknowledged using a web of companies in the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Malaysia to sell millions of barrels of Iranian oil on behalf of the government since 2010.
In a 2013 interview with the BBC, Zanjani played down his political connections in Iran, saying: "I don't do anything political, I just do business." Zanjani has said he is worth about some $13.5bn.
source: BBC |
| Iran: Supreme Court confirms 100 death sentences
March 3, 2016: At least 100 prisoners in Ghezel Hesar Prison (in Karaj, northern Iran) are in imminent danger of execution after their death sentences for drug offenses were reportedly confirmed in the last month by Iran's Supreme Court.
A prisoner in Ghezel Hesar Prison tells IHR (Iran Human Rights): A prosecutor from the revolutionary court visited the prison and told the prisoners they've reached the end of the line and should prepare for execution because their death sentences were confirmed by the Supreme Court.
After a two-month break it appears that Iranian authorities may be preparing for a new wave of executions. Iran Human Rights is deeply concerned and calls on the international community to focus on the death penalty in Iran.
In December 2015, 70 members of Iran's parliament reportedly signed a proposal for a change in legislation to end the death penalty for drug offenses. The bill must be approved by Iran's Guardian Council before it can be passed.
source: Hands off Cain |
| Pope calls for worldwide abolition of death penalty
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February 22, 2016: Pope Francis on Sunday called for the worldwide abolition of the death penalty, saying the commandment "You shall not kill" was absolute and equally valid for the guilty as for the innocent.
Using some of his strongest words ever against capital punishment, he also called on Catholic politicians worldwide to make "a courageous and exemplary gesture" by seeking a moratorium on executions during the Church's current Holy Year, which ends in November.
"I appeal to the consciences of those who govern to reach an international consensus to abolish the death penalty," he told tens of thousands of people in St. Peter's Square.
"The commandment "You shall not kill," has absolute value and applies to both the innocent and the guilty," he told the crowd.
The pope added that there was now "a growing opposition to the death penalty even for the legitimate defense of society" because modern means existed to "efficiently repress crime without definitively denying the person who committed it the possibility of rehabilitating themselves."
source: Reuters |
| Belarus: Triple murderer sentenced to death
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February 16, 2016: Belarus sentenced to death a man convicted of killing three people, the day after the European Union (EU) announced it was lifting sanctions against the ex-Soviet country for an improved human rights record.
It was the third death penalty handed down in Belarus since November 2015.
The 32-year-old man, whose name was not released, was sentenced by a court in Minsk which had found him guilty of five crimes including the three murders, announced Yulia Liaskova, spokeswoman for the Belarusian high court.
These crimes were "committed with particular cruelty," she said.
The latest death sentence came after EU foreign ministers agreed on November 15 to lift nearly all sanctions on Belarus after improvements in the country's human rights record.
EU foreign affairs head Federica Mogherini said that Belarus was "showing a positive trend which we want to encourage."
At the same time the European Union is opposed to capital punishment and abolishing the death penalty is a pre-condition for a country becoming a member of the bloc.
More than 400 people have been condemned to death in Belarus since the 1990s, according to estimates by human rights groups.
source: Hands off Cain |
| Egypt: Court overturns death sentences for 149 Muslim Brotherhood supporters
February 6, 2016: A court in Egypt overturned the death sentences given last year to 149 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood group and ordered a retrial.
Last February, 183 people were sentenced to death over the killings of 16 policemen in the Egyptian town of Kardasa near Cairo in August 2013. Over 30 pro-Islamists were sentenced to death in absentia in the same hearing, but the court said they would have to surrender for a retrial to take place, AFP reports.
The attack on police stations in Egypt came after a deadly police crackdown on protesters just months after the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi. About 700 people had been killed in police firing.
source: Hands off Cain |
| USA: Georgia has executed its oldest death row inmate
February 3, 2016: The US state of Georgia has executed its oldest death row inmate, 72-year-old Brandon Astor Jones, after the Supreme Court rejected his final bid for clemency.
Jones received a lethal injection at a state prison in Jackson, a corrections spokesman said.
The African-American man had spent more than 36 years behind bars for the 1979 murder of a white convenience store clerk.
His lawyers had launched last-minute appeals to halt the execution, including with the US Supreme Court, but they were rejected.
The United States executed 28 people last year, the lowest number since 1991.
source: ABC |
| Pakistan executed 332 after reinstating death penalty
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January 20, 2016: Pakistan announced this week that authorities have executed 332 criminals and militants since lifting a moratorium on the death penalty in 2014, the first time an official tally has been released.
The South Asian nation unveiled a sweeping plan to curb militancy after Taliban assailants gunned down more than 150 people, most of them children, at an army-run school in Peshawar on December 16, 2014.
A six-year moratorium on the country's death penalty was lifted and the constitution amended to allow military courts to try those accused of carrying out attacks.
Hangings were initially reinstated only for those convicted of terrorism, but in March they were extended to all capital offenses.
In a written reply submitted to the parliament on Friday, the Ministry of Interior and Narcotics Control said 332 people had been executed in the country.
According to the report submitted to parliament, 172 religious seminaries across the country have been also been closed on suspicions of having links to militant organizations.
source: i24 |
| U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Florida's death sentencing scheme
January 14, 2016: In an 8-1 decision in Hurst v. Florida released on January 12, the U.S. Supreme Court found Florida's capital sentencing scheme in violation of the 6th Amendment, which guarantees the right to trial by jury. "The Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death," Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the opinion of the Court. The jury and judge in Hurst's case followed Florida's statutory sentencing procedure, which requires only an "advisory sentence" from a jury. Florida does not require the jury to specify the factual basis of its sentencing recommendation. The sentencing judge must give "great weight" to the jury's recommendation, but only the judge ever provides written reasons why a case is eligible for a death sentence.
The Court based its decision largely on Ring v. Arizona, a 2002 decision in which it struck down Arizona's sentencing scheme because a judge, rather than a jury, determined the facts necessary to impose a death sentence.
source: DPIC |
| More nations reject death penalty
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Janury 10, 2016: The New York Times reports that the number of countries using capital punishment continued to shrink and its use became more isolated from 2013 to 2014, even as the number of death sentences worldwide rose. 105 countries have abolished the death penalty, most recently Suriname and Mongolia, and the United Nations lists 60 additional countries as "de facto abolitionist" because they have not had any executions in at least 10 years. That leaves just 28 countries that still practice capital punishment. However, the Times reports, the number of death sentences imposed around the world increased by 28%. Ivan Simonovic, the United Nations assistant secretary general for human rights, called it "a troubling paradox that while the majority of countries have abandoned the use of the death penalty, the overall number of those sentenced to death has been increasing recently." He said, "Terrorism offenses and drug-related offenses seem to be the driving arguments behind this increase, although there is no evidence of its deterring effects." China carries out more executions than any other country, estimated in the thousands, though the exact number is unknown.The 5 countries that conducted the most executions were China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Iraq.
source: NYT |
| Saudi Arabia executes 47, including top Shiite cleric
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January 2, 2016: Saudi Arabia announced on Saturday it had executed 47 prisoners convicted of terrorism charges, including al-Qaida detainees and a prominent Shiite cleric who rallied protests against the government.
The execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr is expected to deepen discontent among Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority and heighten sectarian tensions across the region.
Al-Nimr, who was in his 50s, had been a vocal critic of Bahrain's monarchy, which forcibly suppressed protests in 2011 with the help of Saudi troops. He was popular among disgruntled Shiite youth in both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
The Interior Ministry announced the names of all 47 people executed in a statement carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency. Of those executed, 45 were Saudi citizens, one was from Chad and another was from Egypt.
Saudi Arabia carried out at least 157 executions in 2015, with beheadings reaching their highest level in the kingdom in two decades, according to several advocacy groups that monitor the death penalty worldwide.
source: AP |
| In memoriam: Veljko Guberina
January 1, 2016: Doyen of Serbian advocacy Veljko Guberina died in Belgrade at the age of 91, Bar Associtaion of Serbia has said.
For more than 50 years of active law practice, Veljko Guberina dealt with criminal law. He defended the 618 people accused of murder, 47 were acquitted and 42 sentenced to death, but only ten people have been executed.
Veljko Guberina was a great opponent of the death penalty. Together with Filota Fila he called in the media for the abolition of capital punishment and it is thanks to their efforts that a wide public took a serious interest in the problem of the death penalty in the 1960s and 1970s.
On the October 17t 1981, eleven citizens founded The Society for the Struggle against the Death Penalty and among them was Veljko Guberina. |
| USA: Executions by states fell in 2015
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December 22, 2015: Executions in the United States in 2015 fell to their lowest number in nearly 25 years, and new death sentences imposed by courts declined to levels not seen since the early 1970s.
The annual survey by the Death Penalty Information Center recorded 28 executions this year, the fewest since 1991, when there were 14.
“The numbers are consistent with a long-term trend in which public support for the death penalty is dropping, the number of executions is dropping and the number of death penalties imposed is dropping,” said Robert Dunham, the center’s executive director.
This year, Pennsylvania’s governor has declared a moratorium on executions, Connecticut’s Supreme Court has determined the punishment to be unconstitutional and the Nebraska Legislature repealed that state’s death penalty law — although voters will formally decide the statute’s future in a referendum next year.
In addition, shortages in the drugs used for lethal injections have led several states to impose temporary moratoriums until they obtain reliable supplies.
source: NYT |
| Japan executes 2 convicted of murder
December 19, 2015: Japan executed two people by hanging on Friday, including one who was convicted in a jury trial for the first time under a new system that began six years ago.
Sumitoshi Tsuda was found guilty of killing three people in 2009, and Kazuyuki Wakabayashi was convicted of killing a woman and her daughter in 2006.
Friday's executions for multiple murders bring the total number of death sentences carried out since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took power in late 2012 to 14.
In 2009, Japan launched a jury system in which citizens deliberate with professional judges in a bid to boost the role of the citizenry in the judicial process.
Japan now has 127 inmates on death row, according to the justice ministry.
Japan and the US are the only major advanced industrial nations that continue to have capital punishment.
source: Daily Mail
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| Japan lawyers’ group slams ‘inhumane’ death penalty
December 12, 2015: The Japan Federation of Bar Associations on Wednesday condemned capital punishment as “inhumane” and called on Justice Minister Mitsuhide Iwaki to set up an panel of experts to review the policy.
It said the body should start a national debate about a practice already abandoned in Europe and elsewhere.
The secrecy surrounding executions in Japan has been criticized at home and abroad, with neither death row inmates nor their lawyers and families given advance notice executions, which take place by hanging.
It is also unclear what criteria authorities use in deciding when inmates are to be executed, as some remain on death row for years.
The group noted that 140 countries have abolished the death penalty by law or in practice as of the end of 2014. It also cited a recommendation by the U.N. Human Rights Committee that urged Japan to “give due consideration to the abolition of the death penalty.”
source: JT |
| Mongolia: Historic vote abolishes death penalty
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December 4, 2015: On Thursday, lawmakers voted in favour of a new Criminal Code that abolishes the death penalty for all crimes. The new Criminal Code will take effect from September 2016, and would bring the total number of countries to have completely abandoned this ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment to 102.
“Mongolia’s historic decision to abolish the death penalty is a great victory for human rights. The death penalty is becoming a thing of the past across the world.Mongolia has set an example which we hope will quickly ripple across Asia,” said Roseann Rife, East Asia Research Director at Amnesty International.
Three countries - Fiji, Madagascar and Suriname - have already abolished the death penalty this year.
The last execution in Mongolia was in 2008 and the death penalty remained classified as a state secret. Since then, the country has taken a series of steps towards abolition culminating in yesterday’s historic parliamentary vote.
In 2010, the country’s President, Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, commuted all death sentences and announced a moratorium on all executions. In 2012, Mongolia ratified an international treaty committing the country to the abolition of the death penalty.
source: Amnesty International
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| Vietnam abolishes death penalty for 7 crimes
November 27, 2015: Death sentences imposed on corrupt Vietnamese officials will now be commuted to life in prison if they pay back at least 75 percent of the illegal money they made.
The change is part of a revised Penal Code that an overwhelming majority passed in the National Assembly on Friday, online newspaper VnExpress reported.
Under the revision, which takes effect July 1, 2016, the country also will abolish the death penalty for seven crimes: surrendering to the enemy, opposing order, destruction of projects of national security importance, robbery, drug possession, drug appropriation and the production and trade of fake food.
The revised law will also spare the lives of those who are 75 years old or older.
International human rights groups and some international governments have been urging Vietnam to abolish its death penalty.
Local media reports estimate that there are 500 people on death row in the country.
source: Al Jazeera |
| Belarus man sentenced to death for murder
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November 21, 2015: Belarus on Friday sentenced a man to death for murder, robbery and theft, the second time a court in the ex-Soviet country has handed down the death sentence this year.
A regional court in the western city of Grodno convicted a 29-year-old man, Ivan Kulesh, of murdering three saleswomen as well as other crimes including attempted murder, robbery and theft, the Belarussian Supreme Court and rights activists said.
Raised in an orphanage, Kulesh was unemployed. He was first convicted of theft at the age of 18.
According to prosecutors, he murdered two saleswomen in 2013 and the third with an axe a year later.
In March, a court in the city of Gomel in southeastern Belarus sentenced a man to death for the murder of a young woman.
Belarus remains the only country in Europe to exercise the death penalty.
According to estimates from rights campaigners, more than 400 people have been sentenced to death in the country since the early 1990s.
The European Union later Friday urged Belarus to join a global moratorium on the death penalty as "a first step towards its abolition."
source: AFP |
| Pakistan executions set to hit 300 since december
November 12, 2015: Pakistan has hanged 299 people since resuming executions in December last year, and could pass the 300 mark any day, according to research by international human rights organization Reprieve and Justice Project Pakistan (JPP).
Pakistan lifted a moratorium on executions in December 2014, arguing that it was a necessary move to combat terrorism. However, an investigation by the Reuters news agency published in July this year found that, of 180 people hanged since late December, “fewer than one in six were linked to militancy.”
Reprieve’s count, based on publicly available sources and information from lawyers on the ground in Pakistan, finds that on average, there has been nearly one (0.93) execution every day since the moratorium was lifted.
source: Reprieve |
| UN: In 2014 the number of people sentenced with the death penalty increased by 28 percent
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November 6, 2015: In 2014, there had unfortunately been a 28 per cent increase in the number of people condemned to death, according to data presented by the UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic.
The increase in death sentences, “represents an overall increase in Member States resorting to death penalty to prevent terrorism or drug related offences,” the UN official explained.
Simonovic said that one of the biggest drawbacks of death penalties is the “wrongful conviction” of suspects. He added that advancement in the field of investigation, such as DNA testing, has shown evidence that wrongful convictions do happen “as there is no perfect justice system.”
Simonovic said that according to several studies, there is no convincing evidence of any deterring effect death penalty has on crimes committed. “However, there is conclusive evidence that there is a correlation between death penalty and discrimination and unequal treatment against vulnerable groups,” he added.
source: New Europe |
| USA: Three key Democratic candidates take position on the death penalty
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November 2, 2015: Hillary Clinton affirmed her support for the death penalty in limited circumstances during an appearance yesterday while criticizing the heavy-handed use of the punishment in some states.
"I do not favor abolishing it, however, because I think there are certain, egregious cases that still deserve the consideration of the death penalty," she said at the "Politics & Eggs" event at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire. "But I'd like to see those be very limited and rare, as opposed to what we've seen in some states where there are a hundred people on death row." Clinton added that new evidence shows that the penalty has been "too frequently applied and, very unfortunately, oftentimes in a discriminatory way."
Both of Clinton's rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former Gov. Martin O'Malley (D-Md.) disagree.
O'Malley's campaign put out a statement shortly after Clinton's comment that highlighted his opposition to the death penalty. "The death penalty is racially-biased, ineffective deterrent to crime, and we must abolish it. Our nation should not be in the company of Iran, Iraq, China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen in carrying out the majority of public executions," he said. "That's why I abolished it in Maryland, because it is fundamentally at odds with our values. As President, I would work to build consensus to end it nationally."
Sanders has regularly voted against the death penalty while in office, according to analysis by PolitiFact. He added during an interview on the Thom Hartmann Radio Show, "I'm against capital punishment in general," he said in May. "With so much violence in this world today, I just don't think the state itself, whether the state or federal government, should be in the business of killing people. When you have people who have done terrible terrible things, they are going to spend the rest of their lives in jail and that's a pretty harsh punishment."
source: Hands off Cain |
| Italy refuses to extradite Tunis museum attack suspect beacuse of the death penalty
October 30, 2015: An Italian court on Wednesday turned down a request from Tunisia to extradite a Moroccan man suspected of having supplied weapons for the attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunis in March because he might then face the death penalty.
Italy refuses to extradite suspects to any country if there is a risk they could be executed for the crime.
Tunisia had given Italy no guarantee that Abdelmajid Touil would not face the death penalty, the Milan court of appeals' president, Giovanni Canzio, said, and he ordered him to be released from jail, where he has been for more than five months.
Police later said they issued an order to deport Touil to Morocco and that he would be held at an immigration center in Turin until then.
source: Reuters |
| Executions in Iran could top 1,000 in 2015
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October 28, 2015: Executions in Iran have been rising at "an exponential rate" since 2005 and could top 1,000 this year as the country cracks down on drug offenders, a U.N. investigator said Tuesday.
Ahmed Shaheed said in a report to the General Assembly and at media briefings that Iran executes more individuals per capita than any other country in the world.
He said the majority of executions violate international laws that ban the use of capital punishment for non-violent offenses and for juveniles. He urged Iran to impose a moratorium on the death penalty in those cases, and for all but the "most serious crimes" where it can be shown there was an intention to kill that resulted in the loss of life.
Shaheed, the special investigator on the human rights situation in Iran, said the "shocking 753 executions" carried out by Iran in 2014 — the highest number ever — will be topped this year.
In the first seven months of 2015, at least 694 people were reportedly executed by hanging, he said, and a number of human rights organizations now report that well over 800 individuals have been executed in the last 10 months. "And there are dozens more waiting a similar fate on death row," he added.
Shaheed called the rate of executions "alarming" and said Iran is "possibly on track to exceed 1,000 by the end of the year."
He said 69 percent of the executions during the first six months of 2015 were reportedly for drug-related offenses, reflecting the increasing influx of drugs and rising drug abuse in the country.
source: AP |
| Barack Obama says death penalty 'deeply troubling'
October 24, 2015: Amid new scrutiny of American capital punishment practices, President Barack Obama said in an interview released Friday he was disturbed by the practical effects of the death penalty.
While Obama said he wasn't opposed "in theory" to killing criminals convicted of heinous crimes, he said that data showing racial biases and wrongful convictions have prompted him to wonder whether the death penalty remains a legitimate tool.
"There are certain crimes that are so beyond the pale that I understand society's need to express its outrage," he said. "So I have not traditionally been opposed to the death penalty in theory. But in practice it's deeply troubling."
Obama also said recent botched executions have led him to wonder whether the application of capital punishment is still legal.
source: CNN |
| USA: Ohio delays executions into 2017 due to lack of lethal drugs
October 20, 2015: Ohio on Monday delayed all scheduled executions until 2017 at the earliest because of difficulty obtaining the drugs necessary to carry out lethal injections, the state's corrections department said.
The department said in a statement that "over the past few years it has become exceedingly difficult to secure those drugs because of severe supply and distribution restrictions."
Ohio, one of 31 U.S. states with the death penalty, has not executed an inmate since January 2014 and had planned 11 executions in 2016.
Ohio and other death penalty states have been scrambling to find chemicals for lethal injection mixes for the past several years after pharmaceutical companies, mostly in Europe, banned sales of drugs for use in executions for ethical reasons.
source: Reuters |
| Serbia: Less support for the death penalty! Public Opinion Poll, September 2015
October 16, 2015: In 2014, support for the death penalty in Serbia has topped 50% for the first time since SACP has been testing Serbian public opinion. This year, it started dropping, albeit by only 3 per cent. On the other hand, the percentage of opponents has increased more substantially, by nine per cent.
The poll („face-to-face“ survey of public opinion – omnibus) was administered by Ipsos Strategic Marketing, using the same methodology as in the past six years, on a nationally representative sample (three-stage random representative stratified sample), from 25 September to 4 October 2014. The number of respondents in the realized sample was 1,033. More about the results HERE |
| Russia: MP proposes reintroducing death penalty for terrorists
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October 15, 2015: A key member of the Communist caucus in the State Duma has urged fellow lawmakers to allow the death penalty for terrorists as an extraordinary measure and “a supreme measure of social protection.”
“All activities of any terrorists are aimed at murdering innocent people. They are perfectly aware of the criminal nature of their actions,” MP Vadim Solovyov said in a parliamentary speech on Tuesday. “These killers must know that we will apply to them the harshest measure of social protection which is the death penalty.”
Solovyov suggested that reintroducing the death penalty would help to bring down the terrorist threat in the country, adding that this threat can increase in connection with Russia’s active participation in the operation against Islamic State terrorists in Syria.
Russia introduced a moratorium on the death penalty in 1999 as it sought membership in the Council of Europe. The Constitution still allows it for especially grave crimes and after a guilty verdict by a jury court.
Many Russian politicians and officials, including the Interior Minister and the head of the top federal law enforcement agency urged to return to capital punishment as a measure against terrorists and criminals who target children. Opinion polls held in 2013 and 2014 showed the majority of people supported the return of the death penalty as an exception and for especially grave crimes.
In late 2013 an MP from the nationalist-populist LDPR party proposed to execute convicted terrorists, pedophiles and people who involve children in illegal drug use. The Lower House rejected the bill without a hearing.
source: RT |
| Mogherini and Jagland Declaration on the European and World Day against the Death Penalty
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October 10, 2015: Joint Declaration by the European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, and the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjørn Jagland, on the European and World Day against the Death Penalty, 10 October 2015:
Today, on the European and World Day against the Death Penalty, the Council of Europe and the European Union reaffirm their strong opposition to capital punishment. The death penalty is inhuman and degrading treatment, does not have any proven significant deterrent effect, and allows judicial errors to become irreversible and fatal.
No execution has been carried out in our member states for eighteen years. The Council of Europe and the European Union urge all European States to ratify the protocols to the European Convention on Human Rights which aim at the abolition of the death penalty.
The Council of Europe and the European Union deplore the continuing use of the death penalty in Belarus. They strongly urge the authorities of Belarus to commute the remaining death sentences and establish without delay a formal moratorium on executions as a first step towards abolition of the death penalty.
The Council of Europe and the European Union note with concern that the number of executions of persons for drug offences has increased during the last year in the few states that apply the death penalty to those offences. Both Organisations are particularly alarmed when this involves the execution of minors, which is contrary to international law. It is all the closer to heart because some European citizens have been executed in 2015 and others are still on death row for drug-related offences.
The Council of Europe and the European Union welcome the Resolution of the United Nations General Assembly on a moratorium on the use of the death penalty adopted on 18 December 2014. With an increasing number of votes in favour of that resolution compared to the previous four resolutions of this kind, and with almost two thirds of countries in the world having abolished the death penalty in either law or practice, there exists now a clear global trend towards the abolition of capital punishment.
source: Europa |
| EU welcomes Fiji’s abolishment of death penalty
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October 8, 2015: Fiji has been praised for being the 99th country in the world to have joined the ranks to abolish the death penalty of all crimes. The European Union has welcomed Fiji’s decision to abolish the death penalty through the R F M F Amendment Act of 2015. EU Ambassador to the Pacific, Andrew Jacobs, says this is a big step forward for the nation as we prepare to commemorate World Day against the Death Penalty on Saturday. He adds that it’s important to continue to push for the abolishment of death penalty worldwide- as it represents an inhumane, degrading treatment.
Jacobs says Fiji’s repeal of the death penalty will hopefully trigger similar positive moves in the region. The EU is calling on the remaining island countries-Tonga, Nauru and Papua New Guinea to abolish the death penalty as well.
Earlier this month, Foreign Affairs Minister Ratu Inoke Kubuabola told the U N that Fiji’s ban of on death penalty stemmed from the growing international trend to remove capital punishment. Kububola adds that this is consistent with Fiji’s new Constitution which guarantees every person the right to life.
source: FBC |
| Egypt objects to proposal at Human Rights Council for abolishing death sentence
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October 5, 2015: Egypt's UN Human Rights Council member Amr Ramadan issued a statement Saturday objecting to a proposal made by several European countries seeking to abolish internationally the death penalty.
Ramadan raised concern over pressure exerted by several countries using economic sanctions or aid withdrawal to pressure developing countries regarding the use of the death penalty, describing such moves as "unethical".
Ramadan underlined that Egypt respects the decision of some countries to end the use of the death penalty and urged them to show equal mutual respect regarding Egypt's decision not to.
A resolution on the question of the death penalty was adopted Thursday by a vote of 26 in favour, 13 against and eight abstentions.
In the resolution, it is stated: "The Council calls upon States that have not yet acceded to or ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to consider doing so."
Egypt is among 37 countries in the UN System that still enforce the death penalty.
source: Ahram |
| USA: Georgia executes first woman for 70 years
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October 30, 2015: The first woman to be executed in Georgia for 70 years has been killed by lethal injection after her legal appeals were rejected and a plea by the Pope ignored.
Gissendaner, who was scheduled to be executed on Tuesday evening at the state prison in Jackson, was convicted of murder in the February 1997 slaying of her husband. She conspired with her lover, who stabbed Douglas Gissendaner to death.
She sang Amazing Grace all they way through the injection, and asked those who were there to tell her children she died singing the song.
Gissendaner called Douglas Gissendaner an 'amazing man who died because of me', and was very emotional and sobbing in the moments leading up to her death, the witness said, adding that she said she was sorry and prayed before dying.
Attorney Susan Casey said that Gissendaner's three children are 'heartbroken' with the outcome of the appeals.
'We asked the board for an additional 24 hours so they could visit their mother,' she told CNN. 'That was refused.'
Gissendaner had simple but touching words for her three children in the hours leading up to her scheduled execution: 'I love you, I love you, I love you, and I'm so proud of you'.
Gissendaner owns up to the fact that when she entered prison she was angry, violent, and selfish but in her time behind bars she sought some sort of resolution by helping her fellow inmates.
source: Daily Mail
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| Pope Francis tells US Congress ‘every life is sacred,’ says the death penalty should be abolished
September 25, 2015: Pope Francis has called for the global abolition of the death penalty in his address to a joint meeting of the US Congress in a first for the leader of the Catholic church.
"The Golden Rule also reminds us of our responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development," Francis said in his speech to the Congress.
"This conviction has led me, from the beginning of my ministry, to advocate at different levels for the global abolition of the death penalty. I am convinced that this way is the best, since every life is sacred."
Source: WP |
| Pope Francis tells US Congress ‘every life is sacred,’ says the death penalty should be abolished
September 25, 2015: Pope Francis has called for the global abolition of the death penalty in his address to a joint meeting of the US Congress in a first for the leader of the Catholic church.
"The Golden Rule also reminds us of our responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development," Francis said in his speech to the Congress.
"This conviction has led me, from the beginning of my ministry, to advocate at different levels for the global abolition of the death penalty. I am convinced that this way is the best, since every life is sacred."
Source: WP |
| Prisoners on death row to get free legal aid
September 21, 2015: Convicted criminals on death row will be entitled to free legal representation under a new rule drafted by the Ministry of Justice.
The ministry will assign lawyers to condemned prisoners who cannot afford one during the review of their sentences to ensure equal access to justice.
The source said officials from the ministry and the high court are "finalizing some detailed implementation measures and the rule will be released in the next few months".
Under Chinese law, all death sentences must be reviewed by the Supreme People's Court before defendants can be executed. Currently, defendants who cannot afford to hire lawyers are not guaranteed representation during a death penalty review.
source: China Daily |
| Serbia: Where are former death row inmates today
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September 17, 2015: Serbia will soon introduce life imprisonment for the most serious criminals. Those criminals, 15 years ago would be sentenced to death. At the end of the nineties, a few dozen of death sentences has been verdict in Serbia, but only 12 verdicts were final until the moment when the death penalty was finally abolished in 2002.
In the official records of the Directorate for Enforcement of Criminal Sanctions of the Ministry of Justice is 10 names that in the nineties were on the list for execution. Most of them are now in the new prision at Padinska Skela. This prision is considered to be one of the safest prison in the Balkans.
The most serious sentence after the death penalty at that time was 20 years of imprisonment. However, the courts brought for each of them new sentence of 40 years of imprisonment, which was introduced in 2001 as a "substitute" for the death penalty. Most of them appealed because the penalty of 40 years of imprisonment was not in the Criminal Code at the time when they committed the brutal crimes.
Behind the walls of a new prison for the most serious convicts at Padinska Skela are former death row inmates: Ilija Vuji, Radovan Joksi, Zoran Jevremovi, Borislav oli, Miroslav Stojadinovi, Slavoljub Veli i Slavoljub Jovanovi. In "Zabela" are Ljubomir Stevanovi i Azis Musliju and in Nišu is Mlaa Milovanovi.
Johan Drozdek was the last person executed in Serbia at February 14, 1992. He was sentenced to death for the rape and brutal murder of the girl.
In the early seventies in the Central prison, Dragoljub Guti and Sava Lisovac was the last prisoners executed in Belgrade. They were convicted for the murder of Belgrade taxi driver Tiosav Jankovi at 1969.
source: Politika |
| Bulgaria: 4,200 signatures collected in Veliko Tarnovo, Gorna Oryahovitsa in favour of death penalty
September 15, 2015: Over 4,200 signatures have been collected in the towns of Veliko Tarnovo and Gorna Oryahovitsa in favour of death penalty reinstatement. Petko Ganchev, who organised the petition, announced the news, speaking at a protest staged Monday in front of the court house in district centre Veliko Tarnovo.
The District Court of Veliko Tarnovo is to sit Monday and Tuesday on the trial against Iliyan Zdravkov who murdered this spring 23-year old student Veronika Zdravkova.
Ganchev commented some 200 signatures had been collected in Veliko Tarnovo and about 4,000 – in Gorna Oryahovitsa.
source: Focus |
| Malawi to have referendum on death penalty
September 10, 2015: The government of Malawi wants to conduct a referendum on whether to abolish the death penalty in the penal code or not.
According to the country's Attorney General Kalekeni Kaphale, government could not make a judgment on its own on the matter saying that is why it wants the citizens of the country to make a ruling on whether the penalty should be eliminated in a referendum or let the members of parliament mark the way forward.
Over the past 2 decades, both international and local human rights defenders have pressurised the government to abolish the death penalty.
Since attaining democracy in 1994, Malawi has never executed a death sentence on any convict despite the penalty in the country's Penal Code.
source: malawi24
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| Saudi Arabia: 130th execution this year carried out
September 6, 2015: Saudi authorities put to death a convicted murderer, bringing to 130 the number of executions in the kingdom so far this year.
Saudi citizen Mashari al-Shammari was found guilty of killing fellow tribesman Sufouq al-Shammari in a frenzied attack with a gun, a dagger and a stick, the interior ministry said in a statement to a news agency. He was put to death in the northeastern town of Hafr al-Baten, close to the Iraqi border.
The 130 executions carried out in Saudi Arabia so far this year far exceeds the 87 counted in the whole of 2014.
source: Hands off Cain |
| China exempts 9 crimes from death penalty
September 1, 2015: China's top legislature on Saturday adopted amendments to the Criminal Law, removing the death penalty for nine crimes.
The nine crimes punishable by death include smuggling weapons, ammunition, nuclear materials or counterfeit currency; counterfeiting currency; raising funds by means of fraud; arranging for or forcing another person to engage in prostitution; obstructing a police officer or a person on duty from performing his duties; and fabricating rumors to mislead others during wartime.
After removing the death penalty for these crimes, those convicted will face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
Under the amended Criminal Law, which will take effect on Nov. 1, the number of crimes punishable by death is 46.
source: CRI |
| Chad Executes 10 Boko Haram Members 1 Day After Verdict
August 30, 2015: Chad executed by firing squad 10 members of Boko Haram on Saturday, the security minister said, marking the first use of the death penalty since the country bolstered its anti-terror measures last month.
The 10 men were sentenced to death on Friday after being convicted of crimes including murder and the use of explosives.
Last September, Chad drew praise from rights groups for a draft penal code that abolished capital punishment. The International Federation for Human Rights said at the time that the country had observed a moratorium on the death penalty since 1991 with the exception of nine executions that took place in November 2003. But anti-terror measures approved by lawmakers last month in response to the recent attacks brought the death penalty back.
source: NYT |
| Iraqi Kurdistan hangs 3, breaking death penalty moratorium
August 25, 2015: A Kurdish man and his two wives, convicted of abducting and murdering two schoolgirls, were hanged last week, the first judicial executions in the Kurdistan Region since a death penalty moratorium in 2008.
They were hanged for the deaths of two 11-year-old girls, Avan Haji and Havin Hasan, who were kidnapped in Zakho before being abused and murdered.
In the region’s three provinces, there are now 205 prisoners who have been sentenced to death. The number is higher than in any year since the 1990s, when the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) established its autonomous courts, virtually independent of Iraq’s judiciary.
source: RUDAW |
| Egypt's al-Sisi imposes strict anti-terrorism laws
August 17, 2015: Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has approved stringent new counter-terrorism laws to fight a growing jihadist insurgency.
The laws establish special courts and offer additional protection from legal consequences for military and police officers who have used force.
They also impose the death penalty for anyone found guilty of setting up or leading a terrorist group.
Rights groups say the legislation will be used by Mr Sisi to crush dissent.
President Sisi vowed to bring in tough new counter-terrorism legislation in June, following the assassination by car bomb of Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat.
source: BBC |
| USA: Connecticut's Highest Court Abolishes State's Death Row
August 14, 2015: Connecticut's highest court on Thursday ordered the state's death row emptied out, ruling that a 2012 law abolishing capital punishment for any future crimes must be applied to the 11 men facing execution for offenses committed before it took effect.
In a sharply divided 4-3 ruling, the court declared the death penalty violates the state's constitution, "no longer comports with contemporary standards of decency and no longer serves any legitimate penological purpose."
The ruling came in an appeal from Eduardo Santiago, whose attorneys successfully argued that any execution carried out after the 2012 repeal would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Santiago, whose first death sentence was overturned, faced a second penalty hearing and the possibility of lethal injection for a 2000 murder-for-hire killing in West Hartford.
Source: AP |
| France should bring back death penalty for terrorism
August 12, 2015: France has to reinstate death penalty for terrorism in order to protect itself from the Islamic State (ISIL) militant group, Member of the European Parliament Jean-Luc Schaffhauser told Sputnik on Wednesday.
France has seen several major terrorist attacks by Islamists, since the beginning of the year, including the deadly January shootings in Paris and a failed attack on a gas factory near the city of Lyon in June.
"France has to protect itself from ISIL and has to take some tough decisions like deprivation of the citizenship of the French jihadists, eviction of their families, allow no return to France to jihadists, and if they do, we have to bring them to justice and restore death penalty for terrorism," the lawmaker said.
Capital punishment was abolished in France in 1981.
source: Sputnik |
| Britain's £13m overseas war on drugs 'could be helping fund executions'
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August 11, 2015: Thirty-seven public figures, including Sir Richard Branson, Lord Macdonald QC, the former director of public prosecutions, and Alistair Carmichael, the former Scottish secretary, have called for an urgent inquiry into the UK’s role in anti-narcotics operations abroad, which they say have helped to fund executions in countries such as Pakistan and Iran.
Last year, the government spent almost £13m on anti-narcotics operations in Pakistan. They have resulted in 112 drug offenders in Pakistan facing the death penalty in 2015. Iran has executed at least 394 drugs offenders this year and Saudi Arabia has beheaded at least 47 non-violent drugs offenders.
The 37 people and organisations have signed a letter to Keith Vaz, chair of the home affairs select committee, urging him to launch an inquiry into the Home Office’s financial and operational support for overseas drug operations, which they claim leads to grave rights abuses, especially in countries where the death penalty is applied for drugs offences.
source: The Guardian |
| Pakistan executions top 200
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August 6, 2015: The Pakistani government has executed 206 people since resuming executions in December, according to figures collated by Reprieve.
The rate at which executions have taken place in Pakistan since December has taken the country beyond some of the world’s most prolific executioners, including Saudi Arabia and the US. The Pakistani government’s claim, made repeatedly since December, that it is executing ‘terrorists’ has been called into question, including most recently by a Reuters report finding that the vast majority of those executed – an estimated 70 per cent – had no links to militancy. At least three juveniles have now been executed since December.
Last week, a group of UN experts – including the Special Rapporteurs on summary executions, torture and child rights – urged Pakistan to halt all further executions. They said that “most” of the planned hangings “fall short of international norms”, and called on the government “to continue the moratorium on actual executions and to put in place a legal moratorium on the death penalty, with a view to its abolition.”
source: Reprive |
| Italian anti-death penalty group honors Pope Francis
August 1, 2015: An Italian anti-death penalty group has honored Pope Francis with the prize "Abolitionist of the Year" for his strong position against the death penalty and other forms of "inhumane and degrading" punishments.
"Hands off Cain" on Friday cited Francis' moves to remove from the Vatican criminal code life sentences, which he called "a death penalty in disguise." The pope has frequently lashed out against the death penalty, calling it "inadmissible" no matter the offense.
The Italian group in its annual report said the number of executions carried out worldwide rose to 3,576 last year from 3,511 a year earlier, with China carrying out two-thirds of the total. China was followed by Iran with at least 800 and Saudi Arabia with 88. It said 33 people were executed in the U.S.
source: AP |
| Tunisia votes to bring in death penalty for terrorists
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July 30, 2015: The Tunisian parliament has adopted a new "anti-terror" law aimed at beefing up authorities' powers following recent deadly attacks claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.
Following three days of debate, the law was adopted with 172 members of parliament voting in favour and ten abstentions.
The new laws impose the death penalty as a possible sentence for a range of "terror" offences and will allow authorities to detain terror suspects for up to 15 days without access to a lawyer.
The president of the parliamentary assembly, Mohamed Ennaceur, called the passing of the law a "historic" moment and said it would "reassure" the nation's citizens.
The new legislation comes after a gunman massacred 38 tourists on a Tunisian beach in an attack in Sousse claimed by ISIL on June 26.
In March, an attack on the Bardo museum in the Tunis that was also claimed by ISIL left 21 tourists dead.
The death penalty already exists under Tunisian law, for crimes such as murder and rape, but no one has been hanged since 1991.
Rights groups had hoped parliament would leave it out of the anti-terror bill.
Advocacy groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have condemned the bill.
Describing it as draconian, they said the bill's definition of terrorist crimes is too vague and that it fails to adequately safeguard the rights of defendants and could undermine freedoms.
source: Al Jazeera |
| Amnesty International reveals Iran’s ‘staggering’ execution spree
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July 24, 2015: The Iranian authorities are believed to have executed an astonishing 694 people between 1 January and 15 July 2015, said Amnesty International today, in an unprecedented spike in executions in the country.
“Iran’s staggering execution toll for the first half of this year paints a sinister picture of the machinery of the state carrying out premeditated, judicially-sanctioned killings on a mass scale,” said Said Boumedouha, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme.
“If Iran’s authorities maintain this horrifying execution rate we are likely to see more than 1,000 state-sanctioned deaths by the year’s end.”
The surge in executions reveals just how out of step Iran is with the rest of the world when it comes to the use of the death penalty - 140 countries worldwide have now rejected its use in law or practice.
Executions in Iran did not even stop during the holy month of Ramadan. In a departure from established practice, at least four people were executed over the past month.
“The Iranian authorities should be ashamed of executing hundreds of people with complete disregard for the basic safeguards of due process,” said Said Boumedouha.
“The use of the death penalty is always abhorrent, but it raises additional concerns in a country like Iran where trials are blatantly unfair.”
The reasons behind this year’s shocking surge in executions are unclear but the majority of those put to death in 2015 were convicted on drug charges.
source: AI |
| Gambia to reinstate firing squads: president
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July 20, 2015: Gambia's President Yahya Jammeh has warned that death row inmates should expect to have their sentences implemented, apparently signalling an end to a three-year unofficial moratorium on executions.
The military strongman said in a meeting with religious leaders broadcast on state television late on Friday that the move was a response to the spiralling murder rate.
No official crime statistics are released by the government of mainland Africa's smallest country, which is surrounded by Senegal except for a narrow strip of Atlantic coast.
Jammeh announced in August 2012 that all death row prisoners would be executed by mid-September that year.
A week later the first batch of nine convicts were executed by firing squad.
The killings caused international outrage, especially in Senegal, which had two citizens among those put to death.
The country currently allows the death penalty only for people convicted of causing someone's death through violence or the administration of toxic substances.
The government announced in June however it would hold a referendum on expanding the list of offences punishable by death to any crime deemed sufficiently serious by parliament.
All Gambians aged over 18 will be entitled to take part in the vote, a date for which has yet to be set.
source: AFP
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| Zambia: President Edgar Lungu gives death row inmates life sentences
July 17, 2015: Zambia's President Edgar Lungu on Thursday reduced the sentence of 332 prisoners awaiting death by hanging to life imprisonment to ease maximum security prison congestion.
Crimes that could be punishable by death include murder, treason and robbery with a deadly weapon, although Zambia has not executed any prisoners since 1997.
During a visit to Mukobeko Maximum Security prison, about 180 km north of Lusaka, Lungu said it was unacceptable for a prison with a capacity of 51 inmates to house hundreds.
source: VOA |
| UAE: Woman executed for killing American teacher
July 14, 2015: The United Arab Emirates executed a UAE woman on Monday who had been convicted of killing an American kindergarten teacher and trying to bomb an American-Egyptian doctor in militant-inspired attacks, the state news agency WAM reported.
Ala'a Badr Abdullah al-Hashemi, 31, had also been found guilty of setting up a social media account to spread militant ideology with the aim of undermining the government, and of giving money to militant organisations for attacks, WAM said.
Hashemi was sentenced to death on June 29 on terrorism charges for stabbing Romanian-born Ibolya Ryan, a mother of 11-year-old twins, in the toilet of an Abu Dhabi shopping mall on December 14 and for attempting to bomb an American-Egyptian doctor.
source: Reuters
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| Israel: Netanyahu orders Likud ministers not to back death penalty for terrorists
July 13, 2015: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday ordered his Likud ministers not to support a proposed bill that would impose the death penalty on terrorists who kill Israelis. As a compromise with Likud hardliners, Netanyahu announced he would form an advisory panel to debate the controversial issue.
Netanyahu's decision effectively buries the proposal by the Yisrael Beitenu party of former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, which was scheduled to come up before a 10-member ministerial committee is tasked with deciding which laws the government backs in the Knesset. In light of Netanyahu's decision, the ministerial panel has put off a vote on the legislation.
Lieberman announced in response that he would nonetheless bring the legislation for a Knesset vote this week. Without Likud support, the bill is unlikely to pass.
source: i24news
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| Israel: Jewish Home backs death penalty for terrorists
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July 10, 2015: Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett on Wednesday voiced support for a bill that would impose the death penalty on terrorists convicted on murder charges.
The bill, proposed by Yisrael Beytenu Knesset freshman Sharon Gal, was a plank in the Orthodox-nationalist party’s platform leading up to the March elections. The bill will be brought to the Ministerial Committee on Legislation on Sunday.
“A murderous terrorist, such as the murderers of the Fogel family [in the West Bank settlement of Itamar in 2011], needs to know that he will end his life like he cuts down [the lives of others],” Bennett said. “It’s moral and it’s right.”
While the bill tentatively has the support of Jewish Home’s eight seats, and Yisrael Beytenu’s six, it remains unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, with its 30 lawmakers in the Knesset, will get behind the measure.
The bill proposes that someone convicted of murder on terrorist charges would be sentenced to death by an Israeli civilian court. Meanwhile, anyone convicted of such charges in the West Bank, which is under Israeli military control, would receive a similar sentence from a military court.
In theory, capital punishment exists in Israel — for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, treason and crimes against the Jewish people — but it has only been exercised with the execution of Adolf Eichman in 1962.
source: Times of Israel
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| Tahiri comments the chance to restore death penalty in Albania
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July 7, 2015: Minister of Interior Affairs of Albania Saimir Tahiri has praised calls to restore the death penalty, after the execution of two Czech tourists.
"The call for death penalty? It is not a vindictive instinct, but is the strongest sign that people don't trust the justice system. It is also the biggest encouragement for reform.
Everyone that has suggested the restoring of death penalty, does not seek revenge, but justice. The disbelief that the justice system will not do justice, leads many people to believe that this is the only way.
We can not choose the simplest way. We need to reform the justice system, while we need to monitor every decision of any judge in the country and report any abuse. I officially proposed two initiatives. The first proposal brings mechanical (mathematical) unity of penalties. If the proposal would be adopted, the criminal will be stay in prison for the two (or more) criminal offenses consumed.
The second proposal provides the isolation of high-risk convicts, removing any chance for them to return to the society as more trained criminals. "
source: Albeu |
| 1,400 North Koreans executed under Kim Jong-un from 2008 to 2014
July 2, 2015: Nearly 1,400 North Koreans were executed under the Kim Jong-un regime from 2008 to 2014, according to a report released by the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU), Wednesday.
KINU said its findings were based on the testimony of 221 people who defected from North Korea to South Korea in 2014.
"We believe there were a number of executions that were not witnessed by those whom we interviewed," an official at KINU's strategy and public relations team said on condition of anonymity.
The report showed that North Korea's state-perpetrated violations of human rights are still prevalent despite the United Nations' pressure to end its crimes against humanity.
In particular, the reclusive state increasingly has executed people in recent years for watching and circulating films, TV dramas and other media content produced by South Korea, the report said.
source: Korean Times |
| UN rights experts urge USA moratorium on death penalty
June 29, 2015: United Nations human rights experts appealed to the United States on Friday to impose a moratorium on the death penalty for federal crimes, including the sentence imposed on the Boston Marathon bomber, with a view to abolishing the practice.
"This decision contradicts the trends toward abolishing the death penalty in the country in law and practice," U.N. special rapporteur on executions Christof Heyns and U.N. torture investigator Juan Mendez said in a joint statement.
More than three-quarters of countries worldwide have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice, the experts said.
There is "no proof" that the death penalty has a deterrent effect and many executions have resulted in "degrading spectacles", they added.
source: Reuters |
| Japan: Murder convict executed
June 26, 2015: Japan executed a man who robbed and killed a woman after plotting the crime with accomplices he met online.
The execution brings to 12 the total number of death sentences carried out since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took power in 2012.
Tsukasa Kanda, 44, was hanged for killing 31-year-old Rie Isogai in Nagoya in 2007.
He met his two accomplices via a mobile phone-based web service and the three of them together devised a plan to target a random woman victim.
Kanda's accomplices are serving life sentences. Kanda did not appeal his death sentence after the original district court ruling.
source: Hands off Cain
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| Death penalty to be restored in Ukraine
June 24, 2015: A group of deputies of the Ukrainian legislative body Verkhovna Rada are going to consider draft resolution on death penalty restoration in the country.
Yuriy Bereza, MP of the Ukrainian Parliament, who works out the draft, claimed, that he intents on it to have a limited action, applied only during military operation.
The death penalty was first abolished in Ukraine in 1995.
The capital punishment abolition is an indispensable condition for the EU member-states.
source: Pravda |
| Germany says will not extradite anyone facing death penalty
June 22, 2015: No one will be extradited from Germany if they face the death penalty, a spokesman for the German foreign ministry said on Monday when asked about an Al Jazeera journalist who has been remanded in custody in Berlin at Egypt's request.
"I don't think one can say this loudly enough: Of course, nobody will be extradited from Germany who risks being sentenced to death abroad," Martin Schaefer told a news conference on Monday.
A Cairo court sentenced Ahmed Mansour, who has dual Egyptian and British citizenship, to 15 years in prison in absentia last year on a charge of torturing a lawyer in 2011 in Tahrir Square, the focus of the uprising that toppled veteran autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
source: Reuters
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| Egyptian court upholds death sentence for Morsi
June 17, 2015: An Egyptian court has upheld a death sentence against the ousted president Mohamed Morsi in a trial stemming from his escape from prison during the 2011 uprising that forced Hosni Mubarak from power.
Tuesday’s ruling reaffirms an initial decision in the case in May, in which Morsi and more than 100 others were sentenced to death. In keeping with Egyptian law, the ruling was referred to the grand Mufti, a top religious authority, in advance of Tuesday’s session. The verdict can still be challenged in Egypt’s highest appeals court.
The ruling was issued in a makeshift courtroom in the grounds of a police academy on the outskirts of Cairo. In television footage, Morsi and other defendants appeared inside a metal and glass cage in the courtroom, dressed in colour-coded prison uniforms: white for those awaiting judgment, blue for those sentenced to prison, red for those sentenced to death.
source: The Guardian
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| Iran: Victim’s family forgives young killer at gallows
June 15, 2015: On sunday, the execution of a 22-year-old man was halted at the very last minute in Arak, the capital of Markazi Province, the IRNA reported.
The unidentified convict had killed his aunt and her husband in 2013 when stealing from their home.
The victim’s family forgave him early in the morning when he was brought to the site of his execution.
Over the last year, the prison authorities in Markazi Province have been successful in giving new life to eight other convicts by persuading victim’s families to forgive them.
source: Tehran Times
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| Pakistan executes man who was 15 when convicted of murder
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June 10, 2015: Aftab Bahadur, a 38-year-old Christian who spent 22 years on death row, was hanged in the early hours despite pleas from international human rights groups and church leaders.
They had argued that as he was just 15 at the time he was convicted of murdering three people he should not have been eligible for capital punishment. At the time of his conviction in 1992 it was legal to sentence him to death, although the age was raised to 18 in 2000.
An official at Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail said Bahadur protested his innocence until the end. “With tears in his eyes he was asking for mercy and repeating again and again that he was innocent,” the official said.
His lawyers claim Bahadur was tortured by police into confessing to having killed a woman called Sabiha Baria and her two sons.
Two eyewitnesses in the case later retracted their testimony which they claimed they gave under torture, human rights group Reprieve has said.
Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister, lifted the moratorium on the death penalty last year, a day after Pakistani Taliban gunmen attacked a school and killed 134 pupils and 19 adults.
source: The Guardian |
| Egyptian court sentences 11 people to death in retrial over deadly soccer riot
June 9, 2015: A criminal court in Egypt's coastal city of Port Said has sentenced 11 people to death over a 2012 soccer riot that left more than 70 dead and several hundreds injured.
Tuesday's verdict came at the end of the retrial of 73 defendants in a case that sparked deadly riots in 2013 in Port Said, prompting then-President Mohammed Morsi to declare a state of emergency in the city.
Also Tuesday, the court sentenced 40 defendants to up to 15 years in prison and acquitted the rest.
The earlier trial ended in March 2013, when 21 defendants were sentenced to death, while others received jail terms that ranged from one to 25 years in prison. Twenty-eight were acquitted.
The verdicts can be appealed.
The February 2012 riot began at the end of a league match in Port Said between Cairo's al-Ahly, Egypt's most successful club, and home side el-Masry. It was Egypt's worst soccer disaster and among the world's deadliest.
source: AP |
| USA: Most Americans want their state to allow the death penalty
June 6, 2015: Most Americans don't want to see their state follow in Nebraska's footsteps and ban executions, a new HuffPost/YouGov poll finds, but the degree to which people support the death penalty is split along partisan and demographic lines.
A majority in both parties support the death penalty, but Republicans do so more enthusiastically, with 79 percent in favor, compared to 55 percent of Democrats.
There's also a significant split by age, with Americans under 30 notably less comfortable with the death penalty than their older peers, and far less likely to say that it should be imposed in more cases.
Sixty-five percent of Americans say they favor the death penalty for convicted murderers, while just 25 percent oppose it. Sixty-one percent want their own state to allow for death sentences.
Just 18 percent believe death sentences are handed down too often, while 42 percent say the death penalty it isn't imposed enough, and 20 percent that the current level is just about right.
source: Huffington Post |
| Hungary could be thrown out of EU if it brings back death penalty
June 2, 2015: Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, has warned that Hungary could be thrown out of the EU if it goes ahead with proposals to reintroduce the death penalty.
In an interview with Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, Mr Juncker on Monday warned that "if Hungary wanted to introduce the death penalty, that would be a ground for divorce."
“A reason for divorce! One of my political beliefs is that there shall be no death penalty. Anyone who introduces the death penalty has no place in the European Union.”
His government has stressed it has no plans to reintroduce the death penalty, and says it only broached the subject because of increased public debate surrounding it.
Mr Orban said late last week he is ready to talk with Brussels but “is against anyone driving the country out of the EU and Nato”.
"For us Hungarians they are our family,” he said.
Hungary abolished capital punishment in 1990, and joined EU in 2004.
source: Telegraph |
| Finland's new justice minister supportive of death penalty
May 29, 2015: Finland's incoming justice minister from the populist Finns Party says he approves of the death penalty in "some circumstances."
Jari Lindstrom was expressing his personal opinion and not speaking on behalf of the incoming government. He said Thursday that capital punishment could be acceptable for "extremely heavy crimes, such as against small children."
The 49-year-old lawmaker says the death penalty wasn't "one of the main issues" on his agenda when he is due to take up his ministerial post on Friday.
The death penalty, banned in Finland in 1949, has been abolished in all EU countries.
Lindstrom is one of four new ministers from the EU-skeptic Finns Party, which is in a ruling coalition for the first time.
source: AP |
| USA: Nebraska abolishes death penalty
May 28, 2015: Nebraska abolished the death penalty on Wednesday over the governor's objections in a move pushed through the Legislature with unusual backing from conservatives who oppose capital punishment for religious, financial and practical reasons.
Senators in the one-house Legislature voted 30-19 to override the veto of Gov. Pete Ricketts, a Republican who supports the death penalty.
The vote makes Nebraska the first traditionally conservative state to eliminate the punishment since North Dakota in 1973.
Nebraska hasn't executed an inmate since a 1997 electrocution, and the state has never done so with its current lethal injection protocol.
source: AP
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| Saudi Arabia: 88th person executed this year
May 27, 2015: Saudi Arabia executed three people, raising the total number of executions to at least 88 so far this year, and surpassing the total for all of 2014, when 87 people were put to death.
Awad al-Rowaili and Lafi al-Shammary, two Saudis who were convicted of smuggling amphetamines, were beheaded in the region of Jawf, the Interior Ministry said in statements carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.
Another Saudi, Mohammed al-Shihri, was separately put to death in the region of Asir for murder.
Around half of Saudi Arabia’s executions involved foreigners. Also among this year's dead are at least eight Yemenis, 10 Pakistanis, Syrians, Jordanians, and individuals from Myanmar, the Philippines, India, Chad, Eritrea and Sudan.
A surge in executions began towards the end of the reign of King Abdullah, who died on 23 January, accelerating this year under his successor King Salman.
source: Hands off Cain
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| USA: Nebraska poised to abolish death penalty
May 21, 2015: Nebraska lawmakers gave final approval Wednesday to a bill abolishing the death penalty, with enough votes to override a promised veto from Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts.
The 32-15 vote was bolstered by conservative senators who oppose capital punishment for fiscal, religious and pragmatic reasons.
If that vote holds in a veto override, Nebraska would become the first conservative state to repeal the death penalty since 1973.
Nebraska hasn't executed a prisoner since 1997, and some lawmakers have argued that constant legal challenges will prevent the state from doing so again.
Ricketts has vowed a veto, and announced last week that the state has bought new lethal injection drugs to resume executions.
Maryland was the last state to abolish capital punishment, in 2013. Thirty-two states have death penalty laws.
source: NBC |
| Executioners Wanted in Saudi Arabia
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May 20, 2015: This week the Saudi Ministry of Civil Service began advertising for eight additional swordsmen to conduct executions, lob the hands off of thieves, and perform similar duties. Beheadings are actually mandated under Sharia Law, although Saudi leaders considered adopting firing squads as an alternative in 2013 due to a lack of swordsmen.
No previous experience is necessary, the ministry notes. The job description, which mentions "religious functions," includes "implementation of the rule of murder by Islamic law after the issuance of the Islamic ruling," and "functions of the perpetrators of retribution."
Human Rights Watch reports that the Saudis already have beheaded 85 people this year, just a few short of the nation's total for all of 2014. The United States, with about ten times the population, executed 35 people last year.
Execution is not a punishment limited to murderers in Saudi, however, Crimes punishable also include rape, adultery, blasphemy, drug crimes and sorcery.
source: USA Today |
| UN chief Ban Ki-moon concerned at death sentence for Egypt's Mohamed Morsi
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May 19, 2015: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed serious concern today after an Egyptian court sentenced ousted president Mohamed Morsi to death.
Morsi was among more than 100 defendants given the death penalty Saturday for their role in a mass jailbreak during the 2011 uprising.
"The secretary-general understands that the verdict is still subject to an appeal," said UN spokesman Farhan Haq.
"He will continue to monitor the process very closely." Ban reaffirmed the United Nations position against capital punishment.
The UN chief also "underscored the importance of all parties taking steps to promote - and avoiding those that could further undermine - peace, stability and the rule of law in the region."
The United States and the European Union also expressed concern after the verdict was announced against Morsi, the Islamist president who held office for a year until he was overthrown by the military in 2013.
The ruling against Mursi is not final until June 2. All capital sentences are referred to Egypt's top religious authority, the Grand Mufti, for a non-binding opinion, and are also subject to legal appeal.
source: ET |
| Ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi sentenced to death
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May 16, 2015: An Egyptian court sentenced ousted President Mohammed Morsi and over 100 others to death Saturday over a mass prison break during the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak and later brought Morsi's Islamist movement to power.
Morsi already is serving a 20-year sentence following his conviction on April 21 on charges linked to the killing of protesters outside a Cairo presidential palace in December 2012.
As is customary in capital punishment cases, Judge Shaaban el-Shami referred his death sentence on Morsi and the others to the nation's top Muslim theologian, or mufti, for his non-binding opinion.
The court is also seeking the death penalty for Khairat Shater, a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood for conspiring with foreign militant groups, according to Reuters.
Many of those 122 sentenced to death were tried in absentia, including Yusuf Qaradawi, an Egyptian Islamic theologian, who is now living in Qatar.
The former president escaped a death sentence in a separate case before el-Shami related to allegations that Morsi, several of his aides and leaders of the Brotherhood allegedly passed state secrets to foreign groups, including Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah, during his year in office. A total of 16 senior Brotherhood leaders and aides were sentenced to death by el-Shami in that case.
source: AP |
| USA: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev gets death penalty in Boston marathon bombing
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May 15, 2015: In a sweeping rejection of the defense case, a federal jury on Friday condemned Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death for his role in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings.
The jury found that death was the appropriate punishment for six of 17 capital counts — all six related to Mr. Tsarnaev’s planting of a pressure-cooker bomb, which his lawyers never disputed.
The bombings transformed the marathon, a cherished rite of spring, from a sunny holiday on Boylston Street to a smoky battlefield scene, with shrapnel flying, bodies dismembered and blood saturating the sidewalks; three people were killed, while 17 people lost at least one leg. More than 240 others sustained serious injuries, some of them life-altering.
The jury took 14 hours to reach its sentence, which some legal specialists said was relatively quick in a case this complex.
It was the first time a federal jury had sentenced a terrorist to death in the post-Sept. 11 era, according to Kevin McNally, director of the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project, which coordinates the defense in capital punishment cases.
With death sentences, an appeal is all but inevitable, and the process generally takes years if not decades to play out. Of the 80 federal defendants sentenced to death since 1988, only three, including Timothy J. McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, have been executed. Most cases are still tied up in appeal. In the rest, the sentences were vacated or the defendants died or committed suicide.The Tsarnaev verdict goes against the grain in Massachusetts, which has no death penalty for state crimes and where polls showed that residents overwhelmingly favored life in prison for Mr. Tsarnaev. Many respondents said that life in prison for one so young would be a fate worse than death, and some worried that execution would make him a martyr.
source: NYT |
| Russian State Duma refuses to institute capital punishment for terrorism
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May 14, 2015: Russia's State Duma has rejected in the 1st reading on Tuesday the initiative of member of the Liberal Democratic Party faction Roman Khudyakov on instituting capital punishment for terrorism.
The lawmaker suggested making relevant amendments to articles 78, 83, 87, 88 and 205 of the Russian Criminal Code. In his opinion, "there's a considerable gap in the criminal legislation between the degree of social danger of the crime committed and the punishment for it." "More than 1/2 of citizens support the institution of the death penalty for terrorism, while the criminal legislation doesn't envisage capital punishment for it," Khudyakov said, ITAR TASS reports.
However, the State Duma Committee on Civil, Criminal, Arbitration and Procedural Legislation spoke against the amendments. The committee concluded that the concept of the initiative ran counter to the current legislation and Russia's international commitments, specifically, Protocol No.6 to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms concerning the Abolition of the Death Penalty.
source: news.az |
| Hungary's Orban: death penalty should be up to each country
May 9, 2015: Hungary's prime minister says that each member country of the European Union should be allowed to decide for itself about the use of the death penalty.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose statement last week that the issue of capital punishment should be "kept on the agenda" was strongly rejected by EU officials, said Friday that the EU should follow the example of the United States, where states decide individually about the issue.
Orban said "there is no reason" for countries in Europe with different crimes rates and threat levels to think the same about the death penalty.
Orban said on state radio that he was "on the side of life," but that the death penalty was needed if it was the only way to protect "law-abiding, innocent people."
source: AP |
| Hollande calls for death penalty ban
May 6, 2015: French President Francois Hollande called on Tuesday for abolition of the death penalty, speaking in Saudi Arabia which this year has seen a large rise in the number of executions.
The ultra-conservative Gulf kingdom has executed 78 locals and foreigners, compared with 87 during all of 2014, according to an AFP count.
Hollande said he would make the call to ban executions “everywhere, and regardless who is involved. And I do it here too” from Riyadh.
Just hours before Hollande's arrival on Monday in Saudi Arabia, the kingdom beheaded five foreigners for murder and robbery.
Hollande, who attended the Gulf Cooperation Council summit in Riyadh on Tuesday, said: “France is campaigning across the world to abolish the death penalty.”
“The death penalty should be banned,” he told reporters after meeting GCC leaders including Saudi King Salman.
London-based Amnesty ranked Saudi Arabia among the world's top three executioners of 2014.
source: Yahoo News |
| Five foreigners beheaded in Saudi Arabia
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May 4, 2015: Saudi Arabia Monday beheaded five foreigners for murder and robbery, an unusually high number that adds to what Amnesty International has called a "macabre spike" in the kingdom's executions.
Two Yemenis, a Chadian, an Eritrean and a Sudanese were put to death in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, the interior ministry said in a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency.
It identified them as Yemenis Khaled Fetini and Ibrahim Nasser, Hassan Omar from Chad, Eritrean Salem Idriss and Abdel Wahhab Abdel Maeen from Sudan.
They were all convicted of killing the Indian guard at a business and stealing money from the safe.
Their beheadings bring to 78 the number of locals and foreigners executed in Saudi Arabia this year, compared with 87 for all of last year.
Normally one or two people are executed at a time.
London-based Amnesty ranked Saudi Arabia among the world's top three executioners of 2014.
Drug trafficking, rape, murder, apostasy and armed robbery are all punishable by death under the Gulf nation's strict version of Islamic sharia law.
The interior ministry has cited deterrence as a reason for carrying out the punishment.
source: TDS |
| Hungary says 'does not plan' to introduce death penalty
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May 2, 2015: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban “does not plan to introduce the death penalty,” his chief of staff Janos Lazar said Thursday, after strong EU criticism of Orban’s call for debate on its reintroduction.
Orban informed European Parliament (EP) president Martin Schulz by telephone that the government would debate the issue, but “the prime minister does not plan to introduce it in the country,” Lazar said.The EP confirmed in a statement that Orban had “assured the President that the Hungarian government will respect and honour all European treaties and legislation”
The controversy first erupted on Tuesday when Orban pushed for a debate on bringing back capital punishment, saying existing penalties in Hungary were too soft.
Orban’s comments immediately sparked a sharp response after a series of spats with Brussels over his hardline stance on human rights and civil society norms – key values for the European Union.
Earlier, European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker had warned Orban that he faced a “fight” if he reintroduced the death penalty.
“Mr Orban should immediately make clear that this is not his intention and would it be his intention, it would be a fight,” Juncker told a press conference, stressing that the EU charter forbids the death penalty in the 28-nation bloc.
Hungary abolished capital punishment after the end of communism in 1990, fulfilling a key condition for membership of the European Union, which it joined in 2004.
source: The Straits Times |
| Hungary's Orban ponders return of the death penalty
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April 29, 2015: Hungary's prime minster has raised the possibility of reintroducing the death penalty in the European Union member country. Victor Orban made the statement in the wake of a deadly stabbing that made national headlines.
Prime Minister Orban told reporters in the southwestern city of Pecs that existing penalties for serious crimes such as murder were too soft and that something needed to be done to remedy the problem.
"The death penalty question should be put on the agenda in Hungary," Orban said. He added that it was necessary "to make clear to criminals that Hungary will stop at nothing when it comes to protecting its citizens."
The right-wing politician was speaking a week after the stabbing death of a 21-year-old female clerk in a Trafik tobacco and newspaper shop in the nearby town of Kaposvar, which made headlines across the country.
Under current Hungarian law the stiffest sentence that can be handed down is a life sentence with no chance of parole.
Hungary, which became a member of the European Union in 2004, abolished capital punishment after the fall of communism in 1990.
source: DW |
| Indonesia executes 8 by firing squad
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April 28, 2015: The Indonesian government has executed eight people for drug offences, including two Australians, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumuran, who were the subject of a years-long campaign for clemency.
Also executed were four Nigerians, a Brazilian and an Indonesian. All had been convicted of drug crimes.
A ninth prisoner scheduled to face the firing squad, Filipino woman Mary Jane Veloso, received a last-minute temporary reprieve.
A 10th death row prisoner, Serge Atlaioui, from France, was due to be executed this week, but his sentence has been delayed pending a legal challenge.Plans for Wednesday’s executions attracted international condemnation, including from the UN secretary- general, Ban Ki-Moon, who called on Widodo to “urgently consider declaring a moratorium on capital punishment in Indonesia, with a view toward abolition”.
On Tuesday, Australia, the European Union and France issued a joint statement asking Indonesia to “reflect on the impact [of the executions] on Indonesia’s position in a globalised world and an international reputation”.
source: The Guardian |
| EU 'completely opposed' to Indonesian death row
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April 24, 2015: The EU on Thursday attacked the death sentence imposed on a Frenchman in Indonesia, which is expected to be carried out shortly, saying it was no answer to drug trafficking.
‘The European Union is completely opposed to the death penalty. It cannot be the answer to drug trafficking,’ EU president Donald Tusk said, adding that he was referring to Serge Atlaoui who lost his final appeal against his death sentence earlier this week.
The Indonesian government said earlier Thursday it had ordered officials to make preparations to execute a group of drug convicts, most of them foreigners, amid mounting international criticism.
Ten convicts – from Australia, France, Brazil, the Philippines, Nigeria, Ghana and Indonesia – will face the firing squad after losing appeals for presidential clemency.
Atlaoui was arrested near Jakarta in 2005 in a secret laboratory producing ecstasy and was sentenced to death two years later.
There have been especially sharp exchanges between France and Indonesia in recent days over Atlaoui's fate, with Paris saying his trial had not been properly conducted.
source: Daily Mail |
| Most Russians still support return of capital punishment, poll shows
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April 20, 2015: The percentage of Russians who support the return of the death penalty has slightly reduced, but it’s still a majority at about 60 percent, according to the latest sociological research.
The poll conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation showed 60 percent of Russian citizens would not object to a reintroduction of the death penalty. A year ago this figure was 66 percent and in 2001 it peaked at 80 percent.
Seventy percent of responders believe the death penalty should be used to punish sexual crimes against minors. Sixty percent viewed it the right punishment for murder, and 47 percent supported it as punishment for rape. All of them said the move would help to curb the crime rate and save government funds allocated for prisoners serving long sentences for grave crimes.
Forty percent of responders said the country should not have introduced the moratorium on the death penalty in 1996.
The number who strongly opposed the return of capital punishment was 22 percent – up from 19 percent in 2014.
The moratorium on capital punishment was introduced in 1996 in connection with Russia’s entry into the Council of Europe. The last execution in the Russian Federation took place on September 2, 1996.
Politicians and officials have raised the issue of re-introducing the death penalty from time to time usually for populist reasons.
source: RT |
| USA: Support At Record Low, New Survey Shows
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April 17, 2015: A majority of people in the U.S. believe murderers should be put to death, but support for the death penalty is lower than it has been in nearly two generations, according to a nationwide survey released Thursday by the Pew Research Center. The poll found that 56 percent of Americans favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder, a decrease of six percentage points since Pew’s last survey, in 2011. Thirty-eight percent of Americans oppose the death penalty, according to the latest survey.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, support for the death penalty frequently topped 70 percent, according to Pew. In 1996, 78 percent favored it, while 18 percent were opposed.
Pew’s survey, conducted among 1,500 adults from March 25 to 29, found that much of the decrease in death penalty support has been among Democrats. Currently, 40 percent of Democrats favor the death penalty, while 56 percent oppose it. Republican support for the death penalty also decreased, Pew said, although the decline wasn't as steep. Seventy-seven percent of GOP voters favor the death penalty, compared with 87 percent who favored it in 1996.
Other key findings in Pew's latest survey include a concern among 71 percent of Americans that the death penalty risks an innocent person being put to death. About half of Americans say that minorities are more likely than whites to be sentenced to death for similar crimes, while 41 percent think that whites and minorities are equally likely to face death for heinous crimes.
source: IBT |
| 152 Innocents, marked for death
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April 14, 2015: However much Americans may disagree about the morality of capital punishment, no one wants to see an innocent person executed.
And yet, far too often, people end up on death row after being convicted of horrific crimes they did not commit. The lucky ones are exonerated while they are still alive — a macabre club that has grown to include 152 members since 1973.
How many more innocent people have met the same fate, or are awaiting it? That may never be known. But over the past 42 years, someone on death row has been exonerated, on average, every three months. According to one study, at least 4 percent of all death-row inmates in the United States have been wrongfully convicted. That is far more than often enough to conclude that the death penalty — besides being cruel, immoral, and ineffective at reducing crime — is so riddled with error that no civilized nation should tolerate its use.
Innocent people get convicted for many reasons, including bad lawyering, mistaken identifications and false confessions made under duress. But as advances in DNA analysis have accelerated the pace of exonerations, it has also become clear that prosecutorial misconduct is at the heart of an alarming number of these cases.
source: New York Times |
| "I`m not a women!"
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April 8, 2015: "I`m not a women to be hanged. I want to die by rifle, like my forefathers did!" - these were the words of a Montenegrian Andrija Markovi, who was sentenced to death in the state of Nevada in the USA when he was asked to choose the manner of execution - hanging or shooting.
Andrija Mirkovi was a miner from the mining town Tonopah. He was born in 1879 somewhere in the Serbian Kingdom - it is written in his prison file. He was sentenced to death for the murder of fellow contryman Jovan Gregorovi. In the Nevada State Prison he was registered under prisoner number 1479.
Mirkovi arrived in the USA in 1909. In his first days in the USA, he stayed at his cousin's Krsta Mirkovi, who helped him find a job in a mine in Belmont Tonopah. In 1911 Krsta tragicaly lost his life in a minnig accident leaving his heirs without a will. A clerk Jovan Gavrilovi got the authorization to split Krsta's heritage among his heirs. Not being satisfied with the part of the property he inherited, Andrija Mirkovi killed Jovan Gavrilovi and was sentenced to death because of this crime.
Shooting as a way of execution in Nevada was introduced just before Mirkovi was sentenced to death. He was the first one to be executed by a firing squad. Before this, all executions were done by hanging.
As Mirkovi has chosen to be executed by this new method of execution, a local journalist wrote false news that prison guards refused to shoot convict and that the authorities were searching for volunteers. The prison warden has received hundreds of letters from people who had offered themselves to do this task. Some of them requested money, while others were willing to do it without compensation. Actually, the truth was that prison guards did not refuse to carry on the execution of the death penalty. A special machine called "execution machine" was introduced for the first time. The purpose of this machine was to release executors from the responsibility for the death of the convict. ,,Execution machine'' consisted of three rifles mounted on a steel frame. The weapons were "pre-aimed, loaded and equipped with Maxim silencers. They were to be fired by a coiled spring mechanism set off by simultaneously cutting three strings, where only one of them would fire two loaded rifles. Mirkovi was shot dead by first bullet on May 14, 1913.
The machine, facetiously dubbed the "shooting gallery," was used to execute Mirkovi, but it had never been used again after it. The contraption went into storage and later on it was donated to a scrap-metal drive because convicts prefered hanging over shooting. In 1924 state of Nevada has changed the law and has introduced the gas chamber as the sole method of the execution.
Not only local paper wrote about Mirkovic's death but also newspaper worldwide and so did Politika in 1912. Novosti&t;/a> also wrote about Mirkovi the other day. |
| Serbia: The wife killer said that he deserves the death penalty
April 5, 2015: Stevan Koji (29), suspected to have killed his wife }aklina (26), admitted that she was kicked and beaten, but he said that he did not have the intention to kill her.
He told at the hearing that he beated her so hard that she bled from her mouth, nose and ears, and that she was choking. He beated her to death on thursday evening. She died in front of her minor children, age 3 and 11 months.
The suspect was remanded in custody for 30 days, a prosecutor proposed additional expertise, primarily neuropsychiatric because Stevan had previously been inclined to domestic violence.
"He regrets his actions. He said that he deserves death penalty and that he is concerned for the children" his lawyer Milovan Stojanovi said.
source: Blic |
| US man walks free after 30 years on death row
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April 4, 2015: An Alabama man who spent 30 years on death row for crimes he didn't commit walked free from court on Friday after his conviction for a 1985 double murder was overturned because of insufficient evidence.
Hinton was released after a key piece of ballistics evidence used against him in his December 1986 trial for two separate murders during robberies in Birmingham was discredited.
State technicians said bullets recovered from the crime scene were fired from a gun later recovered from Hinton's mother.
However subsequent tests later cast doubt on the assertion that the bullets used in the killings came from the gun.
A long legal saga culminated in victory last year when the US Supreme Court ruled Hinton had not been given an adequate defense.
"All they had to do was test the gun," Hinton told reporters, frequently wiping away tears.
Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Laura Petro dismissed all charges against Hinton after his lawyers from the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) argued there was not enough evidence linking him to the crimes.
"Sun do shine," an emotional Hinton said moments after his release.
source: AFP |
| Vucko Manojlovic sentenced to six months in prison
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April 2, 2015: The most famous prisoner in Serbia Vucko Manojlovic (69) was found guilty and sentenced to six months in prison for "illicit sexual acts".
He was arrested on suspicion that on November 14, 2013 he had raped Lj.M. (48) at his home in Nis and was subsequently detained for almost two months.
Lj.M. meanwhile, did not join the prosecution.She stated that Vucko was drunk and that he hit her, but there was not sexual act involved.
Vucko Manojlovic has spent 33 years behind the bars.
In February 2013, President of Serbia Tomislav Nikolic made a decision to pardon Vucko, and he was released from imprisonment.
First, he was sentenced to five years in prison for raping S.G. from Leskovac in 1978.
Because of the murder of Deputy District Attorney in Leskovac Dragomir Krstic and the attempted murder of investigative judge Bratislava Gavrilovic and preparation of murder of Judge Mladen Jankovic in December 29, 1984 Manojlovic was sentenced to death by the Supreme Court of Serbia in 1986.
More than 18 years he spent in solitary confinement, asking for the enforcement of the death penalty.
By the decision of former Serbian President Milan Milutinovic, the death sentence was replaced with 40 years in prison in 2002.
source: Mondo |
| Amnesty report: Executions down but death sentences on the rise
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April 1, 2015: Amnesty International says the number of death sentences issued worldwide increased sharply during 2014.
In a report released on April 1, the London-based rights group said at least 2,466 death sentences were recorded during 2014 in a total of 55 countries, a 28 percent increase from 2013.
The number of actual executions reportedly dropped. Amnesty recorded 607 executions in 2014, down almost 22% on 2013.
Apart from China, Amnesty said the world's top executioners in 2014 were: Iran - 289 executions announced officially, and at least 454 not acknowledged by the authorities, Saudi Arabia - at least 90, Iraq - at least 61, the US - 35.
This figure does not include China, which executes more people than the rest of the world put together but keeps the exact numbers a state secret.
Belarus -- the only country in Europe and the former Soviet Union that has not abolished or imposed a moratorium on capital punishment -- executed at least three people in 2014.
Executions were recorded in 22 countries in 2014, the same number as in the previous year.
In Egypt, hundreds of people have been sentenced to death in mass trials over the past two years in a crackdown on Islamists. The trials have drawn widespread international criticism, with the UN describing them as "unprecedented".
In Nigeria, 659 death sentences were recorded in 2014, Amnesty said, a jump of more than 500 compared with the previous year.
Death Penalty World Map
source: AI |
| UK: Support for death penalty drops below 50% for the first time
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March 27, 2015: The NatCen British Social Attitudes Report found 48% of the 2,878 people it surveyed were in favour of capital punishment.
It is the lowest figure since the survey began in 1983, when around 75% of people were in favour.
The death penalty was legally abolished under the Human Rights Act in 1998.
In 1965, a year after the last executions in the UK, MPs voted 200 to 98 to suspend the death penalty for murder, even though opinion polls suggested the vast majority of electors wanted it kept on the statute books.
It was last debated in Parliament in 1998 during the passage of the Human Rights Act. On that occasion, a provision of the Act outlawing capital punishment for murder except "in times of war or imminent threat of war" was backed by 294 votes to 136.
In the same year, the Criminal Justice Bill removed the death penalty from the sentencing options for high treason and piracy with violence, the last two crimes remaining on the statute books that were punishable by death.
source: BBC |
| Utah (USA) to use firing squads if lethal drugs are unavailable
March 25, 2015: Utah became the only state to allow firing squads for executions Monday when Gov. Gary Herbert signed a law approving the controversial method's use when no lethal-injection drugs are available.
Herbert has said he finds the firing squad "a little bit gruesome," but Utah is a capital punishment state and needs a backup execution method in case a shortage of the drugs persists.
The measure's approval is the latest illustration of some states' frustration over bungled executions and difficulty obtaining the drugs. Utah is one of several states seeking new forms of capital punishment after a botched Oklahoma lethal injection last year.
The bill's sponsor, Republican Rep. Paul Ray of Clearfield, argued that a team of trained marksmen is faster and more decent than the drawn-out deaths involved when lethal injections go awry - or even if they go as planned.
source: AP |
| EU criticizes Belarus over death sentence
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March 23, 2015: The European Union has sharply criticized Belarus, the only European country that applies capital punishment, for sentencing a man to death.
In its statement issued on March 19, the EU said that a court in the southeastern city of Homel sentenced Syarhey Ivanou to death the previous day.
Ivanou was convicted of murder and rape.
The EU expressed its "deepest sympathy of the victim of these crimes."
"Nevertheless, the European Union opposes capital punishment in all cases as it cannot be justified under any circumstances. The death penalty is a cruel and inhuman punishment, which fails to act as a deterrent and represents an unacceptable denial of human dignity and integrity," it said.
The EU said that Ivanou's "right to appeal must be fully guaranteed."
The last reported execution of a convict in Belarus took place in April 2014.
Rights activists said the man, who was convicted of murdering his wife and her lover, was executed before the UN Committee on Human Rights examined his appeal.
source: Radio Free Europe |
| Pope: 'Death penalty represents failure' – no 'humane' way to kill a person
March 21, 2015: Pope says nothing can justify death penalty and there's no way to 'humanely' execute convicts.
Pope Francis says nothing can justify the use of the death penalty and there is no "right" way to humanely kill another person.
Francis outlined the Catholic church's opposition to capital punishment in a letter to the International Commission against the Death Penalty, an independent group of former government officials, jurists and others who met with him at the Vatican Friday.
The pope said the principle of legitimate personal defense isn't adequate justification because the death penalty isn't applied to a current act of aggression but "for an act committed in the past."
Declaring "nowadays the death penalty is inadmissible," Francis built on church teaching, including pronouncements during St. John Paul II's papacy, that modern prison systems make executions unnecessary. Francis said there is "no humane way" to execute someone.
source: AP |
| Pakistan hangs 12 Men in largest single-day execution in nearly a decade
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March 17, 2015: The country's death penalty was reinstated in December and broadened to non-terrorism crimes a week ago.
Pakistan hanged 12 men on Tuesday, the largest number of people put to death on the same day since a moratorium on executions was lifted in December, according to an Interior Ministry spokesman.
“They were not only terrorists, they included the other crimes,” the spokesman said, according to Reuters. “Some of them were murderers and some did other heinous crimes.”
The informal suspension of capital punishment, enacted when the current democratic government took over from military rule in 2008, was removed on Dec. 17 following a Taliban attack on a school that killed over 140 people, mostly children.
Although Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif lifted the moratorium under pressure to expedite justice for terrorists and militants, the death penalty for non-terrorism crimes was also reinstated last week.
A total of 27 Pakistanis have been executed since the ban was lifted, and more than 8,000 remain on death row in what human-rights groups say is a severely deficient criminal-justice system.
source: Time |
| Côte d'Ivoire: Definitely abolish the death penalty
March 12, 2015: The National Assembly of Côte d'Ivoire voted to definitely abolish the death penalty in the country.
Following the adoption by the Government on 15 January 2015, the Parliament unanimously approved two bills amending the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code, and replacing the death penalty with life imprisonment.
The complete abolition of the death penalty in Côte d'Ivoire put an end to 14 years of discrepancy between the Constitution, which had abolished capital punishment in 2000, and the criminal code still retaining it in numerous articles, though not applied because forbidden by the Constitution.
Until 2000, the Criminal Code provided for the death penalty for murder and hijacking, but it has never been used since Côte d'Ivoire’s Independence in 1960. On 18 December 2014, the Côte d’Ivoire co-sponsored and voted in favour of the Resolution on a Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty at the UN General Assembly.
source: Hands off Cain |
| Pakistan lifts moratorium on executions
March 10, 2015: Pakistan has lifted its moratorium on the death penalty in all cases, months after resuming executions of terrorism convicts.
The moratorium was lifted in December 2014 for those convicted of terrorism offences, after Taliban gunmen killed more than 150 people at a school in the northwestern city of Peshawar, most of them children.
An Interior Ministry official said on March 10 that the ministry had directed provincial governments to proceed with hangings for prisoners who had exhausted all avenues of appeal and clemency.
Rights groups estimate that there are more than 8,000 people on death row in Pakistan, where a de facto moratorium on the death penalty was put in place in 2008.
source: Radio Free Europe |
| Vatican City: Holy See calls for a global moratorium on death penalty
March 8, 2015: The Holy See called today for a global moratorium on the use of the death penalty aiming at the abolition.
Speaking in Geneva at the 28th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, the Holy See’s Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, urged countries to use a “more humane” form of punishment.
Moreover, we should take into account that no clear positive effect of deterrence results from the application of the death penalty and that the irreversibility of this punishment does not allow for eventual corrections in the case of wrongful convictions.
In conclusion the Holy See Delegation fully supports the efforts to abolish the use of the death penalty, and invites to improve prison conditions, to ensure respect for the human dignity of the people deprived of their freedom.
source: Hands off Cain |
| Suriname: Death penalty abolished
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March 7, 2015: The Parliament of Suriname abolished the death penalty, in the framework of the discussions regarding the adoption of the new Criminal Code.
On 19 May 2014, the Justice and Police Minister of Suriname, Edward Belfort, announced an amendment to its Criminal Code that will remove the death penalty.
On 2 July 2014, the vice-chair of the National Assembly, Ruth Wijdenbosch, told the annual general meeting of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty in Puerto Rico that Suriname "will soon abolish the death penalty".
On 18 December 2014, for the first time, Suriname voted in favour of the Resolution on a Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty at the UN General Assembly. Previously it had always abstained on the Resolution.
The last time someone was put to death in Suriname, was in 1982, when the military rulers executed political opponents. In March 1982, Wilfred Hawker, a sergeant they found guilty of treason, was executed by firing squad at dawn for staging two coups.
izvor: Hands off Cain |
| Taiwan: Student sentenced to 24 death sentences, one for each of his victims
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March 5, 2015: A university student who went on the rampage with a knife on a busy underground train killing four people and injuring more than 20 others has been sentenced to death.
The New Taipei District Court in Taiwan sentenced 21-year-old Cheng Chieh 24 death sentences, one for each of his victims, for the rush-hour attack on a commuter train in the capital Taipei in May last year.
Cheng Chieh used a 10-centimetre knife to slash passengers in the chest and stomach, in some cases as they slept, whilst travelling in a carriage on the metro system's longest stretch between two stations, the court heard.
He was subdued by police and metro staff after the train pulled into its next station.He had complained when interviewed about having too much stress in his life and said he wanted to get the death penalty, but also wanted to do something big before he died.
Cheng was set to obtain a master's degree in business administration and international business from NCKU university in Tainan City this summer. When the attack took place, he was in Taipei for a job interview.
He has the right to appeal the verdict but even his parents called for him to be sentenced to death for the attack that also left 22 people injured.
Family members of the deceased who were present in court also welcomed the verdict, saying that giving Cheng the death penalty met public expectations.Cheng's father Feng agreed, saying: 'Although he is our child, the crime he committed is unforgivable. 'He should be sentenced to death and face it himself. Only by so doing may the pains inflicted on the victims and the wounded and their families be slightly eased. He urged judges to carry out the sentence as soon as possible saying: 'We hope Cheng Chieh can act in a correct manner during his next life.'Family members of the deceased who were present in court also welcomed the verdict, saying that giving Cheng the death penalty met public expectations.
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| USA: Death Penalty Had No Effect on Reducing Crime
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March 4, 2015: A new study by the Brennan Center for Justice examined several possible explanations for the dramatic drop in crime in the U.S. in the 1990s and 2000s. Among the theories studied was use of the death penalty, which the report found had no effect on the decline in crime. The authors explained, "Empirically, capital punishment is too infrequent to have a measureable effect on the crime drop. Criminologically, the existence and use of the death penalty may not even create the deterrent effect on potential offenders that lawmakers hoped when enacting such laws." The authors noted criminals do not consider the consequences of their actions, particularly when the consequence is rarely applied, as in the case of the death penalty. "Much psychological and sociological research suggests that many criminal acts are crimes of passion or committed in a heated moment based only on immediate circumstances, and thus potential offenders may not consider or weigh longer-term possibilities of punishment and capture, including the possibility of capital punishment." They concluded, "In line with the past research, the Brennan Center’s empirical analysis finds that there is no evidence that executions had an effect on crime in the 1990s or 2000s."
source: DPIC |
| Egypt sentences four Brotherhood members to death
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March 1, 2015: Court orders capital punishment for four Brotherhood members as Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie receives life sentence.
An Egyptian court has sentenced four members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood organisation to death and 14 to life in prison.
Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie and his deputy Khairat al-Shater were among those sentenced to life on Saturday, along with former lawmaker Mohamed el-Beltagy and party head Saad el-Katatni and his deputy, Essam el-Erian.
Three co-defendants of Badie were also sentenced to death in the same trial.
Those convicted were accused of murder, inciting murder, attempted murder, possession of firearms and several more. The verdict can be appealed.
In December 2014 the court sentenced the four men to death and referred the sentences to the grand mufti for consideration. The mufti endorsed the court's December decision.
The case stems from clashes near the Brotherhood's headquarters on June 30, 2013, four days before the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi.The fighting left 11 people dead and 91 wounded.
Badie has already been sentenced by three separate courts to three life terms, and he was also handed two death sentences that were later overturned on appeal.
Morsi himself is facing several trials on charges that are punishable by death, while his group have been designated a "terrorist group".
Some 22,000 people have been arrested since Morsi's ouster, including most of the Brotherhood's leaders, as well as non-Islamist activists swept up by police during protests.
source: Al Jazeera |
| Israeli foreign minister on Facebook: Palestinian prisoners should be executed
February 22, 2015: Israel’s hardline right-wing foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman plans to introduce a bill into the country’s parliament, the Knesset, which would implement the death penalty for Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli lockup.
Alongside a photo reading “Death penalty for terrorists,” Lieberman wrote on his Facebook page that his party — Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home) — supports the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners.
“The struggle against terror is the largest challenge for the 21st century world. This is also Israel’s great challenge, but there’s a large gap between what Israel preaches and what is done here [in Israel],” Lieberman stated.
“The first law that Yisrael Beitenu will propose is a death penalty for terrorists, because otherwise we’re ordering up more terror and yet more terror,” Lieberman added.
source: EI |
| Turkey: Judge says death penalty should be debated after young woman’s death
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February 19, 2015: The newly elected head of the Supreme Court of Appeals has joined calls from the government for the reinstatement of the death penalty after the Feb. 11 killing of 20-year-old Özgecan Aslan on a minibus in Tarsus.
Supreme Court of Appeals President 0smail Rü_tü Cirit, who is said to enjoy good relations with President Recep Tayyip Erdoan and the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) led government, said on Wednesday that the reinstatement of the death penalty should be debated. “If a simple survey is carried out among the public, it would show that at least 80 percent [of respondents] want the reinstatement of the death penalty,” Cirit told reporters.
Key political figures within the AK Party earlier voiced their support for reinstating the death penalty after Aslan's murder. Critics say the AK Party is using the tragic case to reinstate the death penalty and that such a reinstatement would have negative outcomes in light of the country's already eroding democracy.
Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci posted a message urging the re-adoption of the death sentence via his Twitter account on Sunday night.
After Zeybekci opened the debate, a number of high-level government officials and politicians expressed their support for the death penalty, which was abolished in 2002 under reforms aimed at initiating Turkey's European Union membership by a three-party coalition government led by the Democratic Left Party (DSP).
source: TZ |
| USA: Pennsylvania Governor Announces Moratorium on Executions
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February 14, 2015: Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf announced Friday that he had suspended the death penalty until he reviews a report on capital punishment in the state.
“This moratorium is in no way an expression of sympathy for the guilty on death row, all of whom have been convicted of committing heinous crimes,” Wolf said in a statement. “This decision is based on a flawed system that has been proven to be an endless cycle of court proceedings as well as ineffective, unjust, and expensive.”
This announcement comes as the death penalty’s use across the country has declined considerably in recent years, with executions and death sentences both dropping well below numbers seen in the last two decades.
Pennsylvania has not executed an inmate since 1999 and has carried out only three executions since 1976, making it one of the least-active states with the death penalty. Yet the state also has one of the largest populations of death-row inmates. There are 186 people currently on death row in the state, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections said, trailing only California, Florida, Texas and Alabama.
source: WP |
| USA: American Ambivalence on the Death Penalty
February 13, 2015: A new Rasmussen poll found that 57% of American adults support the death penalty, down from 63% in the organization's polls dating from 2009. The poll found 26% of respondents opposed the death penalty, with 17% undecided. Respondents were also asked whether they favored the death penalty for James Holmes if he is convicted of the mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. Just 55% said they believed Holmes should be sentenced to death, compared to 66% who held that view immediately after the shooting in 2012. Twenty percent were undecided.
Rasmussen found that Americans were less supportive of executing a defendant who is mentally ill, an issue in Holmes's case. Respondents also had concerns about wrongful convictions, and were split on whether the death penalty deterred crime.
source: DPIC |
| Russian Supreme Court chairman against death penalty return
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February 10, 2015: The chairman of Russia's Supreme Court says he opposes calls to end the country's moratorium on capital punishment.
Vyacheslav Lebedev told journalists in Moscow on February 10 that there is "no reason" to end the moratorium on the death penalty, which was put in place by the Constitutional Court in 1999 and extended in 2009.
Russia imposed the moratorium after joining the Council of Europe, which requires members to refrain from executing convicts.
Last month, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe voted to deprive Russia of its rights within the assembly for the second consecutive session over Moscow's reluctance to stop backing separatists in Ukraine's eastern regions.
Russian lawmakers have questioned whether Russia should remain in the Council of Europe after the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) voted last month to deprive Moscow of its rights within the assembly for the second consecutive session over its interference in Ukraine.
Lawmakers from ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party have said quitting the Council of Europe could enable Russia to reinstate the death penalty.
source: Radio Free Europe |
| Saudi Arabia has already beheaded 21 people in 2015
February 5, 2015: Saudi Arabia beheaded two convicted rapists and a murderer on Wednesday, the interior ministry said, bringing to 21 the number of people it has executed so far this year.
The three were all Saudis.
Abdul Kareem bin Abdul Sattar Meezi and Hashim bin Abdo Mahragi had been convicted of kidnapping and raping a girl and were executed in the Muslim holy city of Mecca, the ministry said.
Saudi Arabia has faced constant international criticism over its human rights record, including its use of the death penalty.
Separately another Saudi, Mohammed bin Ouda bin Naji al-Inzi, was beheaded in the northwestern Jawf region after being convicted of a fatal shooting, the ministry said.
The kingdom executed 87 people last year, up from 78 in 2013, according to an AFP tally.
Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under its strict version of Islamic sharia law.
source: Raw Story |
| Jordan executes 2 prisoners after Islamic State burns pilot to death
February 4, 2015: Amman has executed two prisoners, including the Al-Qaeda would-be suicide bomber Sajida al-Rishawi, after promising a lethal response to the brutal murder of a Jordanian pilot who had been captured by the Islamic State.
Government spokesman Mohammed al-Momani identified the second prisoner as Ziad al-Karbouli, AP reported, adding that both executions took place early on Wednesday.
The executions were carried out by hanging, Reuters reported.
Al-Rishawi was sentenced to death after unsuccessfully attempting to detonate herself during the Al-Qaeda attacks on Jordan a decade ago which killed 60 people, and has been awaiting her death sentence since the subsequent trial ended. Meanwhile, al-Karbouli was identified as a senior Al-Qaeda prisoner sentenced to death for planning attacks against the kingdom.
source: RT |
| Egypt court sentences 183 Muslim Brotherhood supporters to death
February 2, 2015: An Egyptian court sentenced 183 supporters of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood to death on Monday on charges of killing police officers.
The men were convicted of playing a role in the killings of 16 policemen in the town of Kardasa in August, 2013 during the upheaval that followed the army's ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Mursi. Thirty-four were sentenced in absentia.
Thousands of Brotherhood supporters have been arrested and put on mass trials in a campaign which human rights groups say shows the government is systematically repressing opponents.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who as army chief toppled Mursi, describes the Brotherhood as a major security threat.
source: Reuters |
| Russia won't overturn death penalty ban
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January 31, 2015: Chairman of the Human Rights Council Mikhail Fedotov says that no one has the right to demand to overturn ban on death penalty, following a proposal of a group of Russian lawmakers to lift the ban.
MPs from the Liberal Democratic Party said that Russia’s possible decision to withdraw from the Council of Europe would automatically lead to the termination of decisions of the European Court of Human Rights in Russia and hence to the reintroduction of the death penalty. They believe that the moratorium’s cancellation would allow the execution of many death row criminals.
“The issue of the death penalty in Russia has not been decided by the Council of Europe but by Russia’s Constitutional Court,” Fedotov stressed. “I’d like to remind everyone that no one, including MPs, can request a review.”
“Advocating the reintroduction of the death penalty, or worse still, connecting this call to Russia’s possible withdrawal from the Council of Europe, is illogical, to say the least. I’m sure that Russia can withdraw from the Council of Europe no easier than it can withdraw from Europe. Russia is a European country, as Catherine the Great said long ago,” Fedotov added.
source: RAPSI
|
| Japan: 80% of respondents think death penalty ‘permissible’
January 26, 2015: According to a Cabinet Office opinion poll conducted over the weekend, 80.3 percent of the public believes the death penalty is “permissible” and 9.7 percent think it should be abolished.
The high rate apparently reflected respondents’ views that the feelings of crime victims and their relatives should be taken into account, and that serious offenders should receive the ultimate sanction, the poll, conducted every five years, said.
By comparison, the approval ratio was 85.6 percent in 2009 and 81.4 percent in 2004.
In the latest poll, carried out in November, respondents for the first time were asked whether they would support the abolition of capital punishment if Japan introduced a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. Those who said they would came to 51.5 percent and those said they would not came to 37.7 percent.
source: Japan Times |
| Nearly half of Londoners support death penalty for terrorists
January 23, 2015: The YouGov survey for the Standard showed 49 per cent of adults in the capital support capital punishment for murder during terrorist attacks.
Men are more hardline, with 55 per cent believing terrorist killers should be executed, compared to 42 per cent of women.
Older people are more likely to favour the death penalty for such offences, according to the poll carried out after the Paris atrocity in which three terrorists killed 17 people.
Fifty-four per cent of Londoners aged 40 and over supported the re-introduction of the death penalty which was abolished in 1965, while the figure for the 25 to 39-year-old age group was 44 per cent, and 38 per cent among 18 to 24-year-olds.
source: Standard |
| Indonesia executes 6 drug convicts, including 5 foreigners
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January 18, 2015: Indonesia executed by firing squad five foreigners and an Indonesian woman convicted on drug trafficking charges despite appeals to spare them, with the government defending the action as necessary to combat the rising drug trade.
Four men from Brazil, Malawi, Nigeria and the Netherlands and the Indonesian woman were shot to death simultaneously in pairs just after midnight Saturday, several kilometers (miles) from a high security prison on Nusakambangan island. The other woman from Vietnam was executed in Boyolali, according to Attorney General Office's spokesman Tony Spontana. Both areas are in Central Java province.
President Joko Widodo in December rejected their clemency requests. He also refused a last-minute appeal by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and the Dutch government to spare their countrymen — Brazilian Marco Archer Cardoso Moreira, 53, and Ang Kiem Soe, 52, who was born in Papua but whose nationality is Dutch.
Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders said in a statement late Saturday he had temporarily recalled the country's ambassador to Indonesia and summoned Indonesia's representative in The Hague to protest Ang's execution.
Indonesia's Attorney General Muhammad Prasetyo has said there is no excuse for drug dealers and, "hopefully, this will have a deterrent effect."
Prasetyo said the new government had a firm commitment to fight against drugs.
"What we do is merely aimed at protecting our nation from the danger of drugs," Prasetyo told reporters Thursday.
Amnesty International said the first executions under the new president, who took office in November, were "a retrograde step" for human rights.
More than 138 people are on death row, mostly for drug crimes. About a third of them are foreigners.
source: AP |
| Yale University offers free online course on capital punishment
January 12, 2015: Race, Poverty, & Disadvantage is a free on-line course offered by Yale Law School. The course is taught by Stephen B. Bright, President of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Georgia. According to Yale's description, "This course explores the imposition of the death penalty in the United States with particular attention to the influence of race and poverty, and the disadvantages of mental illness or intellectual disability of those facing death." Each of the 13 course sessions introduces a topic within capital punishment and features video of Bright's lectures, as well as background readings and resources.
The course is available through Yale's website, YouTube, and iTunesU.
source: DPIC |
| French far-right leader calls for death penalty in Paris shooting aftermath
January 8, 2015: A day after the targeting of a French satirical magazine in Paris that left 12 people dead, France’s Front National leader announced Thursday that if elected she would propose a referendum to bring back capital punishment in the country.
“I personally believe that the death penalty should exist in our legal arsenal,” Marine Le Pen told television channel France 2.
“I always said that I would offer French citizens the possibility to express themselves on the topic through a referendum,” Le Pen added.
source: Al Arabiya |
| Pakistan hangs two terrorism convicts
January 7, 2015: Pakistan on January 7 hanged two men sentenced to death by an antiterrorism court, bringing to nine the number of executions since last month's lifting of a moratorium on capital punishment.
The two, who were sentenced to death in 2002, were reportedly members of banned Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and had been found guilty of murder.
Pakistan lifted a six-year moratorium on the death penalty in terrorism cases following a Taliban attack that killed 142 children and nine staff at an army-run school in the city of Peshawar on December 16.
On January 6, parliament approved the use of military courts to hear terrorism-related cases in a bid to speed up hearings.
source: Radio Free Europe |
| Saudi Arabia: 2 inmates beheaded in first executions of 2015
January 2, 2015: Two Saudis convicted of drug trafficking became the first people executed in 2015 in the Muslim kingdom, which beheaded 87 people last year.
Malik bin Said al-Sayaari was put to the sword Thursday in the Al-Hasa district of Eastern Province after a repeat conviction for hashish smuggling, the interior ministry said.
And Hussein al-Dussari was beheaded in the Riyadh region for shooting dead a policeman on anti-drugs patrol who was trying to arrest him.
Last year's tally marked a significant increase on the 78 executions recorded in 2013.
Rape, murder, apostasy, homosexuality and armed robbery as well as drug trafficking are punishable by death under Saudi Arabia's Islamic sharia law.
source: Death Penalty News |
| Japan: 129 Inmates remain on death row
January 1, 2015: Japan’s prisons had 129 inmates on death row as of Dec 26, according to a Justice Ministry report.
The ministry said that there were three executions in June and August, while five death-row inmates died of illnesses, including a 92-year-old man.
A man believed to be the world’s longest-serving death row inmate, Iwao Hakamada, 78, was freed in March after the Shizuoka District Court ordered a fresh trial over the grisly 1966 murder of his boss and the man’s family.
source: Hands off Cain |
| EU Condemns Pakistan For Return To Capital Punishment
December 24, 2014: The European Union has condemned Islamabad’s decision to lift the moratorium on the death penalty and demanded its immediate restoration.
The EU said in a statement on December 24: "We believe that the death penalty is not an effective tool in the fight against terrorism."
Pakistan has executed six prisoners since announcing last week that a six-year moratorium on the death penalty was being lifted in terrorism cases.
The decision came amid outrage over the Pakistani Taliban's attack on a school in the northwestern city of Peshawar last week which killed 148 people.
Officials have said they plan to execute 500 convicts in coming weeks.
There are around 8,000 people on death row in Pakistan.
EU officials have said that if Pakistan resumed executions, it could derail a lucrative trade deal with the bloc.
source: Radio Free Europe |
| Jordan hangs 11 after lifting execution ban
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December 21, 2014: Jordan has executed 11 men convicted of murder by hanging, the interior ministry said, as it ended an informal eight-year moratorium on the death penalty.
"Eleven criminals convicted in different cases of murder were executed at dawn," the official Petra news agency quoted a ministry spokesman as saying on Sunday.
Authorities said the men were all Jordanians convicted on murder charges in 2005 and 2006.
Jordan's last previous executions were in June 2006 and 122 people have since been sentenced to death.
Interior Minister Hussein Majali suggested recently that the moratorium might end, saying there was a "major debate" in Jordan on the death penalty and that "the public believes that the rise in crime has been the result of the
non-application" of capital punishment.
A number of countries in the Middle East continue to impose the death penalty for serious crimes, including Jordan's neighbour Saudi Arabia which has executed 83 people so far this year.
China by far carried out the most executions last year, numbering in the thousands, followed by Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the United States, human rights group Amnesty International said in a report in March.
source: Al Jazeera |
| Record number of states vote for UN resolution on death penalty moratorium
December 19, 2014: The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution Thursday calling for an international moratorium on the use of the death penalty. The resolution passed with a record 117 votes in favor, with the United States, along with 37 other nations, opposing the move.
Support for the resolution, which is nonbinding, has increased steadily since it was first adopted in 2007, when 104 states lodged a “yes” vote; this is the fifth time the General Assembly has voted on the issue. Last time the resolution went before the General Assembly, in 2012, it received support from 111 countries.
This year, Eritrea, Fiji, Niger and Suriname moved from an abstention to a “yes” vote; Equatorial Guinea, Kiribati and Sao Tome-Principe also added their support. Bahrain, Myanmar, Tonga and Uganda moved from a ‘no’ vote to an abstention.
source: Al Jazeera |
| Pakistan lifts moratorium on death penalty after school massacre
December 17, 2014: Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has lifted a moratorium on the death penalty in terrorism-related cases, a day after Taliban gunmen massacred 132 schoolchildren and nine teachers in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
Sharif approved the abolishment of the moratorium on December 17 as Pakistan began three days of national mourning for the victims of the school massacre and devastated families buried their children.
Sharif also reportedly told a gathering in Peshawar of all parliamentary parties that Pakistan "will fight the war against terrorism, keeping in mind the faces of the innocent children".
Pakistan imposed a moratorium on implementing the death penalty in 2008 but judges have continued to issue death sentences in some criminal and terrorism cases.
International and Pakistani rights groups say about 800 of some 8,000 prisoners currently on death row in Pakistan were convicted on terrorism charges.
source: Radio Free Europe |
| China clears man 18 years after his execution
December 15, 2014: A court in northern China on Monday cleared a man of the rape and murder of a woman in a public toilet 18 years after he was executed for the crime.
A retrial by an Inner Mongolian court found that Huugjilt, then 18 years old, was wrongly convicted in 1996 of raping and killing a woman in a public restroom.
Another man confessed to the murder in 2005, but a retrial was not conducted until this year, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The deputy head of the court, Zhao Jianping, offered his "sincere apologies" to Huugjilt's parents, China's official Xinhua News Agency reported.
source: AP |
| Villagers collecting signatures for the death penalty in Serbia
December 14, 2014: Dragana iri (18), girl brutally murdered by edomir Djuri (66), yesterday was buried in the village cemetery in Salaš. Outraged villagers began collecting signatures, seeking the death penalty for the killer.
"The monster should be hanged, he has raged around Salaš
a lot and no one could get in his way’’ - outraged locals are saying. They are widely collecting signatures and demanding the death penalty for criminals.
"He killed a child, by pouring acid into her mouth. So what is the adequate punishment for him other than death" - local residents are saying.
source: Kurir |
| Madagascar's MPs abolish the death penalty
December 10, 2014: The National Assembly of Madagascar adopted a bill that abolishes the death penalty on 10 December, World Human Rights Day.
The President of the National Assembly, via his personal representative, had expressed optimism during a workshop aimed at spreading awareness about the death penalty in Antananarivo on 10 October, World Day Against the Death Penalty, by saying that a bill to abolish the death penalty was to be adopted during the current parliamentary session.
The workshop, organized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights with the support of ACAT Madagascar, FIACAT and the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, had brought together a wide array of activists to discuss the death penalty in Madagascar.
Madagascar is the 18th African Union member state to abolish the death penalty for all crimes.
source: World Coalition |
| China to stop harvesting executed prisoners' organs
December 4, 2014: China has promised to stop harvesting organs from executed prisoners by 1 January, state media report.
It has said for many years that it will end the controversial practice. It previously promised to do so by November last year.
Death row inmates have long served as a key source for transplants.
China has been criticised for taking their organs without consent, but has struggled to encourage voluntary donations due to cultural concerns.
Prisoners used to account for two-thirds of transplant organs, based on previous estimates from state media.
For years, China denied that it used organs from executed prisoners and only admitted to the practice a few years ago.
The Chinese authorities put more prisoners to death every year than the rest of the world combined - an estimated 2,400 people in 2013 - according to the San Francisco-based prisoners' rights organisation, Dui Hua.
source: BBC |
| Egyptian court sentences 188 people to death
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December 3, 2014: An Egyptian court sentenced 188 people to death Tuesday pending the opinion of the country's top religious authority, the latest mass death sentence handed down by the country's judicial system despite widespread international criticism.
The 188 were charged over the killing of 11 policemen last year in Kerdasa, a restive town west of Cairo considered a militant stronghold. The attack, which saw the policemen's bodies mutilated, is considered one of the country's grisliest assaults on security forces.The attack happened on the same day that security forces brutally cleared two protest camps of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi's supporters, killing hundreds. Protesters were demanding the reinstatement of Morsi, who hails from the Muslim Brotherhood group.Egypt has been sharply criticized for recent mass death sentences largely targeting Islamists. Earlier this year, a judge in the southern city of Minya sentenced more than 1,200 people to death in two mass trials. The number of death sentences, initially the most in recent memory anywhere in the world, was later reduced to some 200. Those cases also involve attacks on police stations and the killing of police officers following the dispersal of the protest camps.
source: AP |
| Iran: Juvenile offender hanged
December 2, 2014: A youth has been hanged in Iran after being held in prison since his arrest at the age of 14 for accidentally killing a friend.
The execution of Rahim Nosrallahzadeh in prison in the city of Tabriz is the latest in a surge in hangings in the regime under so-called moderate Hassan Rouhani.
More than 1,000 prisoners, including at least eight juveniles, have been put to death in the past year.
The execution of people for crimes committed when they were under 18 is strictly prohibited under Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 37 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, both of which Iran has ratified.
source: NCRI |
| Belgrade Supports Capital Punishment!
November 29, 2014: Belgrade took part in the Cities for Life, Cities against the Death Penalty Day on three previous occasions: in 2007, 2012 and 2013. This year it will not do so.
Serbia against Capital Punishment invited the city authorities to light a monument on 30 November this year, but the city declined.
Many Belgraders wish for the universal abolition of the death penalty and oppose its reintroduction in Serbia. Serbian Constitution prohibits capital punishment, as do several international treaties which Serbia has ratified. Belgrade authorities seem to disagree!
On behalf of all Belgraders who believe that the death penalty is a barbarian punishment and that the human right to life is inherent and inalienable, we regret and condemn the decision of city authorities to abstain from the Cities for Life festivity this year.
You can join our protest by liking&am;nbsp;this facebook status.
Ivan Jankovi - Belgrade for the death penalty?
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| UN vote boosts support for a global moratorium on the death penalty
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November 23, 2014: 114 of the UN’s 193 member states today voted in favour of the resolution which will go before the General Assembly Plenary for final adoption in December.
“Today’s vote confirms that more and more countries around the world are coming around to the fact that the death penalty is a human rights violation and must end. It is also a clear message to the minority of states that still execute – you are on the wrong side of history,” said Chiara Sangiorgio, Death Penalty expert at Amnesty International.
Since 2007 there have been four resolutions calling for a worldwide moratorium on the death penalty, with support increasing each time.
114 states voted in favour, 36 voted against and 34 abstained compared to 111 votes in favour, 41 against and 34 abstentions in December 2012.
New votes in favour came from Eritrea, Fiji, Niger and Suriname. As a further positive sign, Bahrain, Myanmar and Uganda moved from opposition to abstention. Regrettably, Papua New Guinea went from abstention to a vote against the resolution.
Amnesty International urges all UN Member States to support the resolution when it comes for adoption at the plenary session. Those countries still retaining the death penalty should immediately establish a moratorium on executions as a first step towards full abolition.
source: AI |
| Utah (USA) revives plan for executions by firing squad
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November 20, 2014: Ten years after banning the use of firing squads in state executions, Utah lawmakers on Wednesday endorsed a proposal to allow the practice again to avoid problems with lethal-injection drugs.
The proposal from Republican Rep. Paul Ray of Clearfield would call for a firing squad if the state cannot obtain the lethal injection drugs 30 days before the scheduled execution.
Utah dropped firing squads out of concern about the media attention, but Ray said it's the most humane way to execute someone because the inmate dies instantly.
"We have to have an option," Ray told reporters Wednesday. "If we go hanging, if we go to the guillotine, or we go to the firing squad, electric chair, you're still going to have the same circus atmosphere behind it. So is it really going to matter?"
After a 20-minute discussion, an interim panel of Utah lawmakers approved the idea on a 9-2 vote Wednesday. The proposal still needs to go through the full legislative process once lawmakers convene for their annual session in January.
Under current Utah law, death by firing squad is only an option for criminals sentenced to death before 2004. It was last used in 2010.
Ray said his proposal gives Utah flexibility if it's unable to obtain the drugs needed in a lethal injection.
For years, states used a three-drug combination to execute inmates, but European drugmakers have refused to sell them to prisons and corrections departments out of opposition to the death penalty.
That move has led states to use different types, combinations and doses of lethal drugs, but those methods have been challenged in court.
source: AP |
| UN Committee Calls On Iran To Stop Executions
November 19, 2014: A UN committee has approved a resolution expressing deep concern about rights violations in Iran, noting the "alarmingly high frequency" of the use of the death penalty.
The UN General Assembly human rights committee passed the resolution on November 18 with 78 yes votes from member countries, with 35 voting no and 69 abstaining.
The Canada-drafted resolution calls on Iran to stop abuses, including torture.
Iran's representative protested that the resolution doesn't acknowledge "positive developments" since President Hassan Rohani took office.
"At the time when many parts of our region are burning in the fires of extremism," the resolution is counterproductive, the diplomat said.
source: Radio Free Europe
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| Restoring death penalty in Algeria needs open debate
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November 15, 2014: Algerian Justice Minister Tayeb Louh said on Thursday the restoration of the suspended death penalty in the country requires an open and objective debate.
Louh made the remarks as he answered a question asked by parliament members at the lower house on the reasons for non- application of the death penalty in Algeria. He said this issue should include all classes of society.
Algeria has decided to suspend the application of the death penalty since 1993, amid a decade long civil war that claimed 150, 000 victims. Algeria is among 53 countries in the world that have abolished the death penalty in practice, according to Amnesty International.
In recent years, some political activists, associations and lawyers pleaded for restoring the death penalty in Algeria, especially following the surge in crimes against children.
The Algerian Penal Code adopted since December, 2013 new provisions concerning the death penalty, which can now be imposed on "child abductors in case the victim dies."
Louh believes that "judicial sanction, in its modern sense, is not of a vindictive nature, but rather aims to protect the society by identifying personal and social causes leading to crime.
source: Death Penalty News
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| Florida(USA) Executes Man Convicted of Killing His Wife and Stepdaughter
November 14, 2014: A Florida man who spent more than 20 years in prison for killing his wife and stepdaughter was executed by the state on Thursday.
Chadwick Banks, 43, was administered a lethal injection on Thursday evening at the Florida State Prison, Reuters reports.
Banks was arrested in 1992, four days after he fatally shot his wife Cassandra Banks while she was sleeping. He later confessed to raping and killing his 10-year-old stepdaughter Melody Cooper soon after the shooting.
Banks’ execution is the 89th in Florida since the U.S. reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
source: Time |
| Secretary General of Council of Europe: Death penalty is not justice
November 6, 2014: The Secretary General of Council of Europe Thorbjørn Jagland has urged the Belarusian authorities to establish a moratorium on executions.
A statement on this issue has been made by them in connection with the reports that an execution of 26-year-old Homel dweller Alyaksandr Hrunou had been carried out, BelaPAN informs.
Thorbjørn Jagland stressed that he was deeply concerned by reports about the third execution in Belarus.
"Death penalty is not justice. It contradicts all European values," he noted. He urged the authorities of Belarus to establish moratorium on executions immediately and replace death sentences [with life sentences].
It is the third execution in Belarus since the beginning of the year. Meanwhile, there is no official confirmation of the execution still.
source: Chart97 |
| Belarus: A murder convict executed
November 5, 2014: Authorities in Belarus, the only country in Europe that practices capital punishment, has reportedly executed a sentenced to death on a murder conviction.
The unregistered Vyasna (Spring) human rights center in Minsk said on November 4 that Alyaksandr Hrunou, who was sentenced last year after being convictyed of stabbing a woman a woman to death in 2012, had been executed.
Vyasna cited Hrunou's mother as saying that she had received her son's belongings, including clothes he wore in a death row cell, by mail.
Vyasna also said it learned on November 3 that Hrunou's appeal for clemency was denied in early October.
Relatives of people executed in Belarus are rarely informed officially and are not told what has been done with the body.
Belarus is known to have executed two other convicts this year.
Vyasna says five people were executed in Belarus from 2010 to 2012 and at least one person remains on death row.
source: Radio Free Europe |
| Saudi Arabia and its merciless judges
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November 1, 2014: Sixty people have been executed in Saudi Arabia since the start of 2014. Even religion-related crimes can carry the death penalty, because the kingdom sees itself as the protector of Sunni Islam.
In the last two years in particular, several Saudi human rights activists and bloggers have been sentenced to long jail terms, which has led to a severe limitation of press freedom in the country. Saudi Arabia currently occupies number 164 out of 180 countries in the press freedom index published by Reporters Without Borders.
Meanwhile, the country is close to the top of the table when it comes to capital punishment. According to Amnesty, at least 79 people were executed in the country in 2013, and 60 in 2014 so far.
The death penalty is mainly imposed for murder and drug-dealing, but it can also be imposed for "crimes against religion." The Shia cleric Nimr Bakir al-Nimr was sentenced to death in mid-October for allegedly stirring up violence between faiths and organizing protests, as well as disobedience to the king.
The conviction sent out a signal, according to Menno Preuschaft, Islamic studies professor at the University of Münster in Germany. "It demonstrated that they are not willing to tolerate any formof, or tendencies toward, revolution or transition," he told DW.
Preuschaft said it was not surprising that so many rulings are based on religious laws. The ruling family in Saudi Arabia draws its political legitimacy from its role protecting Islam and its holy sites. That role justifies its theological leadership position within Sunni Islam both nationally and internationally. "From the monarchy's point of view, any criticism of religion is a criticism of its own leadership," said Preuschaft. "That's also how it defends its own monopoly on power."
source: DW |
| China considers ending death penalty for 9 crimes
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October 27, 2014: China may scrap the death penalty for nine out of 55 crimes, including counterfeiting and smuggling nuclear materials, state media said Monday.
China executes more people every year than the rest of the world combined, according to Dui Hua, a U.S.-based rights group that focuses on legal justice.
The proposal to end the death penalty for the nine crimes was submitted to the standing committee of the National People's Congress, which is holding its bi-monthly session this week in Beijing, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The crimes include illegal fund raising, counterfeiting, smuggling counterfeit currency, organizing prostitution, forcing others to engage in prostitution, and smuggling weapons, ammunition and nuclear materials. They also include two military-related crimes — obstructing others from performing military duties and fabricating rumors to confuse the public during war time.
China currently has 55 crimes that are punishable by death, including murder, burglary, rape and drug-related offenses. Some economic crimes, such as embezzlement and taking bribes, are also punishable by death, although Chinese courts rarely hand out capital punishment for them.
Although it remains a state secret how many people China executes each year, Dui Hua estimates that about 2,400 people were executed last year, one-tenth the number in 1983.
source: AP |
| Pope: no to death penalty and to inhuman prison conditions
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October 24, 2014: Pope Francis on Thursday called on all men and women of good will to fight for the abolishment of the death penalty in “all of its forms” and for the improvement of prison conditions.
The Pope was addressing a group of members of the International Association of Criminal Law whom he received in the Vatican.
“All Christians and people of goodwill are called today to fight not only for the abolition of the death penalty be it legal or illegal, in all of its forms, but also for the improvement of prison conditions in the respect of the human dignity of those who have been deprived of freedom. I link this to the death sentence. In the Penal Code of the Vatican, the sanction of life sentence is no more. A life sentence is a death sentence which is concealed.” Pope said.
Pope Francis also speaks of what he calls “cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments and sanctions,” and compares detention in maximum-security prisons to a “form of torture”. The isolation imposed in these places – he says – causes “mental and physical” suffering that result in an “increased tendency towards suicide”.
source: Vatican Radio |
| Links between death penalty and mental health exposed from Japan to Nigeria
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October 23, 2014: The 12th World Day Against the Death Penalty was marked by hundreds of actions on all continents, in the media and online.
On 10 October, representatives from the World Coalition and its member organisations featured widely in the media to denounce the links between the death penalty and mental ill health. “In Japan, a person who had spent 50 years on death row has just been released and will have a new trial because they were found to be mentally ill,” said the World Coalition’s executive director, Maria Donatelli.
World Coalition member organisations highlighted the plight of people with mental illnesses or intellectual disabilities facing the death penalty in their country. In Lagos, a press release issued by HURILAWS detailed how “Nigeria has applied the death penalty for more than 50 years with no serious attention paid to mental health”.
Medics, too, took a stance. The International Council of Nurses expressed its deep concern at the lack of adequate care and support for people with mental disorders and issued a reminder that ethics rules prevent nurses from taking part in executions. The president of the World Medical Association drew attention to the World Day at the organisation's annual general meeting, which took place on the same day. On that occasion, he highlighted the Declaration of Tokyo, which prevents medics from taking part in cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Leading figures on the international politics, business and arts scenes endorsed the World Day.
Richard Branson, the founder of the media and transportation group Virgin, called on governments to follow the World Coalition’s recommendations on the protection of people with mental illnesses and disabilities at risk of execution. “We should all strive to end the death penalty for good. But on the road to universal abolition, we must do all we can to protect those that are most at risk of being innocently convicted,” Branson wrote on his blog.
On the occasion of an event on "Justice that Kills: The Death Penalty in the 21st Century" organised by the European Union and Italy at the UN in Geneva, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon issued a message of support for the World Day, calling on world leaders to establish a moratorium on executions and ratify the UN Protocol on the abolition of the death penalty.
Foreign ministers from 12 from countries with and without capital punishment released a joint declaration calling for a world that “respects human dignity” on World Day Against the Death Penalty.
World Coalition president Florence Bellivier has explained the links beween mental disorders and capital punishment.
source: World Coalition |
| China executed 2,400 people in 2013
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October 22, 2014: The world's top executioner China put 2,400 people to death last year, a US-based rights group said, shedding rare light on a statistic Beijing tries to keep a state secret.
The Dui Hua Foundation said on Tuesday that the figure had gone down by 20 percent since 2012, but China is so sensitive about the issue that it has done nothing to publicise the decline in its use of the death penalty.
The foundation, a nonprofit organisation that seeks clemency and better treatment for at-risk detainees, said it obtained its figures from "a judicial official with access to the number of executions carried out each year".
"China currently executes more people every year than the rest of the world combined, but it has executed far fewer people since the power of final review of death sentences was returned to the (Supreme People's Court) in 2007," Dui
Hua said.
China's top court examines all death sentences issued in the country, and sent back 39 percent of those it reviewed last year to lower courts for additional evidence, Dui Hua added, citing a report by the Southern Weekly newspaper.
Amnesty International releases annual reports of death penalties in 22 countries. Its 2013 report recorded an increase of 14 percent in executions worldwide from the 2012 figure.
Amnesty has not published statistics on China's death penalties since 2009 due to the difficulty of getting information.
Amnesty's overall figure in 2013 for death penalties carried out worldwide was 778, which means that if the 2,400 figure is accurate, China executed more than three times the number of people than every other country combined.
Outside of China, almost 80 percent of all executions were recorded in Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Iran is reported to have executed 369 people, and Iraq is recorded as having executed 169, according to Amnesty.
At least 23,392 people were sentenced to death worldwide by the end of 2013, the rights group said, with most of the sentences related to drugs offences.
The United States remained the only country in the Americas that carries out executions. The state of Texas accounted for 41 percent of them.
According to Amnesty International's annual report, by 2013, 173 of the 193 member states of the United Nations were execution free.
source: Al Jazeera |
| Letter of support from the Ambassador of the Republic of Serbia in Morocco
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October 21, 2014: Dear friends, I am recently appointed as Ambassador of the Republic of Serbia in Rabat. One of the topics that I follow is the abolishment of the death penalty which has not been carried out for many years, but is still not abolished, Even the new a Constitution, compiled by serious advocates giving serious consideration does not abolish the death penalty. The authors cite religious reasons against the death penalty, but do not relinquish it's use.
I'm opening this topic in meetings with officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Parliament which has formed a special working group for the abolition of the death penalty. Unfortunately, more than one hundred convicts on death row awaiting execution. This topic is difficult, but I see ample room for discussion. I have spoken with members of the National Committee for Human Rights and soon will meet with representatives of the Moroccan Human Rights Committee and I will open the topic with them.
Here in Morocco on the occasion on October 10, there was little media coverage, However there are independent newspapers and radio programs which have given attention, especially in French.
Although there was no activities here on the occasion on the World day against death penalty, as you organazied in Serbia which I always attended, I felt a personal contribution to convey this information, and to once again confirm my interest and support for yours activities.
Greetings to all, especially to Mr. Jankovic, consistent fighter not only for the abolition, but also for prevention of advocating for the return of the death penalty in our limp, loose laws and risky practice.
With the great respect and with an invitation to visit me,
Sladjana Prica, Ambassador of the Republic of Serbia in Morocco |
| Saudi Arabia Beheaded 59 People So Far This Year
October 17, 2014: Last month saw Saudi Arabia behead at least 8 people. In August those executed by Riyadh were sentenced to death for crimes such as apostasy, adultery and "sorcery." In one case, four members of the same family were executed for "receiving large quantities of hashish," a sentence imposed, according to Amnesty International, on the basis of "forced confessions extracted through torture."
The human rights group has reported a "disturbing surge" in executions in the kingdom. Said Boumedouha, deputy director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Program, said that many are executed for petty crimes, highlighting the frequent and seemingly casual imposition of such sentences.
The practice is not confined to adults. According to Amnesty International, Saudi Arabia executed at least one person under the age of 18 this year, a violation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
source: Vice |
| October 10, World and European Day Against the Death Penalty
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October 11, 2014: On the occasion of the World and European Day Against the Death Penalty at the Center for Cultural Decontamination the Hollywood musical, Chicago, was screened.
The keynote speaker for the evening was Ivan Jankovic, of the NGO organization, Serbia Against Capital Punishment. Jankovic spoke about lynch-like atmosphere of the media, which has extended into the population of Serbia, following the horrible murder of Tijana Juric, in August 2014. Jankovic included graphs depicting the results of survey, conducted in September, indicating, for the first time, a majority of respondents recommending restoration of the death penalty in Serbia. Jankovic believes that the survey results are directly influenced by and related to, the aforementioned murder, and the lynch-like atmosphere. Jankovic referenced more frequent public demand for the return of the death penalty as well as more direct actions thru social networks, requesting the same.
The event was organized by Serbia Against Capital Punishment and the Center for Cultural Decontamination.
Photos from the event
Video |
| EU and Council of Europe on World Day against Death Penalty
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October 9, 2014: Joint Declaration by the European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and the Secretary General of the Council of Europe on the European and World Day against the Death Penalty, 10 October 2014.
''On the occasion of October 10, the European and World Day against the Death Penalty, the European Union and the Council of Europe reaffirm their strong and absolute opposition to capital punishment in all cases and under all circumstances, and their commitment to its worldwide abolition. We are deeply concerned about setbacks in some countries, such as recent mass trials leading to a vast number of death sentences, the extension in domestic legislation of the scope of the death penalty's use, or the resumption of executions after a period of several years.
No execution has taken place in our Member States in the past 17 years. The European Union and the Council of Europe welcome the fact that all Member States of the European Union have now ratified both Protocols 6 and 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights, and urge all other European States that have not yet done so to sign and ratify these instruments which aim at the abolition of the death penalty.
The European Union and the Council of Europe deeply regret the recent executions carried out by Belarus, the only European country that applies this form of punishment. They strongly urge Belarus to commute the sentences of the two remaining persons sentenced to death in 2013, and to establish a moratorium on executions as a first step towards abolition of the death penalty.
Both organisations welcome the recent steps taken by the African Union towards the adoption of an Additional Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Abolition of the Death Penalty. They welcome that recent ratifications of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 15 December 1989, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty, have brought the number of States Parties to eighty-one. They encourage all States which have not yet done so to ratify this protocol on the occasion of its 25th anniversary in 2014.
The European Union and Council of Europe call on all Members of the United Nations to support the Resolution on a moratorium on the use of the death penalty which will be put to vote at the 69th session of the UN General Assembly in December 2014.''
source: The Delegation of the Europian Union to the Republic of Serbia |
| Oklahoma's (USA) Response to Botched Execution: Hide the Next One From the Public
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October 3, 2014: Five months after Clayton Lockett's horrifically botched execution and the state's promise to investigate and improve its execution process, the government responded yesterday with a brand-new "execution policy" that only makes it more difficult for the public to know anything about how the government is carrying out the ultimate punishment.
The policy slashes the number of media witnesses allowed to attend an execution from 12 to 5, and it expressly reserves the right to regulate their access on the fly. Even crazier, the policy gives the state the power to close the execution viewing curtain on a whim, and to remove witnesses -- as state officials see fit.
The new execution policy, and its reduction of public oversight, will only increase the likelihood of more cruel and unusual deaths at the hands of the state.
Some of the three drugs used in a botched execution didn’t enter Lockett’s system because the vein they were injected into collapsed, and that failure wasn’t noticed for 21 minutes, the state’s prison chief said, urging changes to the state’s execution procedure.
Medical officials tried for nearly an hour to find a vein in Lockett’s arms, legs and neck before finally inserting an IV into his groin, prisons director Robert Patton wrote in a letter to the governor Thursday detailing Lockett’s last day.
For three minutes after the first drugs were delivered Lockett struggled violently, groaned and writhed, vomiting.
According to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, Lockett died shortly thereafter of an apparent massive heart attack, approximately 40 minutes after proceedings began.
source: Huffington Post |
| Japan: "No plans to abolish capital punishment"
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September 29, 2014: The Japanese government does not believe that the death penalty is in need of any immediate reform, the country's new Justice Minister Midori Matsushima said.
Matsushima, who took up the portfolio in early September, reaffirmed her stance on capital punishment in Japan, one of 22 countries in the world that still mandate capital punishment for certain crimes.
"I believe that the death penalty is necessary to punish certain very serious crimes. We have to take into account the emotional reaction of the families as well as the general public," Matsushima said at a press conference Friday.
At least 5.6 % of Japanese citizens said the death penalty was "unavoidable if the circumstances demand it", while 5.7 % "totally oppose it", according to the most recent poll conducted on the topic, which the minister cited.
The latest 2 executions in the country took place Aug 29, bringing the total number of state-mandated deaths to 11 since the Liberal Democratic Party regained control of the government in 2012.
Amnesty International has repeatedly criticised Japan's implementation of the death sentence "without legal guarantees", referring to cases such as the execution of prisoners suffering from mental illnesses.
source: BS |
| Former FBI Director Says People Were Executed Based Partly on Faulty Agency Testimony
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September 25, 2014: William Sessions, former head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, recently pointed to cases of defendants who were executed based in part on faulty hair and fiber analysis in calling for changes in the use of forensic evidence. In an op-ed in the Washington Times, Sessions told the story of Benjamin Boyle, who was executed in Texas in 1997. His conviction was based on testing conducted by an FBI crime lab that an official review later determined to be unreliable and "scientifically unsupportable." Neither state officials nor Boyle's attorneys were notified of the task force's findings before his execution. In two other cases, inmates were also executed despite findings that their cases were tainted by unreliable forensic testimony from the FBI. Sessions said, "I have no idea whether Boyle was innocent, but clearly, he was executed despite great doubts about his conviction. Such uncertainty is unacceptable, especially in a justice system that still allows the death penalty."
source: DPIC |
| USA: Texas set to execute woman for gruesome murder of child
September 18, 2014: A Texas woman convicted of the starvation and torture death of her girlfriend's 9-year-old son a decade ago was executed Wednesday evening.
Lisa Coleman, 38, received a lethal injection about an hour after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-day appeal to spare her.
Coleman became the ninth convicted killer and second woman to receive lethal injection in Texas this year. Nationally, she's the 15th woman executed since the Supreme Court in 1976 allowed the death penalty to resume. During that same time, nearly 1,400 men have been put to death.
source: AP |
| Support for Death Penalty in California (USA) Lowest in 50 Years
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September 14, 2014: A Field Poll of voters in California found that support for capital punishment has reached its lowest level since 1965. Only 56% of respondents said they favored keeping the death penalty, down from 69% in 2011. Support for the death penalty among Californians peaked in the mid-1980s at 83%.
The strongest opposition to keeping the death penalty came from voters under 30, African and Asian Americans, and Democrats. Daisy Vieyra, a spokesperson for the ACLU of Northern California, said support for capital punishment has declined because, "The public is becoming more aware of all the flaws that riddle the system." In 2012, a referendum to replace California's death penalty with life without parole almost passed, coming up short in a 52-48% vote.
The poll also asked "What should California do in light of a federal judge’s ruling that California’s death penalty is unconstitutional because it takes so long for the state to carry out an execution?" Voters were closely split, with 52% saying the process should be speeded up and 40% saying the death penalty should be replaced with life without parole.
source: DPIC |
| Interior Minister stated again that he yearns for Capital Punishment
September 9, 2014: Minister of Internal Affairs Nebojša Stefanovi stated for RTS that he would have even today said the same thing, that he regrets that Serbia has abolished death penalty, because what has happened to Tijana Juric causes that kind of reaction, so he reacts like a father.
Minister again making personal statements in public although they are opposite to official policy.
Serbia Against Capital Punishment reminds that according to Article 24 of the Constitution, „There shall be no capital punishment in the Republic of Serbia“. In addition, Serbia has ratified Protocols 5 and 13 to the European Convention of Human Rights, which state: „The death penalty shall be abolished. No one shall be condemned to such penalty or executed“.
source: Danas |
| USA: North Carolina brothers declared innocent, freed after 30 years in prison
September 4, 2014: Two US men who spent three decades in prison for rape and murder, one of them on death row, have been released after DNA evidence proved their innocence.
Mentally disabled half brothers Henry McCollum, 50, and Leon Brown, 46, were convicted in 1983 of raping and killing an 11-year-old girl in North Carolina. A county judge ordered the immediate release of the brothers.
McCollum is North Carolina's longest-serving death row inmate. Brown's sentence was reduced at a second trial to life in prison for rape.
"This case is a tragedy which has profoundly affected not only the lives of the people involved, but which profoundly affects our system of justice in North Carolina," said lawyer for Mr Brown, Ann Kirby.
Among the evidence presented in court was a DNA match linking a cigarette butt found near the victim's body to another man, who was later sentenced to death for a similar rape and murder in the same town.
source: BBC |
| Japan executes two more prisoners
August 29, 2014: Japan executed a mobster and a killer arsonist on Friday, bringing to 11 the total number of death sentences carried out since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took power in 2012.
"I ordered the executions after prudent consideration," Justice Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki told reporters.
The executed men were both multiple killers.
Tsutomu Takamizawa, 59, a gang boss in the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest yakuza grouping, was convicted of shooting three people dead between 2001 and 2005, the justice ministry said.
Mitsuhiro Kobayashi, a 56-year-old former taxi driver, was convicted of killing five people and seriously injuring four others in 2001 by setting fire to a consumer loan office, in Aomori, northern Japan.
Japan now has 125 inmates on death row, according to local media.
Apart from the United States, Japan is the only major industrialised democracy to use capital punishment.
source: AFP |
| Iran: More prisoners hanged in public
August 27, 2014: The Iranian regime henchman continued hanging in public of prisoners in cities across the country to further intensify climate of fear among the public.
On Sunday morning a man was hanged in public in city of Sari (northern Iran) and another man was also hanged in public in city of Borazjan.
Meanwhile the authorities in the main prison in city of Bandar Abbas (southern Iran) transferred a group of five men were transferred to solitary confinement to await their execution.
Since Hassan Rouhani has assumed office as the president of the Iranian regime, there has been a rise in human rights violations in Iran. Some 800 have been executed in Iran during the past year in Iran, including many in public.
source: NCR-Iran
|
| Macedonia: Vevcani wants death penalty resumed after double murder in the village
August 20, 2014: Residents of Macedonia’s Vevcani want the death penalty to be reinstated after two people from the village were killed by former postman, Macedonian Vecer daily writes.
According to the local residents, revenge is the only punishment for the killer of their fellow villagers.
Mayor of the village, Cvevromir Ugrinovski, said that a petition had been launched with a demand to re-enforce the death sentence.
Death sentence was rejected in Macedonia in 1991. The last convict sentenced to death was Male Zekiri in 1987 for raping and killing his own daughter.
source: Focus |
| India: Two Sisters May Become Country's First Women to Be Hanged
August 14, 2014: the Mumbai Mirror said two sisters from Kolhapur in Maharashtra State, who were sentenced to death in 2001 for kidnapping 13 children and killing nine of them, are likely to become the first ever women in India to be hanged after President Pranab Mukherjee rejected their mercy pleas late July.
Renuka Kiran Shinde and Seema Mohan Gavit, who partnered their mother Anjanabai Gavit to kidnap the kids and push them into begging and killed some of them after they stopped being productive.
Desk officer Deepak Jadiye of the home department said no objections have been received yet on the Kolapur sisters’ hanging.
source: Hands off Cain |
| Serbia: A life in prison is possible, but death penalty is not
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August 9, 2014: After the monstrous murder of Tijane Juri (15), the emotional reaction of public is completely understandable. The public in Serbia seeks tougher sanctions for suspect Dragan Djuric (34), but the reintroduction of the death penalty is not an adequate solution, it is not possible due to the fact that Serbia is a member of the Council of Europe.
The maximum penalty for the most serious crimes in Serbia is 40 years in prison. Milan Škuli, Professor of Criminal Law, told for "Danas" that possibility to modify the system of criminal sanctions exists.
"We can`t restore the death penalty because Counicil of Europe does not allow it, andSerbia is a member of Council of Europe. States without death penalty, as the maximum sanction usually have a life sentence. Most Europian countries have life imprisonment in their penal codes and that might be the best legal solution for the most serious crimes - considered Škuli.
Statement of the Minister of Internal Affairs, Nebojša Stefanovi, who expressed regret that Serbia has abolished the death penalty, Škuli estimates as a human reaction, caused with feelings of empathy, in specific circumstances."
On the other hand, the president of the NGO "Serbia against death penalty", lawyer Ivan Jankovi, told for "Danas" that the minister's statement is unacceptable.
"To Ministers and civil servants is not allowed to express their personal and emotional stands in public, if they are opposite with official policy. Serbia is in EU integration process and EU is against death penalty. If the statement is populist, it is also for reprehensible. The question is, in general, what this man thinks - evaluates Jankovi.
He recalls that Serbia abolished the death penalty in 2002, in order to remain a member of the Council of Europe.
source: Danas |
| Serbia: Missing teenager found murdered, Interior Minister yearns for Capital Punishment
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August 7, 2014: The Serbian police have found the body of Tijana J., a 15-year-old girl that went missing in the town of Bajmok, in northern Serbia, on July 26.
The police also have a suspect for her abduction and murder it custody, the MUP has confirmed for B92.
It is assumed that the girl was killed the same night she was abducted. Her body was buried not far from Sombor, in the town of Svetozar Mileti.
The suspected killer is a butcher from Sur
in, who was in Bajmok visiting friends at the time the crime was committed. As reported by the RTS, he was arrested in Belgrade.
According to unofficial information, after several hours of questioning, the suspect admitted that he had killed the girl, and told the police where he buried her body.
During the night, Interior Minister Nebojša Stefanovi and Police Director Milorad Veljovi traveled to Bajmok.
"Unfortunately our worst fears are fulfilled... The police arrested yesterday the monster who committed this crime... Because of this monster and these terrible crimes, sometimes I regret that Serbia has abolished death penalty, it is obvious that our society is not ready for European standards of behavior, " Interior Minister Stefanovic said.
Serbia Against Capital Punishment reminds that according to Article 24 of the Constitution, „There shall be no capital punishment in the Republic of Serbia“. In addition, Serbia has ratified Protocols 5 and 13 to the European Convention of Human Rights, which state: „The death penalty shall be abolished. No one shall be condemned to such penalty or executed“.
source: B92 |
| Missouri (USA) puts to death first inmate since botched execution
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August 6, 2014: Missouri inmate was put to death Wednesday for raping and killing a college student in 1995, making him the first U.S. prisoner put to death since an Arizona lethal injection went awry last month.
The Missouri Department of Corrections said Michael Worthington was executed by lethal injection at the state prison and was pronounced dead at 12:11 a.m. He is the seventh Missouri inmate executed this year.
Worthington had been sentenced to death for the attack on 24-year-old Melinda "Mindy" Griffin during a burglary of her Lake St. Louis condominium.
The U.S. Supreme Court and Missouri's governor had declined on Tuesday to block the execution.
Worthington's attorneys had pressed the Supreme Court to put off his execution, citing the Arizona execution and two others that were botched in Ohio and Oklahoma, as well as the secrecy involving the drugs used during the process in Missouri.
Those three executions in recent months have renewed the debate over lethal injection. In Arizona, the inmate gasped more than 600 times and took nearly two hours to die. In April, an Oklahoma inmate died of an apparent heart attack 43 minutes after his execution began. And in January, an Ohio inmate snorted and gasped for 26 minutes before dying. Most lethal injections take effect in a fraction of that time, often within 10 or 15 minutes.
source: USA Today |
| Somalia executes three suspected militants by firing squad
August 3, 2014: Three men involved in a deadly terrorist attack on the Presidential Palace in Mogadishu have been executed by a firing squad.
The men, all members of al-Qaeda linked al-Shabab, had been found guilty of killing civilians and masterminding the July attack, and were sentenced to death by a Somali military court.
The attack on July 5 saw al-Shabab insurgents attack the presidential palace with guns and bombs while President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was away.
The militants entered the presidential palace by placing a car bomb near the entrance to the compound, after which the militants attacked from two directions, officials said at the time.
The images of the execution emerge as a roadside bomb detonated in a busy market in the Somali capital, killing three women, and wounding seven others.
source: Daily Mail
|
| German Officials Refuse to Cooperate in Possible Death Penalty Case
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July 29, 2014: German officials are withholding significant evidence in a murder case involving U.S. servicemen because of Germany's opposition to the death penalty. Sean Oliver has been charged with the murder of another member of the U.S. military, Dmitry Chepusov, in Germany. The U.S. Air Force has jurisdiction over the case, but Germany is withholding cooperation unless the U.S. military agrees not to seek a death sentence. German police discovered the body and conducted the autopsy, and are now refusing to hand over several pieces of physical evidence.
Germany abolished the death penalty in 1949 and authorities are banned by law from cooperating in foreign cases that could result in the death penalty. The victim's family is also opposing capital punishment for Oliver. Dennis Bushmitch, the victim's brother, said, “We are urging the Americans not to pursue the death penalty.”
In 1985, the German government successfully fought extradition of a German citizen accused of two murders in Virginia until a decision was made not to seek a death sentence.
source: DPIC |
| Arizona (USA) execution takes two hours
|
July 25, 2014: US death row inmate Joseph Wood has died after an execution in Arizona took nearly two hours to kill him.
Wood, a double murderer, was executed by lethal injection.
His lawyers filed an appeal for an emergency stay of execution, after he had been "gasping and snorting for more than an hour" in the death chamber.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer says she has ordered a full review of the execution, although she said that Wood "died in a lwful manner".
Wood's lawyers argued the extended execution process violated his right to be executed in the absence of cruel and unusual punishment.
But Ms Brewer said: "By eyewitness and medical accounts he did not suffer. This is in stark comparison to the gruesome, vicious suffering that he inflicted on his two victims, and the lifetime of suffering he has caused their family."
The execution should have taken 10 minutes, his lawyers said, but Wood, 55, gasped more than 600 times before he died.
He was convicted of the 1989 murders of his estranged girlfriend Debra Dietz and her father Eugene Dietz.
This latest case has brought the issue of how America executes its inmates on death row back into the spotlight, only a few months after a botched execution in Oklahoma.
source: BBC |
| Singapore executes two men and resumes executions after more than three years
22 July, 2014: On 18 July 2014 the Central Narcotics Bureau announced the executions of two men, Tang Hai Liang, 36, and Foong Chee Peng, 48. The executions were carried out by hanging.
Because of the secrecy surrounding the death penalty in Singapore, the exact date of the previous execution is uncertain; the last executions were reportedly carried out in 2011.
According to the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, “23 detainees remain on the death row in Singapore, many of them being convicted for drug-related offences.”
source: ICDP
|
| Lebanon and Qatar now among abolitionists
|
July 22, 2014: Executions have resumed in Kuwait and Egypt while Lebanon and Qatar are now de facto among abolitionists - countries in which no court has sentenced anyone to death for at least a decade - along with Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia, according to the 2014 report on the death penalty worldwide presented Friday in Rome by Italian NGO "Nessuno Tocchi Caino" (May nobody touch Cain).
According to the report, the countries with the highest rate of executions in 2013 and the first 6 months of 2014 were China - where at least 3,000 of the world's reported 4,106 executions were carried out - followed by Iran (687), Iraq (172) and Saudi Arabia (78).
Palestine, Bahrain, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Syria and Yemen also maintained the death penalty. Algeria is carrying out a moratorium on executions.
Among the 8 countries which resumed executions over 2013 or in the first semester of this year were the United Arab Emirates (1), Egypt (at least 8 in 2014) and Kuwait (5).
A reported 13 people aged under 18 were executed in 3 countries: at least 9 in Iran, 3 in Saudi Arabia and 1 in Yemen.
source: Death Penalty News |
| Judge rules against California (USA) death penalty
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July 17, 2014: A federal judge has ruled that the death penalty in California is unconstitutional, citing that lengthy and unpredictable delays have resulted in an arbitrary and unfair capital punishment system.
Opponents of capital punishment hailed Wednesday’s ruling by US District Court judge Cormac Carney as a landmark decision.
The ruling has overturned the death sentence of Ernest Dewayne Jones who was condemned in 1994 for killing his girlfriend's mother three years earlier.
"Nearly two decades later, Mr. Jones remains on California's death row, awaiting his execution, but with complete uncertainty as to when, or even whether, it will ever come," the judge wrote in his ruling, calling the death penalty an empty promise that violates the Constitution's protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
Since the adopton of capital punishment by California voters in 1978, more than 900 people have been sentenced to death for their crimes, but only 13 executed.
For the rest the dysfunctional administration of California's death penalty system has resulted, and will continue to result, in an inordinate and unpredictable period of delay preceding their actual execution," Carney said.
"Indeed, for most, systemic delay has made their execution so unlikely that the death sentence... has been quietly transformed into one no rational jury or legislature could ever impose: life in prison, with the remote possibility of death."
"Such a system .. is unconstitutional," he said.
source: Al Jazeera
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| Fewer Russian citizens support death penalty - poll
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July 15, 2014: The number of people supporting death penalty gradually decreases in Russia, sociologists of Levada Center told Interfax on Monday upon presenting its poll. According to the survey held on June 20-23 in 134 cities, towns and villages in 46 Russian regions among 1,600 respondents, currently 52 percent Russians support death penalty, and 61 percent and 73 percent people shared this stance in 2012 and 2002 respectively.
In the past two years the share of death penalty opponents grew from 24 percent to 33 percent, sociologists said. The number of people absolutely opposed to capital punishment remains almost unchanged - 9 percent respondents said in December 2010 they supported cancelling the death penalty completely, 10 percent in 2012 and 7 percent share this stance now, the poll showed.
Death penalty is generally more supported by people aged 18-25 (54 percent) and 40-55 (52 percent), men (56 percent), respondents with at least secondary education (57 percent), rural residents (57 percent) and those living in towns (52 percent).
The Russian Criminal Code foresees the punishment of life imprisonment to death penalty for a number of especially serious crimes against a person.
Death penalty moratorium was introduced in Russia by a presidential order in August 1996 and the country signed a relevant protocol of the European convention on human rights in April 1997. However, the document has not been ratified by the State Duma.
source: RBTH |
| Malawi will not abolish the death penalty, UN told
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July 13, 2014: Malawi will not abolish the death penalty from its laws, Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs Principal Secretary and Solicitor General Banda told United Nation Human Rights Council.
Banda said when formally presented the responses to the committee's question of whether the coutnry had plans to ratify the Second Optional Protocol to the [International Covenant on Civil and Politcal Rights] ICCPR by amending the Penal Code in order to formally abolish the death penalty.
She Said Malawi retains the death penalty and, as such, has no intentions to ratify the Ooptional Protocol to the ICCPR.
"There are no immediate plans of abolishing the death penalty. Malawian courts still impose death penalties on persons convicted of murder," reads a response.
Murder, treason and armed robbery are punishable by hanging in Malawi but the coutnry has not carried out an execution since 1992, and it is therefore believed to have a policy or established practice of de facto abolition.
source: Death Penalty News
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| Egypt: 180 sentenced to death in June alone
July 9, 2014: Some 180 people were sentenced to death in Egypt in June, according to a report issued by the Egyptian Observatory of Rights and Freedoms.
The report pointed out that the total number of convictions during June alone exceeded 1,700 people, 941 of whom were given prison sentences, 760 were acquitted, and 180 were given the death penalty.
Since the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi, security services have arrested thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members and opponents of the coup, mostly during peaceful protests.
Some 682 pro-Morsi demonstrators were given the death penalty including the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Badie.
source: Middle East Monitor
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| Another Juvenile Execution in Iran
July 6, 2014: A juvenile offender was executed in the prison of Tabriz (Northwestern Iran) in the month of June, stop child executionsaccording to unofficial sources. According to the website Oyannews the prisoner was identified as “Amir Sardhaei” convicted of a murder committed when he was under 18 years of age. The execution was carried out on Monday June 9, in the prison of Tabriz, said the report.
Despite international protests, Iranian authorities have executed at least 8 prisoners charged with offences committed at under 18 years of age in 2014.
source: Iran Human Rights
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| ‘Death penalty has no place in 21st century,’ declares UN chief
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July 2, 2014: The death penalty has no place in the 21st century, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared today, calling on all States take concrete steps towards abolishing or no longer practicing this form of punishment.
“Together, we can finally end this cruel and inhumane practice everywhere around the world,” said Mr. Ban in opening remarks to the special event “Best practices and challenges in implementing a moratorium on the death penalty,” co-organized at UN Headquarters by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Permanent Mission of Italy to the UN.
The special event is being held, “in the spirit” of the aims of the annual resolution of the UN General Assembly on “Moratorium on the use of the death penalty” first adopted in 2007. That broad and inclusive text does not impose the abolition of the death penalty but rather proposes a moratorium on executions – de jure or de facto – with a view to abolishing the death penalty in the future.
The UN chief went on to express concern about legislation in 14 States that permits the death penalty on children as well as the new phenomenon of sentencing large groups of individuals to death in mass trials.
source: UN News Centre
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| Japan carries out first execution of 2014
June 27, 2014: Japan Thursday hanged a man on death row in the first execution of the year and the ninth since the government of the Liberal Democratic Party came to power at the end of 2012, the government said.
Masanori Kawasaki, 68, was executed in Osaka in western Japan for the murder of his two granddaughters and sister-in-law in 2007, Japan's Minister of Justice, Sadakazu Tanigaki said.
Japan, along with the US, is the only industrialised and democratic country that still uses the death penalty.
The execution is done under great secrecy, without prior notice to the offender and no witnesses, and is disclosed to the public only once it has been carried out.
source: Business Standard
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| Vietnam court confirms 29 death sentences
June 22, 2014: The Supreme People's Court in the northern province of Quang Ninh yesterday refused to revoke death sentences given to 29 people involved in the biggest drug trafficking case in Viet Nam.
The trial was presented with evidence of heroin weighing a total of 1,750 kilos - plus thousands of methamphetamine pills.
Communist Vietnam has some of the world's toughest anti-drug laws.
Anyone found guilty of possessing more than 600 grams (21 ounces) of heroin, or more than 20 kilograms of opium, can face the death penalty.
The country currently now has more than 700 prisoners on death row.
Since 2011 Vietnam shifted from the firing squad to lethal injection.
source: Death Penalty News |
| Belarus: Secret Executions, Forced Labor Reports UN Expert
June 20, 2014: The UN Human Rights Council were told of the "systematic character of the serious repression of all human rights in Belarus" by the expert it appointed to investigate the former Soviet state.
Miklos Haraszti told the Geneva-based body that the government in Minsk, headed since 1994 by President Alexander Lukashenko, is the only parliament in Europe without opposition.
It is also the only country in Europe that retains the death penalty and Haraszti had previously reported "as a possible positive development that no executions had reportedly carried out during the reporting period."
"However, in April 2014, two new executions were carried out in secret," he said. "Those facing the death penalty, and their relatives or lawyers are neither informed of the scheduled date of execution nor where the body is buried. In one of the cases, the mother of the executed Pavel Sialiun was not notified of the decision to reject his plea for pardon or the date of execution."
source: Death Penalty News |
| India To Impose Death Penalty On Hijackers
June 15, 2014: India will introduce a new anti-hijacking law to impose death penalty on hijackers, Xinhua news agency reports local media as saying.
The Civil Aviation Ministry plans to introduce the Anti-Hijacking Act 2014 which proposes to enforce the death sentence for convicted hijackers if there is loss of life of passengers, treat conspirators at par with those actually carrying out the hijacking, and provide for confiscation of property of guilty persons.
The new law will repeal the current law on hijacking which went into effect in 1982.
source: Hands off Cain |
| USA: Poll Finds Majority Support for Life in Prison Over Death Penalty
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June 10, 2014: A new poll by ABC News and the Washington Post finds that a majority of Americans prefer life without parole (52%) as punishment for convicted murderers, with just 42% preferring the death penalty. This is the first time that this poll has found higher support for life without parole than the death penalty.
Without an alternative sentence offered, support for the death penalty was 61%, equaling the lowest level of support in polls going back to the early 1980s, and showing a significant drop since support for the death penalty peaked at 80% in 1994. Among those who said they supported the death penalty, 29% preferred the alternative of life without parole when offered a choice between the two punishments. In states that do not have capital punishment, respondents were more likely to prefer life without parole (58%), with only 38% selecting the death penalty. Among the groups that had stronger than average support for life without parole were women (57%), nonwhites (65%), and Democrats (67%).
source: DPIC |
| Japan: Bar association to lobby embassies on death penalty abolition
June 7, 2014: The Japan Federation of Bar Associations said Friday it will step up consultations with the European Union on abolishing capital punishment and will work to encourage public debate.
The Japanese criminal justice system came under negative global scrutiny this year when a death-row inmate was freed after 48 years in prison. In March, a court freed Iwao Hakamada, 78, pending a re-examination of a 1966 murder case in which investigators allegedly faked evidence.
The federation will set up a panel of lawyers with experience of foreign criminal justice systems and will consult foreign embassies in Japan.
“We want to create opportunities to think about capital punishment, by deepening cooperation with the European Union . . . and by disseminating information,” said Yuji Ogawara, a lawyer at the federation.
The EU is strongly against capital punishment.
source: Japan Times |
| Taiwan: Death penalty for kidnappings abolished
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June 2, 2014: In its final meeting before the end of the plenary session, the Legislative Yuan passed amendments to the existing Criminal Code scrapping capital punishment from two clauses, which stipulate that a person who “kidnaps another to extort ransom shall be sentenced to death, life imprisonment or imprisonment for not less than seven years” and that “if aggravated injury results from the offense, the offender shall be sentenced to death, life imprisonment, or imprisonment for not less than 10 years.”
The bill was proposed by the Executive Yuan, who referred in its proposal to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which was ratified by Taiwan in 2009 and says that in countries that have not abolished the death penalty, “the sentence of death may be imposed only for the most serious crimes in accordance with the law in force at the time of the commission of the crime and not contrary to the provisions of the present Covenant and to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”
source: Hands off Cain |
| Ohio (USA) judge orders moratorium on executions amid drug scrutiny
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May 29, 2014: A US judge ordered a two-and-a-half-month moratorium Wednesday on executions in Ohio to allow time for arguments over the state's new lethal injection procedures, which have drawn intense scrutiny.
Lethal injection, the primary means of execution in all 32 states with capital punishment, is under fire as never before because of botched executions, drug shortages caused by a European-led boycott, and a flurry of lawsuits over the new chemicals that states are using instead.
Ohio (USA) uses two drugs injected simultaneously in executions. The policy change considerably increases the amount of the sedative and raises the amount of the painkiller.
The US supreme court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, but around America the number of executions has declined steadily since peaking in 1999. The number of states that carry the death penalty has also been declining, with six dropping it in the last eight years.
Last week, Tennessee (USA) passed a law that could essentially bring back the electric chair. Elsewhere around the US, lawmakers have been talking about reviving the firing squad and the gas chamber, methods largely abandoned a generation ago.
source: The Guardian |
| Tennessee (USA) to use electric chair as death penalty when lethal injection drugs are unavailable
May 23, 2014: Tennessee's (USA) governor has signed a bill that would allow the state to use of the electric chair if lethal injection drugs are unavailable.
Currently, Tennessee (USA) death row inmates can opt for the electric chair instead of lethal injection, but the state gives them a choice. The new law says the state can unilaterally mandate the chair if lethal injection drugs can't be obtained.
Tennessee (USA) has scheduled executions by lethal injection for at least 10 death row inmates.
source: Hands off Cain |
| Maldives teenager could face death penalty
May 23, 2014: Sixteen-year-old charged with murder becomes first minor accused of capital offence since law's reintroduction.
A 16-year-old teenager has been charged with murder over a fatal stabbing in the Maldives, becoming the first minor to be accused of a capital offence since the death penalty was reintroduced, officials say.
Police said on Wednesday that the unnamed teenager is accused of stabbing a 21-year-old man to death in December last year in a drug-related fight in the capital Male.
If found guilty, the teenager faces the possibility of the death penalty, which was reintroduced in the country earlier this year.
Human rights groups have widely condemned the reintroduction of the death penalty after a 60-year moratorium, in particular provisions in the law which would allow children as young as seven to be sentenced to death.
The execution would take place once the offenders turned 18.
source: Al Jazeera |
| Suriname: Death Penalty To Be Revoked
May 21, 2014: Suriname, which has announced plans to remove the death penalty from its criminal books, says it will increase the maximum jail term for life sentences from 20 to 30 years.
The revised code will no longer feature the death penalty that Justice and Police Minister Edward Belfort described as an outdated piece of legislation that is irreversible once it is carried out. He also said that in his opinion it is not the government's prerogative to decide who lives or dies.
The justice minister has been very vocal about scrapping the capital punishment, saying in March that "countries that apply it would be expected to be the safest countries in the world, yet still have many murders committed on a daily basis".
source: Death Penalty News |
| Belarus: Convicted murderer reportedly executed
May 15, 2014: Media reports in Belarus say a convicted murderer has been executed.
Reports cite a court in the eastern city of Mahileu as saying on May 13 that Ryhor Yuzepchuk, 45, was put to death.
He was sentenced last year for killing his cellmate.
It is not clear when the execution was carried out.
The standard method of execution in Belarus is by a single gunshot to the back of the head.
The reports come four weeks after another convict in Belarus, Paval Selyun, 23, who was sentenced to death last year on charges of murdering his wife and another man, was said to have been executed.
Belarus is the only European country that still uses capital punishment.
source: Hands off Cain |
| Iran: Twenty people hanged in Karaj and Ahvaz
May 13, 2014: The Iranian regime has executed twenty people in Karaj and Ahvaz in recent days, reported the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). On 9 May, a group of 11 prisoners including a woman were hanged in Ghezel Hesar prison of Karaj. The prison guards had beaten the prisoners for resisting their transfer to solitary confinement prior to execution.
On 12 May, another group of 9 prisoners were hanged in a prison of Ahvaz. The victims, who had been all accused of drug smuggling, were identified by their initials: L. B., M. T., A. A., H. K., A. Kh, M. J., A. Q., M. Q, and another M. Q.
source: Hands off Cain |
| Imprisonment in Serbian Alkatraz
April 8, 2014: The Council of Europe has stated in its latest report that the Serbian prisons are the most populated in Europe. On 100 prisoners come as many as 160 prisoners. See how in the Serbian Alkatraz live the most dangerous prisoners, and why some convicts on 40 years in prison complains about the fact that the death penalty is abolished. Is it 22 hours a day in a cell greater punishment than death penalty?
For "Oko magazin" speaks multiple murderers sentenced to forty years in prision, chief of KPZ Zabela Zabele Radojica Šutovi, both lawyer and writer DSc. Ivan Jankovi, and criminologist Zlatko Nikoli.
LINK |
| President Obama Orders Review of Death Penalty
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April 7, 2014: President Obama has ordered Attorney General Eric Holder to review the application of the death penalty in the U.S. following the failed execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma on April 29. The President noted concerns about innocence and racial bias: “In the application of the death penalty in this country, we have seen significant problems — racial bias, uneven application of the death penalty, you know, situations in which there were individuals on death row who later on were discovered to have been innocent because of exculpatory evidence. And all these, I think, do raise significant questions about how the death penalty is being applied.” The Department of Justice was already reviewing federal execution protocols. Brian Fallon, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said, “At the president’s direction, the department will expand this review to include a survey of state-level protocols and related policy issues.” The President called the events in Oklahoma, in which the inmate regained consciousness and apprarently suffered before dying of a heart attack, "deeply disturbing."
source: DPIC |
| Sierra Leone to abolish death penalty
April 6, 2014: Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Hon. Franklyn Bai Kargbo, on May 2nd 2014, told the United Nations Committee against Torture that Sierra Leone will shortly abolish the death penalty. Addressing a public hearing session of the Committee in Geneva, Mr. Kargbo said that his office has received firm instructions from President Ernest Bai Koroma on the issue.
Sierra Leone is among 155 state parties to the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
source: Death Penalty News |
| Turkey child murders sparks outrage prompting calls to reinstate death penalty
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May 5, 2014: Several brutal murders of children have sparked outrage across Turkey, prompting calls to bring back the death penalty and leading the government to stiffen sentences for child killers.
Turkey abolished capital punishment more than a decade ago as part of Ankara's bid to enter the European Union, but calls to bring it back have multiplied after the gruesome killings.
Yusuf Yigitalp, deputy leader of the Islamic Saadet (Felicity) Party, said scrapping the death penalty had sparked a surge in crimes and bringing it back was a "must".
"Today capital punishment is applied in Western countries. The death penalty is in place in the United States and in Europe for certain crimes," he told the conservative Milli Gazete newspaper.
Ankara abolished capital punishment in 2002 as part of reforms to aid its EU bid, enshrining it in its constitution two years later.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that reintroducing capital punishment was impossible if Turkey wanted to join the bloc and the government would instead work to ensure full-life sentences for child murders.
source: Yahoo News |
| UN: Botched US execution may violate international law
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May 2, 2014: GENEVA — The United Nations human rights office says U.S. death row inmate Clayton Lockett’s suffering during his botched Oklahoma execution this week may amount to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under international human rights law.
A spokesman for the office, Rupert Colville, says Lockett’s prolonged death on Tuesday is “the second case of apparent extreme suffering caused by malfunctioning lethal injections” reported in the United States this year, after Dennis McGuire’s execution in Ohio on Jan. 16 with an allegedly untested combination of drugs.
Colville told reporters Friday in Geneva that “the apparent cruelty involved in these recent executions simply reinforces the argument that authorities across the United States should impose an immediate moratorium on the use of the death penalty and work for abolition of this cruel and inhuman practice.”
Some of the three drugs used in a botched execution didn’t enter Lockett’s system because the vein they were injected into collapsed, and that failure wasn’t noticed for 21 minutes, the state’s prison chief said, urging changes to the state’s execution procedure.
Medical officials tried for nearly an hour to find a vein in Lockett’s arms, legs and neck before finally inserting an IV into his groin, prisons director Robert Patton wrote in a letter to the governor Thursday detailing Lockett’s last day.
For three minutes after the first drugs were delivered Lockett struggled violently, groaned and writhed, vomiting.
According to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, Lockett died shortly thereafter of an apparent massive heart attack, approximately 40 minutes after proceedings began.
source: CBS |
| Egyptian court sentences 683 people to death
April 29, 2014: A judge at a mass trial in Egypt has recommended the death penalty for 683 people - including Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie.
The defendants faced charges over an attack on a police station in Minya in 2013 in which a policeman was killed.
However, the judge also commuted to life terms 492 death sentences out of 529 passed in March in a separate case.
Also on Monday, a court banned a youth group that helped ignite the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
The cases and speed of the mass trial hearings have drawn widespread criticism from human rights groups and the UN.
The trials took just hours each and the court prevented defence lawyers from presenting their case, according to Human Right Watch.
The sentences have been referred to the Grand Mufti - Egypt's top Islamic authority - for approval or rejection, a step which correspondents say is usually considered a formality. A final decision will be issued in June.
source: BBC |
| Belarus executes convicted murderer
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April 23, 2014: Belarus has executed a man convicted of a gruesome double murder, a rights group said, the latest case of capital punishment in the ex-Soviet country.
Pavel Selyun had been found guilty of murdering his wife and her lover in August 2012 after he found out they were having an affair.
He had decapitated the man and stuffed his body down a rubbish chute, but took his head with him as he fled town and still had it when he was arrested on a train.
Last year a court sentenced Selyun, 23, to death, a punishment that is usually carried out in secret by shooting in the back of the head.
The execution, the first of 2014, was apparently carried out in recent days, although Selyun's lawyer and family found out only on Friday (April 18).
"Today the mother of Pavel Selyun found out from the lawyer that the punishment had been carried out," rights group Viasna said in a statement. "The lawyer went to meet the defendant but was told by prison officials that Selyun 'had left in accordance with the sentence'."
"In other words, that means he was executed," it said.
source: Hands off Cain |
| Hundreds protest Egypt's death sentences in Bosnia
April 20, 2014: More than 200 demonstrators gathered in the Bosnian capital to protest against the death penalty for 529 members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
The crowds chanted slogans on Saturday such as "Muslim Brothers shoulder-to-shoulder", "Morsi, we are with you" and "Peace for Muslim Brotherhood and resistance".
A dozen people in the crowd stood wrapped in white sheets which, according to Islamic tradition, are used to wrap the dead.
Some of the demonstrators brought ropes and platforms symbolizing the gallows.
Most of the demonstrators were students from the International University of Sarajevo and Association Egyptian Unity. The protest in Sarajevo was held peacefully and without incident.
source: Daily Sabah |
| Iranian killer's execution halted at last minute by victim's parents
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April 17, 2014: When he felt the noose around his neck, Balal must have thought he was about to take his last breath. Minutes earlier, crowds had watched as guards pushed him towards the gallows for what was meant to be yet another public execution in the Islamic republic of Iran.
Seven years ago Balal, who is in his 20s, stabbed 18-year-old Abdollah Hosseinzadeh during a street brawl in the small town of Royan, in the northern province of Mazandaran. In a literal application of qisas, the sharia law of retribution, the victim's family were to participate in Balal's punishment by pushing the chair on which he stood.
But what happened next marked a rarity in public executions in Iran, which puts more people to death than any other country apart from China. The victim's mother approached, slapped the convict in the face and then decided to forgive her son's killer. The victim's father removed the noose and Balal's life was spared.
In recent years Iran has faced criticism from human rights activists for its high rate of executions. The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, accused Hassan Rouhani of doing too little to improve Iran's human rights, especially reining in its staggering use of capital punishment.
As of last week, 199 executions are believed to have been carried out in Iran this year, according to Amnesty, a rate of almost two a day. Last year Iran and Iraq were responsible for two-thirds of the world's executions, excluding China.
At least 369 executions were officially acknowledged by the Iranian authorities in 2013, but Amnesty said hundreds more people were put to death in secret, taking the actual number close to 700.
Iran is particularly criticised for its public executions, which have attracted children among the crowds in the past. Iranian photographers are often allowed to document them.
Bahareh Davis, of Amnesty International, welcomed the news that Balal had been spared death. "It is of course welcome news that the family of the victim have spared this young man's life," she said. "However, qisas regulations in Iran mean that people who are sentenced to death under this system of punishment are effectively prevented from seeking a pardon or commutation of their sentences from the authorities – contrary to Iran's international obligations."
She added: "It's deeply disturbing that the death penalty continues to be seen as a solution to crime in Iran. Not only is the death penalty the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment with no special deterrent impact, but public displays of killing also perpetuate a culture of acceptance of violence.
"Public executions are degrading and incompatible with human dignity of those executed. In addition, all those who watch public executions – which regrettably often includes children – are brutalised by the experience."
source: The Guardian |
| Belarus: Public opinion on the death denalty
April 15, 2014: In 2013, non-governmental organisation Penal Reform International commissioned a detailed survey of public opinion about crime, punishment and the death penalty in Belarus.
Market researchers, Satio, conducted the survey, interviewing 1,000 participants. The results show that opinions around capital punishment are more varied and nuanced than is often stated, while public attitudes about crime in general are strongly affected by respondents’ social position, background and emotions.
Key findings included: support for the death penalty is only 64% – significantly down on the 80% who supported capital punishment in a 1996 referendum; concerns about personal safety appeared to be a key reason for supporting the death penalty; three-quarters of respondents felt that convicting an innocent person was worse than letting the guilty go unpunished.
source: Hands off Cain |
| Stop Mass Executions in Egypt
April 12, 2014: An Egyptian court has sentenced 528 men to death, most in their absence, following a grossly unfair mass trial.
The convicted men are supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi and were tried for their alleged role in a riot in which one policeman died.
This mass trial represents the largest number of death sentences handed down in one case in recent years. It is a grotesque example of the shortcomings and selective nature of Egypt's justice system.
This is definitely not justice. Its the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, and it could be an attempt to wipe out political opposition.
Take action! Send letter to Egyptian authorities to overturn this verdict. |
| Vietnam’s Death Penalty System Under Fire
April 7, 2014: Vietnam’s system of capital punishment is being scrutinized after several people convicted of banking corruption and other financial crimes were sentenced to death. Vietnam is one of only two countries worldwide that executes for those types of crimes; the other is China.
In addition, the Southeast Asian nation has been trying to switch to lethal injections, but the European Union refuses to ship the drugs needed because of their use of the death penalty.Vietnam is one of only 22 countries in the world to use capital punishment last year.
Country stopped executions temporarily because of a shortage of lethal injections, similar to what is now being seen in states across the US, caused by the refusal of pharmaceutical companies to sell drugs to be used in death penalty cases. In July 2011 a new law in Vietnam replaced the country's main method, a firing squad, with lethal injection.
source: Voice od Russia |
| Executions rise in 2013
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April 1, 2014: Executions by beheading, electrocution, firing squad, hanging and lethal injection rose by almost 15 percent in 2013 on the previous year, the organization said in its latest report on the death penalty released Thursday.
China executed more people than any other country last year. Although Chinese authorities treat official execution statistics as a state secret, Amnesty International estimates thousands are killed under the death penalty every year, more than the rest of the world combined.
Excluding China, executions rose to at least 778 last year, up from 682 in 2012.
Iran came in second, with at least 369 put to death by the state, followed by Iraq (169), Saudi Arabia (79), and the United States (39).
In total, 22 countries practiced capital punishment last year, one more than in 2012.
Crimes that attracted the death penalty ranged from murder, robbery, drug trafficking, and corruption, to acts which Amnesty said should not be considered crimes at all, including "adultery," "blasphemy," and "sodomy."
Public executions were carried out in Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Somalia, but in many instances executions took place in secret.
The use of the death penalty has declined in the last 20 years, and the number of countries enforcing the death penalty has fallen from 37 in 1993 to 22 last year -- evidence that executions are becoming "a thing of the past," the report said.
source: AI |
| 'Working' guillotine up for auction in France
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March 27, 2014: A 19th century guillotine in perfect working order goes up for auction in France and is expected to fetch up to 60,000 euros, the auctioneers said.
The wood, iron, steel and brass guillotine, synonymous with the 1789 French Revolution, was used to behead people in the second half of the 19th century.
It will be auctioned today in the northern city of Nantes and auctioneer Francois-Xavier Duflos said it was expected to fetch between 50,000 and 60,000 euros.
“It is rare for this type of object to go to auction, so it is rather difficult to set a price, but we have taken into account its rarity,” auctioneer François-Xavier Duflos told "It would be nice if it remained in a historic setting, either on display in a chateau or in a public collection."
The guillotine has been in private hands for over a century and is currently owned by an unnamed man who had it passed down to him from his grandfather. The grandfather apparently bought in Lyon in the early 20th century.
“It was used by the army, it was assembled and disassembled,” Duflos told “It has certainly known several battlefields.”
The guillotine was named after reformer Dr Joseph Ignace Guillotin, who had argued for a method of painless capital punishment, that would be used for all the classes. It was meant as an interim step before the banning of the death penalty. Before guillotine, axe was the metod of execution in France.
The device remained France’s standard method of execution until the death penalty was abolished in 1981. The last person to be executed using a guillotine was murderer Hamida Djandoubi on September 10, 1977.
source: The Local |
| Iran Against Abolition Of Capital Punishment For Drug Smugglers
March 21, 2014: Minister of Interior Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said Iran is against abolishing the death penalty for drugs smugglers, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported.
Rahmani Fazli, who represented Iran at the 57th session of the Commission of Narcotic Drugs in Austria's capital Vienna from March 13-14, said Iran is also opposed to legalising various kinds of narcotic drugs.
Smugglers are not just involved in drug trafficking but in armed struggle, illegal border crossing, money laundering, rape, murder and terrorist activities, he said.
Rahmani Fazli said the final decision on the abolition of death penalty for drug smugglers will be made at the Commission of Narcotic Drugs meeting in 2016.
source: Hands off Cain |
| UN: At least 176 people hanged in Iran in 2014
March 16, 2014: At least 176 people were reportedly hanged in Iran in 2014 alone, and the rate of executions appears to have increased steadily since the summer of 2013, the UN said. Most of the executions were for drug-related offenses, in violation of international legal provisions, which limit the permissibility of capital punishment to the "most serious" crimes, the UN reported.
“The Government continues to execute individuals at a staggering rate, despite serious questions about fair trial standards,” said Christof Heyns, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.
The United Nations experts urged the government of Iran “to heed to calls by the international community to declare a moratorium on executions.”
source: Hands off Cain |
| Sri Lanka Can't Find an Official Executioner
March 14, 2014: A newly recruited hangman in Sri Lanka has resigned in shock after being shown the gallows for the first time.
In the last year, three men have come and gone from the position, the last of which resigned this week after seeing the gallows in which he might have to work.
Commissioner-General of Prisons Chandrarathna Pallegama told the BBC that the new recruit - "got shocked and afraid" after seeing the gallows, which came after several days of training.
Mr Pallegama said the man would be given one month to consider his decision. If there was no change, fresh applications would be called for through a government gazette.
The country has not carried out a judicial execution since 1976 but has over 400 prisoners on death row.
source: BBC |
| China's top legislature considers trimming death penalty crimes
March 13, 2014: The National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, is considering reducing the number of crimes subject to the death penalty, an NPC official said on Sunday.
Speaking at a press conference on the sidelines of the ongoing parliamentary session, Zang Tiewei, said an amendment to the Criminal Law has been included in the annual legislative agenda.
The legislature will study the possibility of reducing the number of types of crimes to which the death penalty is applicable, based on the needs of China's economic and social development and criminal deterrence, he said.
The last time China reduced the number of crimes punishable by death was in 2011. At that time, the country's legislature adopted an amendment to the Criminal Law, reducing the types of crimes punishable by death by 20 percent, or 13 in number. It was also the first reduction since the Criminal Law took effect in 1979.
source: Xinhua |
| Lethal injection chosen as method for PNG death penalty
March 10, 2014: The United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, is in Papua New Guinea assessing the newly imposed death penalty.
Death by lethal injection has been legislated as the preferred method for judicial killings in PNG. Previously, hanging was the only option for capital punishment but it's now considered barbaric and has been removed from the statutes.
source: Death Penalty News |
| Execution of a minor offender in Iran
March 7, 2014: A 21 year old man was hanged in Northern Iran for an alleged murder he committed at the age of 17. Despite ratifying the UN Convention for the Child’s Rights, Iranian authorities continue execution of juvenile offenders.
According to the report the boy who was identified as Mehras Rezaei was convicted of murdering his cousin Ramin four years ago. He was sentenced to “qisas” (retribution by kind).
Iran is one of the few countries in the world which still practices death penalty for juvenile offenders.
source: Death Penalty News |
| USA: Supreme Court Looks At Freddie Lee Hall, Death Row Inmate With Low IQ
March 2, 2014: A Floridian with an IQ as high as 75 may be diagnosed as mentally disabled and be eligible for help getting a job. But on death row, the state says having an IQ higher than 70 categorically means an inmate is not mentally disabled and may be executed.
The Supreme Court barred states from executing mentally disabled inmates in 2002, but until now has left the determination of who is mentally disabled to the states.
In arguments Monday, 68-year-old Florida inmate Freddie Lee Hall is challenging the state's use of a rigid IQ cutoff to determine mental disability.
Florida is among a few states that use a score of 70, as measured by IQ tests, as the threshold for concluding an inmate is not mentally disabled, even when other evidence indicates he is.
source: Huffington Post |
| Are the Serbs for restoring of the death penalty?
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February 23, 2014: Due to a cruel murders of children, pedophilia and brutal rape in Serbia, there are more and more people who advocate for the reintroduction of the death penalty.
According to the latest survey, which is annually conducted by "Ipsos Strategic Marketing ", 53 percent of respondents said that they are for restoring of the death penalty, while 47 percent said that they are still against and it its reintroduction. What is interesting is that the survey showed a record support for the death penalty in Serbia over the past seven years.
Because of these alarming data for the abolitionists, the survey was repeated, whereupon established a decrease support for the death penalty (from 57 to 53 percent), but still the majority of people were for her reintroduction to the national legislation.
"We can not state with certainty what caused the increase in support for the death penalty ,but from past experience, the majority of death penalty respondents who belong to the right political bloc are for the death penalty"- says for the Telegraph Marija Šijak from the NGO "Serbia against the death penalty " adding that because of the atmosphere of dissatisfaction and poor economic status in whole country, citizens are inclined to radical views and in terms of criminal sanctions.
Greater support for the death penalty appears every time the news of a horrible crime go public.
As to whether, after such news does she ever thought that we should restore the death penalty, Šijak says:
"We would not make an exception in no case, because every human life is inviolable, and no one, not even the state has no right to deprive someone's life."
One of the arguments against the death penalty is a possible miscarriage of justice because of which an innocent persons can be executed. Also, there is a misconception that in the countries which still have death penalty is lower rate of serious crime.
The death penalty in Serbia was applied from the emergence of the modern state in 1804. until 2002 , when it is abolished by the National Assembly on 26th February.
Attorney Djordje Mamula , who opposes the reintroduction of the death penalty, stated for Telegraf that science has shown that severe penalties are not a cure for crime, but quickly resolved cases are.
The last death sentence in Serbia was carried out on February 14th 1992 over Johan Drozdek.
source: Telegraf |
| USA: Pew Poll Shows Sharp Drop in Death Penalty Support
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February 19, 2014: Support for the death penalty has fallen sharply by 23 percentage points since 1996, reaching its lowest level in almost two decades, according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center. The 2013 poll also found a 10 point drop in just the last 2 years in respondents who say they "strongly favor" the death penalty, from 28% to 18%. The percentage of Americans who say they oppose the death penalty has risen to 37%. In 2011, Pew asked respondents about the reasons behind their views on the death penalty, finding that the top two reasons for opposition to capital punishment were the imperfect nature of the justice system and a belief that the death penalty is immoral. The drop in public support coincides with an overall decline in use of the death penalty during the same time period, with both death sentences and executions falling dramatically since the 1990s. Six states have repealed the death penalty in the last six years, and three governors have recently imposed moratoriums on executions.
source: DPIC |
| Virginia (USA) electric chair bill dies for the year in state Senate
February 13, 2014: A Virginia state Senate committee has agreed that legislation bringing the electric chair back into regular use should be shelved this year.
The bill, would have made electrocution the default mode of execution in the state if the Department of Corrections certified that lethal injection drugs were not available. Like many states, Virginia has been struggling to procure those drugs as manufacturers resist the use of their products in capital punishment.
Senators said they want more time to look into alternative methods of drug procurement before reverting to the electric chair, which is currently an optional mode of execution chosen by few prisoners.
source: Washington Post |
| Washington (USA): Gov. Inslee suspends use of death penalty
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February 12, 2014: Gov. Jay Inslee said Tuesday he was suspending the use of the death penalty in Washington state, announcing a move that he hopes will enable officials to "join a growing national conversation about capital punishment."
"There have been too many doubts raised about capital punishment, there are too many flaws in this system today," Inslee said at a news conference. "There is too much at stake to accept an imperfect system."
Inslee said that the use of the death penalty is inconsistent and unequal.
Inslee's moratorium, which he says will be in place for as long as he's governor, means that if a death penalty case comes to his desk, he will issue a reprieve, which isn't a pardon and doesn't commute the sentences of those condemned to death. Rather than face capital punishment, death row inmates will simply remain in prison.
"During my term, we will not be executing people," said Inslee. But "nobody is getting out of prison, period."
Last year, Maryland abolished the death penalty, the 18th state to do so and the sixth in the last six years in USA.
source: King5 |
| EU welcomes stay of executions in UAE
February 8, 2014: EU High Representative for foreign affairs and security policy Catherine Ashton Friday welcomed the announcement that United Arab Emirates (UAE) President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, ordered a stay on all executions in the UAE on 29 January.
"I hope this will constitute a 1st step towards the consideration of a definitive moratorium on the use of the death penalty in the UAE," she said in a statement.
The EU foreign policy chief said she also hoped that "this development will set a positive example for the wider region to adopt similar measures paving the way for the abolition of the death penalty." The EU opposes capital punishment in all cases and under all circumstance, added Ashton.
source: Death Penalty News
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| Texas (USA) executes Suzanne Basso
February 7, 2014: Capital murder defendant Suzanne Basso was executed in Huntsville, Texas Wednesday for the brutal 1998 slaying of a mentally disabled man, becoming only the 14th woman to be put to death since 1976. By comparison, almost 1,400 men have been put to death.
Basso was convicted in 1999 of leading a group of thugs in torturing and killing Louis Musso, 59, so they could cash his life insurance policy.
An autopsy showed Musso had several broken bones, including a skull fracture and 14 broken ribs. His back was covered with cigarette burns, and bruises were found all over his body.
Basso became a suspect after reporting him missing following the discovery of his body. Five others also were convicted, including Basso's son, but prosecutors only sought the death penalty for Basso.
About 60 women are on death row in the U.S., making up about 2 % of the 3,100 condemned inmates.
source: BBC |
| Brunei: Shariah-based Penal Code Set to Take Effect
February 3, 2014: In what the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) are calling ‘a step backward’ for human rights, the Sultan of Brunei has announced that a series of laws that were formulated in 2013 are set to be enacted in April, 2014. The laws, which criminalize everything from adultery to same-sex relations, include punishments ranging from public stonings to execution.
“The 2013 Penal Code will re-introduce the death penalty after years of an effective moratorium in the country, and provide for stoning and other forms of torture and ill treatment for a range of ‘misconduct.’ The 2013 Penal Code provides for the death penalty as a possible penalty – for both Muslims and non-Muslims – for the crimes of robbery (Article 63), rape (Article 76), adultery and sodomy (Article 82). It also is prescribed as a penalty – for Muslims only – upon conviction for acts constituting extramarital sexual relations (Article 69),” reports the ICJ.
source: Hands off Cain |
| Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan Seeks Death Penalty For Cyber Crime
January 30, 2014: As part of the provisions of the Cyber Crime Bill 2013, the Nigerian president has proposed the death penalty for any person who is found guilty of hacking into the Critical National Information Infrastructure or computer networks resulting in the loss of lives.
Where there are no loss of lives but the offender causes grievous bodily injury to another person, the bill recommends a prison term of not less than 15 years. Using any computer network for terrorism purposes also attracts life sentence.
The bill defines Critical National Information Infrastructure as ‘certain computer systems, networks information infrastructure vital to the national security of Nigeria or the economy & social well-being of its citizen’.
source: Nigerian Monitor |
| Virginia (USA): Bill to allow increased use of electric chair passes Virginia House
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January 25, 2014: Virginia lawmakers, facing a shortage of the drugs used to perform lethal injections, are moving toward re-embracing use of the electric chair.
The House of Delegates overwhelmingly passed a bill that would make electrocution the default method of death for condemned prisoners if lethal injection is not available. Currently, electrocution is used only at the request of the inmate sentenced to die.
Virginia, like other states that allow capital punishment, is struggling with a shortage of the drugs used to execute prisoners. European manufacturers will not sell chemicals for use in executions, and a major U.S. supplier halted production in 2011.
Only six states — Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia — still authorize use of the electric chair, according to research compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center. All of the six states will electrocute only those inmates who specifically request it.
The electric chair was last used in Virginia in January 2013, when Robert Gleason Jr., 43, chose to die by electrocution.
source: Washington Post |
| Texas (USA) executes Mexican, despite protests
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January 23, 2014: A Mexican national was executed Wednesday night in Texas for killing a Houston police officer, despite pleas and diplomatic pressure from the Mexican government and Secretary of State John Kerry previously asked Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott to delay Tamayo's punishment.
Edgar Tamayo, 46, received a lethal injection for the January 1994 fatal shooting of Officer Guy Gaddis, 24.
Tamayo was condemned for the January 1994 murder of Officer Guy Gaddis, who was shot as he prepared to take Tamayo and another man, both handcuffed in the squad car's back seat, to jail. Tamayo, trial testimony revealed, extricated a pistol hidden in his clothing and fired the fatal shots.
The case garnered international attention because authorities failed to tell Tamayo at the time of his arrest that he could confer with the Mexican consulate. That right is provided by the United Nation's Vienna Convention on Consular Affairs.
Tamayo becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death in Texas this year and the 509th overall since the state resumed executions on December 7, 1982.
source: BBC |
| Sudan approves death penalty for human traffickers
January 22, 2014: Sudan’s parliament endorsed a human trafficking act that allows to sentence human traffickers with the death penalty.
The decision was made after thorough study and deliberations by MPs representing legislation, justice, defense and security, who approved the death sentence act. Members of Parliament emphasized the necessity of harsh punishments for human traffickers.
UNHCR said last year that Sudan hosts about half a million of refugees from the Horn of Africa states most of them are from Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia who spread in all Sudanese towns.
Sudan’s Minister of Interior, Babikir Ahmed Digna called for the establishment of specialized institutions to control such crimes.
source: Hands off Cain |
| Council of Europe condemns 'cruel' execution of Ohio (USA) killer, calls for protest
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January 18, 2013: The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe expressed outrage at the "cruel and inhuman" execution of a convicted killer in Ohio (USA) with an untested drug that lasted an unusually long time, calling on Americans to protest against "such atrocities."
Denis McGuire, 53, spent the last 15 minutes of his life gasping for breath on Thursday while being executed with an "experimental" drug cocktail. The execution that lasted 25 minutes from the lethal ejection to the pronouncement of his death has been described as one of the longest since Ohio resumed capital punishment in 1999.
Marina Schuster (Germany), General Rapporteur on the abolition of the death penalty for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), expressed her outrage calling the people to protest against the use of "inhumane" punishment. "No execution method is ever humane, but this terribly botched state killing shows, for all to see, what a cruel and inhuman punishment the death penalty is. This punishment has no place in a civilized society. I call on the American people to protest against such atrocities being committed in their name." Schuster said.
source: Hands off Cain |
| Executed Ohio killer Dennis McGuire took 15 minutes to die with never-before-tried drugs
January 16, 2014: An Ohio man is set to be put to death Thursday by a two-drug cocktail never before used in a U.S. execution. Dennis McGuire was convicted in 1994 of the rape and murder of 22-year-old Joy Stewart, who was seven months pregnant.
Like many states, Ohio has been forced to find new drug protocols after European-based manufacturers banned U.S. prisons from using their drugs in executions -- among them, Danish-based Lundbeck, which manufactures pentobarbital. In response to that shortage, the department amended its execution policy to allow for the use of midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a painkiller.
Lawyers for McGuire had said the drugs placed him at risk of air hunger, a phenomenon which causes terror as the patient struggles to catch his breath.
According to a pool report from journalists who witnessed the execution, the whole process took more than 15 minutes, during which McGuire made "several loud snorting or snoring sounds."
source: CNN |
| Iraq PM rebukes UN’s Ban on execution moratorium
January 14, 2014: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki yesterday publicly rebuked U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s call for the country to halt executions while standing beside him at a joint news conference.
Despite widespread calls for a moratorium due to major problems with the country’s criminal justice system, Iraq executed at least 169 people last year, its highest such figure since the 2003 US-led invasion, placing it third in the world, behind just China and Iran.
“I have urged the prime minister and Iraqi government to put (a) moratorium on (the) death penalty,” Ban said in response to a question during the news conference with Maliki in Baghdad.
But Maliki replied that Iraqis would not accept murderers being allowed to live, and said executions were permitted under the constitution and Islam.
“We respect UN decisions and human rights, but we do not believe that the rights of someone who kills people must be respected,” Maliki said.
Press conference video
source: Hurriyet Daily News |
| UN rights office praises Myanmar for commuting all death sentences
January 11, 2014: The United Nations human rights office said it hopes that Myanmar’s decision to commute all death sentences to life imprisonment will lead to the full abolition of the death penalty in the country.
President Thein Sein announced on 2 January that he would commute death sentences to life imprisonment and reduce some sentences on humanitarian grounds and to mark the 66th anniversary of independence of the country, marked on 4 January.
“We warmly welcome the Myanmar Government’s Presidential Order,” the spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Rupert Colville, told journalists in Geneva.
The move is “very significant” for Myanmar, which has not carried out the death penalty since 1989, the spokesperson noted, as the country assumed the chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
source: UN News Centre |
| Tunisia to maintain capital punishment in future constitution
January 7, 2014: Tunis – The National Constituent Assembly (NCA) voted for maintaining capital punishment in the upcoming constitution. The votes were by 135 yes against a total of 174. The NCA is voting on the draft constitution article by article separately. The deputies will participate in a general vote where two thirds majority will be needed in order to enact Tunisia’s second constitution as after its independence from France, 1956.
The article 27 says that “The right for life is scared and cannot be violated, except in extreme cases regulated by the law,”
Death penalty was last used in 1991. In the same year, a man was sentenced to death penalty for charges of raping 14 children. According to estimates made by Human Rights Watch, there were around 40 prisoners sentenced to death in Tunisia as of February 2011.
source: Tunis Times |
| Iraq’s use of the death penalty increases, with 169 killed in 2013
January 2, 2014: Iraq’s use of the death penalty has increased despite international condemnation, with some fearing execution rates could rise further as officials seek to appear tough on security ahead of elections.
At least 169 people were put to death in 2013, by far the country’s highest such figure since the 2003, and one that puts it third in the world, behind just China and Iran.
Iraqi officials insist capital punishment is both sanctioned by Islam and an effective way to curb violence, despite the fact that 2013 executions have had no visible effect on the worst protracted surge in bloodshed since 2008.
Those sentenced to death are usually hanged, often in groups.
source: National |
| European boycott of death penalty drugs lowers rate of US executions
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December 27, 2013: New Death Penalty Information Center report claims there were 39 executions this year – the lowest number since 1994.
The European-led boycott of medical drugs used by US corrections departments to execute prisoners is having such an impact that it has driven the number of executions to an almost all-time low, a leading authority on the death penalty has concluded.
California, Arkansas and North Carolina have all had effective moratoriums for the past seven years because they have failed to settle on a workable lethal injection protocol. Several other states are turning to untested drugs or to lethal medicines improvised in single batches by so-called “compounding pharmacies” that are not subject to federal regulations.
The European Commission imposed tough restrictions on the export of anaesthetics to US corrections departments in 2011, and amid the squeeze a succession of states has been running out of their primary lethal drugs supplies. As a result, Florida has turned to midazolam hydrochloride, a drug never before used in executions.
source: The Guardian |
| Committee of Ministers: Declaration on the recent executions in Japan and the USA
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December 22, 2013: The Committee of Ministers deplores the executions which have recently taken place in Japan and is deeply concerned with the increasing number of executions carried out in that country since 2012.
While welcoming some progress during the current year with the abolition of death penalty in the State of Maryland, the Committee of Ministers equally deplores the executions which have recently taken place in the USA.
These executions run counter to the growing trend against the death penalty at the international level as shown by the latest resolution on the moratorium on the use of death penalty adopted at the United Nations last year.
As observer States to the Council of Europe, both States committed themselves to share Council of Europe values and to make a positive contribution to the work of the Organisation. The Committee of Ministers calls again on the Japanese and US authorities to put an end to this inhumane practice with the establishment of a moratorium on the use of death penalty as a first step towards its abolition and to respect the values and principles of the Council of Europe.
The Committee of Ministers reiterates its unequivocal opposition to capital punishment in all places and in all circumstances. It remains determined to continue its efforts towards global abolition of this inhumane practice.
source: Council of Europe |
| Secretary of State John Kerry Urges Texas to Reconsider Death Sentence of Mexican Citizen
December 17, 2013: In a letter to Texas officials, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged a review of the conviction of Edgar Arias Tamayo, a Mexican citizen scheduled to be executed in January 2014. Tamayo was not notified of his right to contact the Mexican Consulate, a violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, a treaty that the U.S. has signed and ratified. In 2004, the International Court of Justice ordered the U.S. to review the convictions of Tamayo and 50 other Mexican citizens who had been sentenced to death without being notified of their rights under the Vienna Convention.
Kerry's letter warned that executing Tamayo could damage U.S.-Mexican relations and hinder the ability of U.S. officials to help American citizens detained abroad.
source: DPIC |
| Japan executes two death row inmates
December 13, 2013: Japan has hanged two men, bringing to eight the number of prisoners executed since the conservative government of Shinzo Abe came to power a year ago.
One of those executed on Thursday was Ryoji Kagayama, 63, who stabbed to death a student from China after robbing her in 2000. He also knifed a man to death in 2008 in a failed robbery attempt.The other prisoner was Akira Morinaga, 55, who drowned a relative of his former wife in a bath in 1986 and murdered an acquaintance of her days later.
Japan now has 129 inmates on death row, according to justice ministry data.
With the exception of the United States, Japan is the only major industrialised democracy to use capital punishment.
International advocacy groups say the system is cruel because inmates can wait for their executions for many years in solitary confinement and are only told of their impending death a few hours ahead of time.
source: Aljazeera |
| Atheists Face Death Penalty In 13 Countries
December 11, 2013: In 13 countries around the world, all of them Muslim, people who openly espouse atheism or reject the official state religion of Islam face execution under the law, according to a detailed study issued on Tuesday.
The study, The Freethought Report 2013, was issued by the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), a global body uniting atheists, agnostics and other religious skeptics, to mark United Nations' Human Rights Day.
The study covered all 192 member states in the world body and involved lawyers and human rights experts looking at statute books, court records and media accounts to establish the global situation.
IHEU’s study this year is more comprehensive. It brought to the fore a full list of countries where execution, usually public beheading, takes place. The study includes Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
source: Huffington Post |
| Upon Nelson Mandela's Death, Recalling First Act of South Africa's Constitutional Court
December 7, 2013: When South Africa's Constitutional Court was created under then-President Nelson Mandela, its first act was to abolish the death penalty. Justice Arthur Chaskalson, President of the Court, announced its unanimous decision on June 7, 1995, stating, "Everyone, including the most abominable of human beings, has a right to life, and capital punishment is therefore unconstitutional....Retribution cannot be accorded the same weight under our Constitution as the right to life and dignity. It has not been shown that the death sentence would be materially more effective to deter or prevent murder than the alternative sentence of life imprisonment would be." Under apartheid, the death penalty had been applied much more often to blacks than to whites. Mandela, himself, faced the possibility of a death sentence in his 1962 trial for incitement.
source: DPIC |
| Death penalty a barrier to EU market access, Senate told
December 6, 2013: ISLAMABAD - In a written statement to the Senate on Friday, the Foreign Ministry said that Pakistan's case for greater access to European markets would be substantially weaker if it does not abolish the death penalty.
In the written response, the Foreign Ministry said that the case of Generalised System Preference (GSP) plus status could be weakened by the issue of capital punishment, as the EU seeks its abolishment and has also notified the Pakistani officials on the matter.
Although the EU has previously clarified that the abolishment of the death penalty is not a condition, according to a Dawn report, every aspirant for the GSP Plus status has to sign 27 conventions relating to human rights, child labour, and fair trade practices.
source: DAWN |
| PAKISTAN: SHARIAT COURT STATES DEATH ONLY PENALTY FOR BLASPHEMER
December 5, 2013: After 23 years, the Federal Shariat Court (FSC) has issued orders to remove the provision of life-imprisonment from the blasphemy law, stating that only death is punishment for blasphemy and sought a report from the government for implementation of the order within a couple of months.
source: Hands Off Cain |
| 1,700 cities, including Belgrade, take part in 'Cities for Life' Day
December 1, 2013: On 30 November, on the occasion of the International Day of Cities for Life, promoted by the Community of Sant'Egidio, 1700 cities worldwide, including 70 capitals on the five continents, rallied against the death penalty through conferences, public demonstrations, the lighting of the most significant monuments, celebrations in squares to say yes to life because, as Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye makes the world blind".
Belgrade participated for the third time (first two was in 2007 and 2012).
This year, the ukur esma monument was lit up and a scene from the play „The last day of the condemned man“ by Jean-Hyppolyte Tisserant, translated by Danilo Kiš, was shown at the Center for Cultural Decontamination. Ivan Jankovi gave an introduction into the death penalty and Mirjana Mio
inovi gave an introduction into the play. After that, Predrag Ejdus played a role of Jean Coutaudier.
Photos from the event
Video Cities for Life – Belgrade against the death penalty
Video of the campaign
The map of the Cities for Life. Find Belgrade! |
| Stoning will not be brought back, says Afghan president
November 29, 2013: Afghanistan's government has backed away from a proposal to reintroduce public stoning as a punishment for adultery after the leak of a draft law stirred up a storm of international condemnation.
The president, Hamid Karzai, said in an interview that the grim penalty, which became a symbol of Taliban brutality when the group were in power, would not be coming back.
source: The Guardian |
| Adulterers may be stoned under new Afghan law
November 26, 2013: Death by stoning for convicted adulterers is being written into Afghan law, a senior official said, the latest sign that human rights won at great cost since the Taliban were ousted in 2001 are rolling back as foreign troops withdraw.
"We are working on the draft of a sharia penal code where the punishment for adultery, if there are four eyewitnesses, is stoning," said Rohullah Qarizada, who is part of the sharia Islamic law committee working on the draft and head of the Afghan Independent Bar Association.
Billions have been invested on promoting human rights in Afghanistan over more than 12 years of war and donors fear that hard won progress, particularly for women, may be eroding.
During the Taliban's 1996-2001 time in power, convicted adulterers were routinely shot or stoned in executions held mostly on Fridays.
source: Reuters |
| UNITED NATIONS: HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE CRITICIZES IRANIAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
November 20, 2013: The UN General Assembly’s human rights committee criticized serious rights violations in Iran, including torture, frequent use of the death penalty and widespread restrictions on freedom of assembly and expression.
A resolution urging Iran’s new government led by President Hassan Rouhani to address ongoing human rights violations.
The resolution cites Iran’s use of inhuman punishments including flogging and amputations and its “alarming” high use of the death penalty including against young people under age 18.
source: Hands Off Cain |
| Vucko Manojlovic arrested on suspicion of rape
November 16, 2013: The most famous Serbian death penalty convict Vucko Manojlovic (68) got out from prison (in February) as a free man after 27 years of imprisonment because President of Serbia, Tomislav Nikolic, decided to pardon him.
Vucko Manojlovic was arrested yesterday on suspicion of raping LJ.M. (48) at his own home.
For kidnapping and murdering prosecutor in Leskovac, Manojlovic was sentenced to imprisonment for 20 years by the County Court in Nis in 1985, but Supreme Court reversed that judgment into the death penalty in 1986.
His death penalty was replaced in 2002 with 40 years of imprisonment. Eventually, Tomislav Nikolic pardoned him in February this year.
source: Blic |
| Support for the death penalty in Serbia lower than six months ago
November 11, 2013: Public opinion poll taken in Serbia in September shows the support for the death penalty to be lower than in March 2013. Out of 100 respondents, 44 were for the death penalty, 38 against and 19 were undecided. Out of 100 respondents with a firm attitude towards the death penalty, 53 were for and 47 against it (in March, this ratio was 57:43).
Women, young persons (aged 18–29) and voters for the Left (DS and LDP) were against the death penalty more often than were men, older persons (aged 30+) and voters for the Right (SNS, SPS and DSS). City dwellers opposed capital punishment more often that the rural respondents. Inhabitants of Belgrade are against capital punishment more often than not, those of Vojvodina are split 50:50, while people from Central Serbia are overwhelmingly for capital punishment.
Detailed report is available here.
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| Iraq: Executions at their highest in post-Saddam Iraq
November 9, 2013: A sharp increase in the use of the death penalty in Iraq has brought the number of known executions to the highest in the decade since the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
"Iraq’s increased use of the death penalty, often after unfair trials in which many prisoners report having been tortured into confessing crimes, is a futile attempt to resolve the country’s serious security and justice problems," said Phillip Luther, Middle East and North Africa Director at Amnesty International.
At least 132 people have been executed in Iraq so far this year. However, the true number could be higher and the Iraqi authorities have yet to publish full figures.
source: Amnesty International |
| USA: Support for Death Penalty At Its Lowest in 40 Years
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November 2, 2013: A recent Gallup poll found the lowest level of support for the death penalty in America since 1972. Gallup's October poll measured Americans' abstract support at 60%, a 20-percentage point decline from 1994, when 80% of respondents were in favor of the death penalty for those convicted of murder.
Support for the death penalty differed sharply among those who identified themselves with a political party: 81% of Republicans supported the death penalty, while only 47% of Democrats and 60% of Independents favored it..
However, support among all three groups has dropped in the last 25 years, with the Democrats’ support declining 28 percentage points since its peak in 1994.
This poll measured the public’s support for capital punishment in theory, without any comparison to other punishments. When Gallup and other polls have offered respondents a choice of the proper punishment for murder - the death penalty or life in prison without parole - respondents are about evenly split, with less than 50% supporting the death penalty.
Gallup's release noted that the decline in support may be linked to the issue of innocence, "The current era of lower support may be tied to death penalty moratoriums in several states beginning around 2000 after several death-row inmates were later proven innocent of the crimes of which they were convicted." In the past 10 years, the percentage of Americans who believe the death penalty is applied fairly has dropped from 60% to 52%.
source: DPIC |
| Serbia Against Capital Punishment become a member of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty!
Ocotber 30, 2013: Association of citizens Serbia Against Capital Punishment become a member of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty.
The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty is an alliance of NGOs, bar associations, local bodies and unions whose aim is to strengthen the international dimension of the fight against the death penalty.
The World Coalition lobbies international organisations and States, organises international events and facilitates the creation and development of national and regional coalitions against the death penalty.
It was created in Rome on 13 May 2002 and has established 10 October as the date of the annual World Day Against the Death Penalty. World Day Against the Death Penalty has been marked in Serbia in 2012 and 2013 by Serbia Against Capital Punishment.
The World Coalition has more than 150 member organisations. |
| In Memoriam: Srdja Popović
October 29, 2013: Srdja Popovi, a prominent Serbian lawyer and advocate of human rights and democracy during both the communist era and the rule of late strongman Slobodan Miloševi, has died. He was 76.
Popovic won prominence in 1970s' when he defended well-known dissidents, artists and critics of the communist regime in former Yugoslavia.
When Yugoslavia broke up in 1990s', Popovi spoke openly against the autocratic and warmongering policies of Milosevic.
Most recently, Popovi represented the family of Zoran Djindji, the slain former Serbian premier.
Srdja Popovi opposed capital punishment unconditionally and was one of the founders of abolitionist associations in 1986 and 1987.
On July 15, 1980. He submitted a petition to the Presidency of the SFR Yugoslavia, asking it to initiate proceedings for the abolition of capital punishment in law. The Presidency never bothered to respond. |
| Belarusian Supreme Court Annuls Death Sentence In Murder Case
October 24, 2013: In an unusual move, the Belarusian Supreme Court has annulled a death sentence in a murder case.
Prominent human rights defender Andrey Paluda, who has followed the case, called the court's October 22 decision unprecedented.
The court ruled that the case against Alyaksandr Hrunou must be reinvestigated due to procedural mistakes.
Hrunou was found guilty of killing a young woman and sentenced to death in June.
The Supreme Court's decision comes two weeks after the UN's special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Belarus, Miklos Haraszti, urged Minsk immediately introduce a moratorium on executions immediately.
Three death sentences, including Hrunou's, were handed down by Belarusian courts this year.
Five executions were held from 2010 to 2012.
Belarus is the only country in Europe that retains the death penalty.
source: Radio Free Europe |
| Sultan of Brunei introduces death by stoning under new Sharia laws
October 22, 2013: The Sultan of Brunei has announced tough new Islamic punishments as part of a new sharia penal code.
The punishments, which would only apply to Muslims, include death by stoning for adultery, flogging for drinking alcohol, and severing of limbs for theft.
Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah said the new laws would be enforced from April next year.
"It is because of our need that Allah the almighty, in all his generosity, has created laws for us, so that we can utilise them to obtain justice," the monarch said.
source: Death Penalty News |
| BELARUS: LUKASHENKO FULLY JUSTIFIES DEATH PENALTY
October 15, 2013: President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko fully justifies the use of the death penalty in his country, despite the calls from the European Union to ban it.
Lukashenko explained that some crimes are so grave that they can not be forgiven. In particular, the Belarusian leader recalled the terrorist attack on the subway in Minsk from April 11, 2011, when 15 people were killed. Two suspects were detained very quickly and were executed by shooting in less than a year.
In addition, Lukashenko recollected the situation in the country at the time when he became its president. It was tough measures that helped Lukashenko normalize the situation. "Offenders understand it only when you talk to them in their language," he explained.
Last week, the European Union called on Belarus to abandon death penalty. At this moment, Belarus is the only country in Europe that practices this kind of punishment.
source: Hands Off Cain |
| Serbia Commemorated the World Day and European Day against the Death Penalty
October 10, 2013: On the occasion of the World and European Day Against the Death Penalty in Center for Cultural Decontamination the founders of the first abolitionist associations (1981, 1986, 1987) in Serbia and former Yugoslavia spoke about past days and the obstacles they had encountered back then.
The opening speech was held by Milos Jankovic, Deputy Ombudsman, who strongly supported the abolition of the death penalty in the world and pointed up the importance of informing the public about this issue. He also spoke about permanent need of explaining why the death penalty is opposite to the right to life and the right to human dignity.
This event was organized by Serbia Against the Death Penalty and the Center for Cultural Decontamination.
Photos from the event
Again Against! Video
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| Serbia signs joint appeal for abolition of death penalty
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October 10, 2013: To markin European and World Day Against the Death Penalty, foreign ministers of 42 countries issued a joint appeal for abolition of the death penalty.
Justice that kills is not justice. Convinced of the inherent inhumanity of the death penalty, the 42 countries represented here oppose its use under any circumstances anywhere in the world,” reads the appeal, which was joined by Serbia.
The ministers underscore that the death penalty is not only an intolerable affront to human dignity, but its use goes hand in hand with numerous violations of the human rights of the condemned and their families and has no positive impact on crime prevention or security and does not in any way repair the harm done to the victims and their families.
“Armed with these convictions, we take the opportunity presented by the 11th World Day against the Death Penalty to reiterate our unrelenting dedication to the abolition movement in Europe and all over the world,” the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a release.
Today, only about 50 countries still allow capital punishment, whereas twenty years ago it was almost twice as many, the release notes.
As the resolutions of the United Nations show, a growing majority of States support the establishment of a universal moratorium on death penalty.
The joint appeal for abolition of the death penalty was signed by the foreign ministers of Serbia, Albania, Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Macedonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania and Luxembourg.
The list of signatories also includes the foreign ministers of Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.
source: B92 |
| LETHAL INJECTION: Many States in USA Changing Lethal Injection Process
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October 4, 2013: Ohio announced it will be obtaining its execution drug, pentobarbital, from a compounding pharmacy if it is not available from the manufacturer. Texas made a similar announcement a few days earler. In the past, some compounding pharmacies have been implicated in providing contaminated drugs with fatal side effects. These local companies are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. Florida announced it will be using a new drug, midazolam, in its October 15 execution. The drug will be part of a 3-drug process and has never been used before in executions. The 3-drug process can be extremely painful if the first drug is not completely effective. Missouri intends to be the first state in the country to use the drug propofol in its October 23 execution, despite the fact that the drug company that delivered the drug has asked for its return. If Missouri goes ahead with the execution, European countries may impose restrictions on the exportation of this drug, thereby affecting other uses for vital surgeries in the U.S. Finally, Tennessee will now use only a single drug, pentobarbital, in its executions, though it did not say where it hoped to obtain the drug.
source: DPIC |
| Pakistan, with thousands on death row, rules against death penalty
October 3, 2013: Pakistan has scrapped plans to reinstate the death penalty, the government said on Thursday.A 2008 moratorium on capital punishment imposed by Pakistan's previous government expired on June 30 and the country had been due to execute 2 jailed militants in August - a plan described by the Pakistani Taliban as an act of war.
"Pakistan has decided to continue with the moratorium on capital punishment since the government is aware of its international commitments and is following them," Omar Hamid Khan, an interior ministry spokesman, said.
Up to 8,000 people languish on death row in dozens of Pakistan's jails.
source: Reuters |
| Death Penalty officially abolished in Maryland (USA)
October 1, 2013: Maryland is the latest US state to abolish the death penalty - a bill signed into law earlier this year by Democratic governor Martin O'Malley came into effect on October 1. The last execution in the southern state was in 2005.
source: DW
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| Execution of Juveniles in Iran: prisoner executed for murder committed at age 14
September 23, 2013: According to the local newspaper, an 18-year-old, who was convicted of committing a murder when he was 14, was executed in Kazeroun last week.
According to reports from Iran, another juvenile offender, Mohammad (Maher) Ayashi, is scheduled for execution in Ahwaz’s Karoun Prison (southwestern Iran) tomorrow morning. The boy, who is currently in his twenties, is convicted of murder during a street fight when he was 17 years old.
Iran has ratified the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, which bans the death penalty for offences committed under 18 years of age. However, Iran is still one of few countries executing minors.
source: Iran Human Rights |
| Belarus: Death sentence confirmed for double murderer
September 19, 2013: The Supreme Court of Belarus confirmed the death sentence for a man convicted of killing two people last year after police caught him transporting a decapitated head from one of the bodies.
Pavel Selyun, 23, was arrested in August 2012 on the train, where he was transporting the head of his male victim in a bag.
Two days earlier he had killed the man in the city of Grodno, along with his own wife, apparently out of jealousy over their love affair.
Belarus is the only country in Europe with the death penalty, administered through shooting the convict in the back of the neck. The sentence is usually carried out in secret.
Selyun's sentence is the fourth known death sentence this year.
source: Death Penalty News |
| TEXAS (USA): DEATH ROW INMATE CAN'T BE FORCIBLY DRUGGED
September 16, 2013: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has ruled that Steven Staley, a death row inmate with a history of mental illness, cannot be forcibly medicated for the purpose of making him competent for execution.
The court ruled in favor of Staley, 51, White, who was convicted in the October 1989 murder of 35-year-old Robert Read during the robbery of a restaurant.
The same court on May 14, 2012 granted a reprieve for Staley 2 days before he was scheduled to die by lethal injection.
Prosecutors have argued Staley is competent for execution, but his attorneys have countered that this was accomplished only because a state judge in Fort Worth improperly ordered Staley be given drugs to make him competent so the state of Texas could kill him.
source: Hands Off Cain |
| JAPAN: DEATH ROW INMATE HANGED; 6TH EXECUTION SINCE ABE BECAME PM
September 13, 2013: Japan hanged a 73-year-old man, bringing to six the number of inmates executed since the conservative government of Shinzo Abe came to power in December.
Tokuhisa Kumagai was executed at the Tokyo Detention House, after being convicted of shooting dead the owner of a Chinese restaurant in a May 2004 robbery, among other crimes.
source: Hands Off Cain |
| The leader of a new political party in Austria dreaming about reinstating the death penalty
September 8, 2013: The leader of a new political party in Austria, Frank Stronach, campaigning in this month’s federal election, upset supporters by saying he backs the death penalty.
“For professional hit men there should be a death penalty because they are a threat to society,” Stronach said, according to a transcript of a question-and-answer session published today by the Vorarlberger Nachrichten newspaper.
Stronach’s campaign issued a statement that the candidate was expressing his personal opinions about the death penalty and that they aren’t part of his party’s platform.
Capital punishment has been outlawed in Austria since 1950.
source: Bloomberg |
| China to stop using organs from executed prisoners in transplants
September 3, 2013: Huang Jiefu, head of the Health Ministry's organ transplant office, said China would start phasing out its decades-long practice of using the organs of executed prisoners for transplant operations from November.
Many Chinese view the practice as a way for criminals to redeem themselves. But officials have recently spoken out against harvesting organs from dead inmates, saying it "tarnishes the image of China".
Huang said the organ transplant committee would ensure that the "source of the organs for transplantation must meet the commonly accepted ethical standards in the world".
China has launched pilot volunteer organ donor programs in 25 provinces and municipalities with the aim of creating a nationwide voluntary scheme by the end of 2013. By the end of 2012, about 64% of transplanted organs in China came from executed prisoners and the number has dipped below 54% so far this year, according to figures provided by Huang.
source: The Guardian |
| Poland waived death penalty
August 29, 2013: Warsaw -- Poland finally waived the death penalty as one of the last members of the Council of Europe.
Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski has signed a Protocol No. 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights.
Poland has adopted the Protocol that removes the option of the death penalty in all circumstances, even in the case of war on May 3th,2002., but she has completed the ratification this summer in both Houses of Parliament, which President Komorowski signed and definitely ended.
Poland thus excludes the imposition and implementation of death penalty against any person under its jurisdiction in any circumstances, even in time of war or when the state is directly threatened by the outbreak of war.
Last death sentence was carried out in Poland on April 21st, 1989.
source: B92 |
| In Convic Database we have more than 7000 people!
August 25, 2013: Today we entered 37 convicts in our Database of persons sentenced to death in Serbia 1804-2002 and Yugoslavia 1918-1991, making a total of 7025 individuals sentenced to death, of whom 4957 were executed. |
| Ceausescu execution spot to become tourist attraction
August 24, 2013: The grim barracks where Romania's brutal communist despot Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were executed are to be opened to the public.
The former military unit at Targoviste, 100 kilometres (60 miles) northwest of Bucharest, is to be turned into a museum and is due to welcome its first visitors in early September. In the barracks, time seems to have stood still since the execution.
"Many Romanians and foreigners said they wanted to see the wall against which Ceausescu and his wife Elena were shot on December 25, 1989," Ovidiu Carstina, director of the museum.
But Lucia Morariu, head of the local tour operators' association, felt turning Ceausescu into a tourist brand was not a good idea. "Why encourage those who mourn him? Romania boasts other highlights" she said.
source: France24 |
| Repeated Execution Dates Called Psychological Torture
August 21, 2013: According to some experts, the process of repeatedly submitting a person to imminent execution is a form of psychological torture that should be banned. The Center for Constitutional Rights has said that “the intense strain of repeatedly coming within hours or days of execution” is torture.
Stuart Grassian, a psychiatrist and former Harvard Medical School professor, said that the terror of imminent executions is more difficult for someone like Warren Hill, who is mentally retarded and has had a series of execution dates. Hill came within hours of execution four times. At one time, he ate his last meal and said his goodbyes before his execution was stayed, ninety minutes before the scheduled time. More recently, Hill was already sedated and strapped to the gurney when his execution was stopped with just minutes to spare.
In 2013, there have already been 27 stays of execution.
source: DPIC |
| Pakistan to carry out first executions since 2008
August 14, 2013: Pakistan will next week execute four people, including two jailed militants, ending a five-year moratorium on capital punishment.
The move has been condemned by the Pakistani Taliban as an act of war.
Pakistan's new government, trying to display its resolve in fighting crime, overturned the moratorium on the death penalty in June.
A senior prison official in the southern province of Sindh said that four convicted criminals, including two militants from the radical Sunni group Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, would be hanged at the Sukkur Jail between 20 and 22 August.
source: RTE |
| Vietnam executes 1st prisoner by lethal injection after long delay
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August 8, 2013: Vietnam executed its first prisoner by lethal injection, ending a two-year pause in capital punishment caused by difficulties in obtaining the needed chemicals, state media reported.
Vietnam decided in 2011 to switch from firing squads to legal injection on humanitarian grounds, reportedly because of the trauma caused to the shooters. But it had been unable to execute anyone because the European Union bans factories from exporting drugs.
The country amended laws this year allowing the production of local chemicals to be used in executions, but the source of the drugs used in execution was unclear.
Thanh Nien daily reported that Nguyen Anh Tuan, a 27-year-old man condemned to death in 2010 for murdering a woman, was executed in a Hanoi prison.
There are currently 586 people on the death row in Vietnam, the paper said.
Amnesty International said it was saddened to hear of the resumption of executions.
“We regret that authorities in Vietnam have exercised the opportunity to review the death penalty in line with debates in other Southeast Asian countries,” said Chiara Sangiorgo, the group’s campaigner against the death penalty.
Vietnam allows for the death penalty for 21 crimes including drug smuggling, embezzlement, treason and subversion.
source: The Washington Post |
| Bahrain increases punishment for terror acts to death penalty
August 6, 2013: Bahrain's King Hamad has decreed stiffer penalties for "terror acts" in the country rocked by a Shiite-led uprising since 2011, the official BNA news agency said.
Under a new law, suspects convicted for bomb attacks will be sentenced to life imprisonment or to death in cases of casualties. The minimum penalty for an attempted bombing is 10 years behind bars.
source: Middle East Online |
| Texas (USA) running out of lethal drug; no replacement found yet
August 2, 2013: The USA's most active death penalty state is running out of its execution drug.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice says its remaining supply of pentobarbital (pento-BAR-bit-all) expires in September. Department spokesman Jason Clark says officials are exploring all options but have yet to find an alternative.
Texas has lethally injected 11 death-row inmates so far this year, most recently on Wednesday. Two executions are scheduled in September and at least five others are set for following months.
It wasn't immediately clear if the September executions may be delayed.
Other death penalty states have encountered similar problems as drug manufacturers have balked at using their products for capital punishment.
Texas has executed 503 inmates since 1976.
source: Fox News |
| World abolishing death penalty, despite hiccups
July 26, 2013: The number of death penalties carried out worldwide dropped last year according to an annual report released Friday by an Italian non-governmental organisation (Hands off Cain).
The global number dropped from 5,004 in 2011 to 3,967 in 2012, while the number of countries that abolished capital punishment rose from 155 to 158 over the same period, the Italian NGO Hands off Cain said.
"The significant decrease in death penalties is to a great extent thanks to China, where they dropped from 4,000 to 3,000 in just a year," Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino said at a press conference to present the report.
In China, the number of death penalties has dropped 10 percent each year since 2007, when a new law meant death sentences had to go before the Supreme Court.
Despite the significant decrease, China remains the first country on the Hands off Cain blacklist, followed by Iran, which carried out 580 executions in 2012, and Iraq, where the number of death penalties almost doubled over the last year to 129.
Although 33 of the 40 countries that still have the death penalty are ruled by despots, some "liberal democracies" returned to capital punishment in 2012, the report said.
In 2011, of the "liberal democracies", just the United States and Taiwan carried out executions, while in 2012 Japan, Botswana and India began using capital punishment again after many years in which the practice was suspended.
This year, Indonesia joined them, carrying out its first death penalty for five years.
Bonino said she was disappointed that "we cannot call Europe a death penalty-free continent because of Belarus, where three executions took place in 2012".
source: Ahram Online |
| Saudi Arabia: significant increase in the number of executions
July 17, 2013: According to the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, the number of people that have been executed in Saudi Arabia in 2013 shows a significant increase in comparison to recent years.
While 27 people were executed in 2010, that number almost tripled in 2012, with 79 executions. In July 2013 the number of death penalties applied stood at 57, clearly marking a negative trend. Experts however suspect the shadow figure of executions in Saudi Arabia to be much higher.
Many of these executions were not applied to persons committing ‘serious’ crimes under international norms.
sorce: Death Penalty News |
| Missouri threatens return of gas chambers for death row inmates
July 12, 2013: The state of Missouri is threatening to resurrect the use of the gas chamber for executions, as an alternative to its dwindling supply of lethal-injection drugs.
The state's attorney general, Chris Koster, has warned that unless Missouri is allowed by the state supreme court to press ahead quickly with pending executions under its current lethal-injection protocol, its drug supplies will expire. In that case, the state might have to turn to the only other option open to it – the gas chamber.
"Under Missouri law only two forms of execution are permitted: "… by means of the administration of lethal gas or by means of the administration of lethal injection", Koster said.
Missouri switched from hanging as its preferred method of judicial killing to the gas chamber in 1937. The last time such an execution was carried out in the state was in 1965.
source: The Guardian |
| PAKISTAN: MORATORIUM ON EXECUTIONS EXPIRED
July 4, 2013: Pakistan's new government ended the moratorium on executions, an official said.
Under the previous government led by the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), no one except a soldier convicted by court martial was put to death since 2008.
But the PPP suffered a crushing defeat in historic elections on 11 May, which swept to power the centre-right Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) under Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
A presidential order imposing a moratorium on the death penalty, issued in 2008, expired on 30 June.
The interior ministry spokesman said up to 450 convicts are awaiting execution and their cases will be examined. The government will show sympathy towards convicts who fall into a "special category" such as women and the elderly, he said.
source: Hands Off Cain |
| RUSSIA: NUMBER OF DEATH PENALTY SUPPORTERS GROWS
July 2, 2013: A total of 38 percent Russians support the resumption of death penalties in the country, against 33 percent in 2012, a poll, carried out by Levada Center on 6-10 June 2013 among 1,601 people in 45 Russian regions, showed.
Sixteen per cent, against 28 percent in 2012, said it was necessary to expand the death penalty application.
Twenty three percent respondents supported keeping the existing death penalty moratorium, while only 14 percent said so in 2012.
A total of 13 percent Russians said capital punishment had to be cancelled completely and 10 percent shared the same point of view in 2012.
Eleven per cent failed to answer.
source: Hands Off Cain |
| Ban urges countries to abolish death penalty, increase transparency surrounding procedure
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June 29, 2013: Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged United Nations Member States to move towards the abolition of the death penalty, and called on countries where the procedure is still practiced to increase transparency to allow a serious debate on capital punishment.
“The taking of life is too absolute, too irreversible, for one human being to inflict on another, even when backed by legal process,” Mr. Ban said opening the high-level event and panel discussion at UN Headquarters in New York, on “Moving away from the death penalty – Wrongful Convictions.”
The high-level event moderated by Ivan SŠimonovic, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, is the second in a series of UN panel discussion on how to move away from the death penalty.
Since 2007, the General Assembly has adopted four resolutions calling on States to establish a moratorium on the use of the death penalty with a view to its abolition. Today about 150 of the UN's 193 Member States have either abolished the death penalty or no longer practice it.
source: UN News Centre |
| Texas (USA) executes 500th inmate since 1976
June 27, 2013: Kimberly McCarthy on Wednesday evening became the 500th prisoner executed in Texas since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated in the state.
McCarthy was pronounced dead at 7:37 p.m. ET at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas, said department spokesman John Hurt.
The 52-year-old former occupational therapist was convicted in 1997 of murdering her 71-year-old neighbor, Dorothy Booth, a retired college professor.
source: CNN |
| Belarusian Orthodox Church wants death penalty to be abolished
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June 26, 2013: The Belarusian Orthodox Church said the death penalty must be abolished. But it also said that this problem should not be politicized.
"The Belarusian Orthodox Church drew citizens' attention to the problem of the death penalty back in the 1990s. In 1996, on the eve of a national referendum which dealt with the death penalty among other issues, we urged the Belarusian people to give up this punishment," Metropolitan of Minsk and Sluzk and Patriarchal Exarch to all Belarus Filaret said in a message of greetings to a roundtable conference on religion and the death penalty in Minsk.
"We, Christians, cannot justify the death penalty, because it is the sin of murder. Any life belongs to God as its creator. It is not us, the sinful, who give one the gift of life. It is not for us to take one's life away. Our Lord, Jesus Christ, sacrificed His life for each of us after suffering humiliation, torture and death on the Cross. By subjecting its citizens to the death penalty the state crucifies Christ again and again," Metropolitan Filaret said.
"That was our position when the referendum was held. It has not changed," he said.
Citing the fundamentals of the Russian Orthodox Church's social concept, Metropolitan Filaret said that, "many countries have abolished the death penalty and do not practice it." "Remembering that mercy is always better than revenge, the Church welcomes such steps," he said.
He also said that Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia and his predecessor Patriarch Alexy II both spoke in favor of abolishing the death penalty.
source: Interfax |
| Nigeria hangs 4 men in first known executions since 2006
June 25, 2013: Nigeria has hanged at least four convicted criminals in the West African nation's first known executions since 2006.
Human rights group LEPAD told The Associated Press that inmates at Benin City Prison were traumatized by the sound of screams and thuds.
In a telephone interview, a lawyer for the group, Chino Obiagwu, said that a fifth man was due to be hanged but received a brief reprieve when the executioner had technical problems with the gallows.
Amnesty International's deputy Africa director, Lucy Freeman, said the hangings marked "a truly dark day for human rights" in Africa's most populous nation.
source: Global Post |
| VIETNAM: 117 INMATES TO BE EXECUTED WITH LETHAL INJECTIONS MADE IN VIETNAM
June 21, 2013: As many as 117 death-row inmates will be given lethal injections made in Vietnam beginning June 27 when a new regulation takes effect.
European Union banned the exportation of lethal injection drugs because it regards capital punishment (which is also banned) to be a violation of human rights.
The ban had left Vietnam unable to execute a prisoner since November 2011, just as the country had implemented a switch from the firing squad – which had been used previously – to lethal injection as its method of execution. Lethal injection is commonly considered a more humane form of execution.
Last month, the government issued the decree that called for the domestic production of lethal injection cocktails. Now that the poisons are being produced locally, executions will resume as soon as the decree takes effect.
source: Hands Off Cain |
| Nigeria wants the death penalty
June 19, 2013: Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan wants to enforce the death penalty, the West Africa Bureau Chief Kwangu Liwewe said on Tuesday.
The death penalty is still in force in 17 African countries but human rights activists condemn it because it violates the right to life.
They say there is no evidence it deters crime and innocent people are frequently wrongfully convicted.
But executions on the continent continue with five countries carrying them out last year.
source: eNCA |
| Belarus hands down third death penalty this year
June 14, 2013: A Belarusian court has handed down its third death penalty this year, the Belapan news agency reports on Friday.
Belarus remains the only European country that still uses the death penalty and repeatedly comes under harsh criticism from international organizations. In 2012, the country executed the attacker who bombed the metro in Minsk in April 2011, and his accomplice.
This time, the Gomel Regional Court has sentenced a 25-year-old local resident for murdering a female student. He was convicted of murder committed with extreme cruelty. His attorney noted that there is no direct evidence of the individual's guilt, except the fact that he gave himself up and gave testimony.
A few days ago, the Grodno Regional Court sentenced a 23-year-old man to death for murdering two people.
In April, a man was sentenced to death for murdering his cellmate in prison while serving a sentence for previous crimes.
source: RAPSI |
| Support for death penalty stable in US as Texas approaches 500th execution
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June 11, 2013: Texas is moving closer to an unflattering jubilee: the 500th execution since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. This Wednesday, June 12, Texas will execute its 499th person, and execution no. 500 is scheduled for June 26. Texas uses the death penalty more than any other state, and the competition does not even come close.
No. 2 on the execution list is Virginia, which has killed 110 people – and only five since 2010. Texas has executed more people than the next six states (Virginia, Oklahoma, Florida, Missouri, Alabama and Georgia) combined.
The Texans put to death are disproportionately African-American.
Sixty-three percent now favour the death penalty as the punishment for murder, similar to 61% in 2011 and 64% in 2010, according to polls conducted by Gallup.
One exception to that is adults who describe their political views as “liberal.” Just under half of liberals, 47%, favour the death penalty, while 50% oppose it. However, most conservatives and moderates support it, as do majorities of all party groups, including 51% of Democrats. Additionally, non-whites are closely divided on the issue, with 49% in favour and 45% opposed. That contrasts with whites, among whom 68% are in favour.
source: Death Penalty News |
| North Carolina (USA) Legislators Vote to Repeal Racial Justice Act
June 8, 2013: On June 5, legislators in North Carolina voted to repeal the Racial Justice Act, which had allowed death row inmates to challenge their sentences based on claims of racial bias. The Racial Justice Act was the only law of its kind that allowed inmates to use statistical evidence to claim that race played a role in their trial. Since the law took effect in 2009, most of the inmates facing execution in North Carolina appealed their sentence under the act. In 2012, Marcus Robinson, who was the first defendant to receive a hearing under the Racial Justice Act, was re-sentenced to life without parole due to evidence of racial bias in jury selection. Representative Darren Jackson expressed his disappointment at the repeal of the law. Johnson said, “[W]e voted for the RJA because we wanted the death penalty to be applied uniformly, without regard to race. Be it the perpetrator, the victim, or an individual juror, race should play no part in the process.”
source: DPIC |
| Poll: Most Czechs are for capital punishment
June 3, 2013: Over 3/5 of Czechs are of the view that death penalty should exist in the Czech Republic, according to a poll conducted by the CVVM polling institute in early May.
Some 26 % of Czechs hold the view that capital punishment should "decidedly" be in the Czech Republic, while another 36 % are rather for than against it.
It is absolutely opposed by 11 %, while another 21 % are rather against it.
The remaining 6 % were unable to give any answer.
The view that capital punishment should be reinstated reached its peak in 1992-1994, when it was held by 3/4 of Czechs.
The minimum was recorded in 2002, when the agreement was only voiced by 56 %.
source: Prague Daily Monitor |
| Artist plans to cover executed prisoner’s corpse in gold paint for show
June 2, 2013: A Danish artist says he plans to turn the body of a convicted murderer, currently awaiting execution on death row in Texas, into a work of art. Martin Martensen-Larsen intends to coat the corpse of Travis Runnels, who is incarcerated at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit prison in Livingston, in gold paint and mount his corpse on a chair. Runnels, whose execution date has not yet been scheduled, has agreed to donate his body for the piece which will be modelled on the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.
“I want to confront people with the death penalty and demystify it, since for many it is an abstraction,” Martensen-Larsen says. “I am not celebrating the prisoner, it is American society, or in this case Texas, which places him on a pedestal through the media attention, millions of dollars spent on appeals and through the execution itself which promises redemption.”
source: The Art Newspaper |
| Iran amends law on stoning for adultery
June 1, 2013: IRAN has amended its internationally condemned law on stoning convicted adulterers to death to allow judges to impose a different form of execution, according to the revision seen by AFP.
The controversial practice, in which stones are thrown at the partially buried offender, has provoked outcries from human rights organisations, international bodies and Western countries urging Iran to abandon it.
An article of Iran's Islamic new penal code, published earlier this week, states that, "if the possibility of carrying out the (stoning) verdict does not exist," the sentencing judge may order another form of execution pending final approval by the judiciary chief.
According to International Committee Against Stoning, at least 150 people may have been stoned in Iran since 1980 and 12 offenders in Iranian prisons are now facing stoning sentences.
source: Herald Sun |
| Papua New Guinea repeals sorcery law and expands death penalty
May 30, 2013: Papua New Guinea has repealed its controversial Sorcery Act but has expanded its use of the death penalty.
The death penalty will be applied to more crimes, aggravated rape - gang-rape, the use of a weapon, or rape of a child - and armed robbery, and more methods of execution have been approved.
Amnesty International condemned the move to toughen penalties.
"Papua New Guinea has taken one step forward in protecting women from violence by repealing the Sorcery Act, but several giant steps back by moving closer to executions," Amnesty's deputy director for the Asia-Pacific Isabelle Arradon said in a statement.
source: BBC |
| UK: 63% back death penalty for terror
May 26, 2013: Almost two thirds of people in the UK believe we need more stringent terrorism laws and would support the death penalty for terrorists, a poll conducted since the murder of soldier Lee Rigby found.The survey found 64% of voters believe we need tougher laws to curb incitement to terrorism, while 63% would support the death penalty for convicted terrorists.
source: Belfast Telegraph |
| UN Human Rights High Com concerned over Papua New Guinea death penalty
May 21, 2013: The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has voiced concern about the Papua New Guinea government’s plan to reactivate the death penalty.
It says resuming the death penalty, which has been dormant in PNG since 1954, would be a major setback.
In 2007, the UN General Assembly called on states to establish a moratorium on the use of the death penalty with a view to abolition.
About 150 of the UN’s 193 member states have either abolished the death penalty or no longer practise it.
source: RNZI |
| LETHAL INJECTION: British Manufacturer Stops Drug Supply to Arkansas for Executions
May 17, 2013: The British manufacturer Hikma Pharmaceuticals recently announced new rules to restrict the supply of its products for unintended uses, such as carrying out executions in the United States. Earlier this year, Reprieve, a legal advocacy organization based in London, found that a U.S. subsidiary of Hikma sold 100 grams of phenobarbital to the Arkansas Department of Corrections. Arkansas decided to use the new, untested drug in their lethal injection process when they were unable to secure supplies of the drugs they normally use. A spokesman for Hikma Pharmaceuticals said the order had been made as part of the regular request for drugs for prison hospital services and did not raise any red flags because the drug had never been used in executions before. Arkansas has been contacted by the drug company and told that Hikma was closing the account.
source: DPIC |
| VIETNAM CHANGES LAW TO ALLOW DOMESTICALLY PRODUCED POISON IN LETHAL INJECTION
May 15, 2013: Vietnam has issued a new law allowing domestically produced chemicals to be used to execute prisoners.
The European Union has stopped exporting chemicals used in lethal injections because it regards the death penalty as a human rights violation. The ban has left Vietnam unable to execute a prisoner since November 2011, when the country decided to switch from firing squads to lethal injections.
Vietnam’s old law governing executions stipulated the names of the three chemicals produced in the EU that had to be used in lethal injection. The new law issued this week doesn’t mention the chemicals by name, meaning they can be produced locally.
The law will take effect on June 27.
There are believed to be more than 530 Vietnamese currently on death row.
source: Hands Off Cain |
| SACP has signed Platform on Cooperation of Civil Society Organisations in Prevention of Torture
May 10, 2013: Non-governmental association of citizens Serbia Against Capital Punishment and All Inhuman and Degrading Punishments (short name: Serbia Against Capital Punishment – SACP) has signed Platform on civil society cooperation in pursuing activities of the National mechanism for torture prevention NPM.
Platform was created within the project “Cooperation in Torture Prevention“, conducted by IAN International Aid Network, funded by the European Union through European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights EIDHR. The aim of the Platform is defining the role of civil society organizations in advocating for the human rights of detainees and effective protection against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Platform is supported by 19 organizations. |
| Ashton calls Belarus to abolish death penalty
May 8, 2013: EU High Representative, Catherine Ashton today issued a statement condemning the death sentence imposed on a detainee of Mahilyow prison in Belarus after he murdered his cellmate.
According to the statement: “(The High Representative) is conscious of the serious nature of the crime for which this individual has been convicted. However, she does not believe that capital punishment can ever be justified. The European Union opposes capital punishment under all circumstances. The death penalty is considered to be a cruel and inhuman punishment, which fails to act as a deterrent and represents an unacceptable denial of human dignity and integrity”.
Finally, High Representative Ashton called on Belarus to join a global moratorium on the death penalty with a view to move towards its abolition.
source: New Europe |
| Death Penalty Abolished in Maryland
May 3, 2013: Maryland has become the latest state to abolish the death penalty.
Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley signed a bill Thursday repealing the law and replacing it with life in prison without parole.
Maryland is now the 18th state to ban the death penalty. It has become the first state south of the Mason-Dixon line to outlaw it.
The state's last execution was in 2005.
source: CBN
|
| BELARUS HANDS DOWN FIRST DEATH PENALTY THIS YEAR
April 30, 2013: A Belarusian court has handed down the first death penalty this year, the Mogilyov Prosecutor's Office said in a statement.
Belarus remains the only European country that still uses the death penalty and repeatedly comes under harsh criticism from international organizations.
The two men were convicted of murdering their cellmate in prison while serving their sentences for previous crimes. One of them was cumulatively sentenced to execution for all of his crimes, and the other was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
source: Hands Off Cain |
| LETHAL INJECTION: Arkansas Plans to Use Untested Drug in Executions
April 26, 2013: The Arkansas Department of Corrections recently announced it will use a new drug, phenobarbital, for lethal injections. Phenobarbital is used to treat seizures but has never been used for executions in the U.S. Some experts are concerned that using drugs that are untested for this purpose could result in inhumane treatment. David Lubarsky, who chairs the anesthesiology department at the University of Miami's medical school, said, "People should not be using inmates as an experiment. And that is basically what this is. It's basically experimenting." Up until a few years ago, all states carrying out lethal injections used sodium thiopental as the first of three drugs in their protocol. States were forced to seek alternative drugs when the manufacturer stopped making sodium thiopental in response to objections about its use in executions.
source: DPIC |
| Toma Fila: Capital Punishment is not the solution
April 21, 2013: Following the recent mass homicide in Serbia, where 13 people were murdered, lawyer Toma Fila says: "Capital punishment has no affect on crime. He who kills does not think about the consequences. It is only later that he can contemplate how he will escape or cover up the crime. Capital punishment has evidently not provided the solution".
source: Nedeljnik |
| UN urges Iraq to suspend use of death penalty
|
April 20, 2013: The United Nations on Thursday, April 18 called on Iraq to suspend use of the death penalty after authorities executed 21 people on the same day following their conviction on terrorism charges, according to Reuters.
The high rate of executions, making Iraq the world's most prolific user of the death penalty after China and Iran, has put the country under fire from human rights groups. So far 32 people have been executed in Iraq this month.
Executions are a sensitive issue for Iraq's Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki whose government faces rallies by thousands of Sunni Muslims against what they see as marginalization of their sect.
"I regret that repeated calls of the United Nations to suspend the implementation of death sentences were not heard," U.N. representative Martin Kobler said. "I urge once again the Iraqi government to immediately suspend all pending death sentences and to apply without delay the moratorium."
The justice ministry said 21 people had been executed on Tuesday for crimes linked to al Qaeda, including five accused of trying to attack Maliki's convoy.
source: PanARMENIAN.Net |
| Iraq executes 21 in one day on 'terror' charges
April 17, 2013: Iraq put 21 men to death on Tuesday, a senior justice ministry official told AFP, the latest in a series of mass executions that have drawn international condemnation.
All of the men were Iraqis and had been convicted on anti-terror charges, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The latest executions brought to 50 the number of times Baghdad has carried out the death penalty so far this year, despite widespread calls for a moratorium on the country's use of capital punishment.
Justice Minister Hassan al-Shammari insisted last month that Baghdad would continue to implement the death penalty in the face of widespread calls for it to issue a moratorium.
Iraq's executions have sparked concern from the United Nations, as well as from Britain, the European Union and rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
source: Agence France-Presse |
| Seven Convicts Hanged In Southern Iran
April 16, 2013: Seven men convicted of serious crimes have been hanged in Iran, according to local agency reports.
The semiofficial Mehr news agency reported on April 16 that the seven were hanged in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz -- four in public and three at the city’s Adel Abad prison.
The seven were convicted of murder, armed robbery, and rape.
International rights groups have criticized Iranian authorities for the increasing number of death penalties being carried out.
Murder, rape, armed robbery, and narcotics trafficking are among the crimes punishable by death in Iran.
source: Radio Free Europe |
| SAUDI EXECUTED FOR MACHINEGUN MURDER
April 14, 2013: Saudi authorities beheaded a citizen in the western city of Medina after he was convicted of shooting dead another man, the interior ministry said.
Sultan bin Rashid al-Mutairi had been found guilty of using a machinegun to kill Mused bin Nayer al-Mutairi after a dispute between the pair, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.
source: Hands Off Cain |
| Death penalty 2012: Despite setbacks, a death penalty-free world came closer
|
April 10, 2013: Despite some disappointing setbacks in 2012, the global trend towards ending the death penalty continued, Amnesty International found in its annual review of death sentences and executions.
2012 saw the resumption of executions in several countries that had not used the death penalty in some time, notably India, Japan, Pakistan and Gambia, as well as an alarming escalation in executions in Iraq.
But the use of the death penalty continues to be restricted to an isolated group of countries, and progress towards its abolition was seen in all regions of the world.
Only 21 of the world’s countries were recorded as having carried out executions in 2012 – the same number as in 2011, but down from 28 countries a decade earlier in 2003.
In 2012, at least 682 executions were known to have been carried out worldwide, two more than in 2011. At least 1,722 newly imposed death sentences in 58 countries could be confirmed, compared to 1,923 in 63 countries the year before.
But these figures do not include the thousands of executions that Amnesty International believes were carried out in China, where the numbers are kept secret.
There was an alarming rise in Iraq’s use of the death penalty, where at least 129 people were put to death – almost double the 2011 figure of 68.
source: Amnesty International |
| UNITED NATIONS: U.N. criticizes several countries, including Japan over death penalty use
April 7, 2013: The U.N. rights body on Friday criticized Kuwait, Japan and other countries in Asia for resuming executions after halting the practice for several years.
“We are deeply concerned that a number of countries in the Middle East and Asia have recently started reapplying the death penalty after several years of moratorium,” OHCHR spokesman Rupert Colville told reporters in Geneva.
He criticized Kuwait, India, Indonesia and Japan for resuming executions in a move that he said flies in the face of “the overwhelming global trend towards abolishing the death penalty.”
Kuwait on Monday carried out its first executions in six years, hanging a Saudi, a Pakistani and a stateless Arab who had been convicted of murder.
And in Asia, India resumed executions late last year after an eight-year moratorium, and Japan also applied the death penalty for the first time in nearly two years.
Last month, Indonesia carried out its first execution in four years.
Of the countries that never stopped carrying out the death penalty, like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran, China and North Korea, Colville expressed particular concern about the soaring number of executions in Iraq.
source: Japan Today |
| KUWAIT: THREE HANGED IN THE FIRST EXECUTIONS SINCE 2007
|
April 3, 2013: Kuwait hanged three convicted murderers in the first executions in the Gulf state since May 2007, the ministry of justice said.
The men, a Pakistani, a Saudi and a stateless Arab, were hanged at the central jail, west of the capital Kuwait City, in front of judicial and security officials, the ministry said.
Pakistani Parvez Ghulam was convicted of killing a Kuwaiti couple and the Saudi national, Faisal al-Oteibi, of stabbing a compatriot to death. The stateless Arab, Dhaher al-Oteibi, was hanged for shooting and killing his wife and five children.
Kuwait had six years ago stopped executing convicts sentenced to death without providing an explanation.
Public attorney Mohammad al-Duaij, who supervised the executions, was cited by the official KUNA news agency as saying another 48 people were on death row awaiting a final decision on their sentences by the Emir. Under Kuwaiti law, the Emir has the right to commute death sentences to a life term.
Kuwait has executed a total of 69 men and three foreign women since it introduced the death penalty in mid-1960. Most of those condemned have been convicted murderers or drug traffickers.
source: Hands Off Cain |
| Growing support for the death penalty in Serbia!
|
April 1, 2013: The first 2013 public opinion poll showed an increasing number of the death penalty supporters in Serbia. For the first time in the past seven years, they make up a sizable majority of 57 as against 43 per cent (without the undecided).
One fifth of all respondent were undecided so that in the total sample there were 45% supporters and only 34% opponents of the death penalty.
Since 2001, the support for capital punishment never exceeded 53 per cent, and in some years it was as low as 44 per cent (w/o the undecided). Therefore, this year’s results represent a major and unwelcome (at least for the abolitionists) surprise.
Another reason for concern is the fact that the supporters of capital punishment now make up a majority in those demographic groups which have been traditionally against it. For the first time, a majority of female respondents opted for the death penalty, although to a lesser degree than the men, while the young (18–29 years) support the death penalty more often than the remainder of the population (59%).
Those who vote for the parties of the Left still oppose the death penalty considerably more often than the sympathizers of the Right, but their absolute numbers are decreasing.
This year’s results are most likely a result of the changing political scene (the overwhelming victory of the Right in the May 2012 elections) and the economic crisis.
The poll was administered by Ipsos Strategic Marketing as a „face-to-face“ survey of public opinion ( omnibus), using the same methodology as in the past six years. The researchers used a representative three-stage random national sample. The field work was done from 10 to 21 March and the number of respondents was 1,006. The integral report is available here.
Serbia Against Capital Punishment intends to repeat this poll in September. |
| Iraq executes 18 despite international outcry
|
March 27, 2013: Iraq executed 18 people this month, eight of them on the same day as an attack on the justice ministry, a top official said on Wednesday, despite global condemnation over its ongoing executions.
Deputy Justice Minister Busho Ibrahim said that all 18 were convicted of terror-related offences, and that all were Iraqi men.
He declined to give a breakdown of where they were from, but said that some had been tried in northern Nineveh province and some in Baghdad, with others in unspecified provinces.
Eight of the executions coincided with a coordinated attack on the justice ministry complex in central Baghdad on March 14 in which 30 people were killed. The attack was later claimed by Al-Qaeda's front group in Iraq.
Al-Qaeda's Iraqi affiliate later said that nationwide attacks on March 19 that killed 56 people were "revenge for those whom you (the government) executed."
Iraq's executions have sparked calls for a moratorium from the United Nations, as well as Britain, the European Union and rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
source: Global Post |
| EU Urges Indonesia To Re-enforce Moratorium Of Executions
March 25, 2013: EU Foreign Policy chief Catherine Ashton has expressed deep regret at the recent execution in Indonesia.
The death row inmate, Adam Wilson, was executed on 15 March, after a gap of five years during which no execution had taken place.
In a statement issued on Friday, the High Representative termed it as "a step backwards and goes against the global abolitionist trend."
"The European Union hopes that Indonesia will return to its previous moratorium policy, and consider joining the wide community of states that have abolished the death penalty entirely."
Aston made it clear that "The EU is opposed to capital punishment in all cases and without exception, and has consistently called for its universal abolition."
source: RTT |
| Top pharma company Teva moves to stop flow of execution drugs
23 march 2013: One of the world's and the UK's largest pharmaceutical companies has taken steps to ensure its drugs cannot be used to carry out executions by lethal injection.
Teva, which describes itself as a "top 10 global pharmaceutical company [with] $20.3bn in sales in 2012," will put in place distribution controls to ensure its products cannot be used to kill prisoners on America's death rows.
Teva is recommencing production of an anaesthetic called propofol, which in large enough doses can be used to kill. As supplies of other execution drugs run out, US prisons are starting to turn to propofol to carry out capital punishment.
source: Death Penalty News |
| India Rape Law: Parliament Passes Strict Sexual Violence Legislation
March 22, 2013: NEW DELHI — India's Parliament passed a sweeping new law Thursday to protect women against sexual violence in response to a fatal December gang rape and beating of a young woman on a bus in New Delhi.
The new law, which still requires the president's signature before it becomes official, makes stalking, voyeurism and sexual harassment a crime. It also provides for the death penalty for repeat offenders or for rape attacks that lead to the victim's death. The law also makes it a crime for police officers to refuse to open cases when they receive complaints of sexual attacks.
source: The Huffington Post |
| Belarus: After death, the cruelty continues as bodies of two executed men still hidden
|
March 17, 2013: The bodies of two men executed a year ago in Belarus must be released to their relatives for burial or the burial site should be revealed, Amnesty International said today.
Uladzslau Kavalyou and Dzmitry Kanavalau were executed in March 2012 in Minsk, capital of Belarus. They had been sentenced to death on 30 November 2011 after being found guilty in connection to a bomb attack in Minsk that killed 15 people and wounded more than 300 in April 2011.
Their trial has been criticized for failing to meet international fair trial standards.
Article 175 of the Criminal Executive Code of the Republic of Belarus allows for the government not to communicate the place of burial of those executed to their relatives.
"It is unacceptable that authorities in Belarus would not even reveal the burial site to the families, and ban them from saying goodbye to their loved ones," said Diaz-Jogeix, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for Europe and Central Asia.
Belarus is the only country in Europe that still sentences people to death. Executions are carried out by shooting the individual in the back of the head.
Prisoners are only informed hours, or even minutes, before they are executed.
source: Amnesty International |
| SAUDI ARABIA: SAUDIS RETHINKING METHOD OF EXECUTION
March 13, 2013: A Saudi newspaper says a ministerial committee is looking into formally dropping public beheadings as a method of execution in the oil-rich kingdom.
Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where a death sentence results in beheading in a public square.
The authoritative daily Al-Watan says in its today's edition that the ministerial committee is considering fatal shootings as an alternative.
There have been calls in the kingdom for replacing public beheadings with lethal injections carried out in prisons.
There was no official confirmation immediately available of the newspaper's report.
source: Hands Off Cain |
| Public Discussion on Literature and the Death Penalty
|
March 10, 2013: Death penalty humiliates us, because it reduces us to a community that has the right to take human life away. A society’s commitment to abolish the death penalty is proportional to the development of democracy. That is the conclusion of the discussions that took place in the Serbian Literary Society on the death penalty in literature and history, with participation of lawyer Ivan Jankovi and literary critic and journalist Teofil Pan
i.
In the literature, the issue of capital punishment is considered in relation to the tradition of humanistic values. It is historically related to the reform of the criminal justice system which unfolded in Europe and America from 1760s to 1840s. A significant role in this process was played by Cesare Beccaria’s study "On Crimes and Punishments" (1764), a major critique of feudalism, under whose influence some rulers began to restrict the death penalty.
Apart from the works of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Victor Hugo, Kafka and Camus, participants singled out Serbian writers who advocated abolition, such as Borislav Peki, Vidosav Stevanovi, Mia Danojli, Sima Milutinovi Sarajlija and others. in "The Last Day of a Condemned Man", Victor Hugo looked at civilization as a series of transformations leading to a final disappearance of crime and punishment. Tolstoy was a preacher of nonviolence, an active pacifist, while Dostoyevsky, as an opponent of the imperial regime, was arrested, sentenced to death and then pardoned (1849).
A special mention was made of the motive of the executioner, who – in life as well as in literature, becomes a victim of his own fears and ultimately commits suicide.
source: Politika
Photos from the event. |
| YEMEN: 15 CHILD OFFENDERS EXECUTED IN FIVE YEARS
|
March 5, 2013: Yemen has executed at least 15 young male and female offenders, all aged under 18 when they committed the offences, in the last five years, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said, urging the government to halt such executions.
The New York-based group also called on President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to reverse the execution orders of three juveniles on death row, whose appeals have been exhausted.
"Sending child offenders before firing squads is hardly the way for Yemen to show that it respects human rights," said Priyanka Motaparthy, children's rights researcher at HRW.
In a 30-page report, HRW cited the case of Hind al-Barti, executed by a government firing squad in Sanaa on murder charges. The group said the young woman's birth certificate showed she was 15 at the time of the alleged murder.
Barti told HRW in March 2012 that she had made a false confession after police officers beat her and threatened her with rape. Government authorities only gave her family a few hours' notice before her execution.
Human Rights Minister Hooria Mashhour said Yemeni law prohibited the execution of offenders under the age of 18, but that people often lacked birth certificates to prove their age.
"Problems happen during procedures, during trials, where they treat the young offender as a fully responsible adult," Mashhour told Reuters, when asked about the HRW report.
"When rulings are issued and we, as Ministry of Human Rights, intervene, the judiciary consider our action as interference by the executive branch in their work."
source: Hands Off Cain |
| Public Discussion Literature and the Death Penalty
Thursday, 7 March at 7 p.m.
Serbian Literary Society, Belgrade, Francuska 7
Discussion:
Literature and the Death Penalty
Ivan Jankovi and Teofil Pan
i speak about capital punishment in and out of literature |
| UN: BAN KI-MOON REAFFIRMS CALL FOR MORATORIUM ON DEATH PENALTY
|
February 28, 2013: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today reiterated his call for a global moratorium on applying the death penalty, stressing the United Nations' long history of opposing the practice and the growing momentum among the international community to permanently end it.
"A global moratorium is a crucial stepping stone towards full worldwide abolition," Mr. Ban said in a message delivered by the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Kyung-wha Kang.
"Capital punishment is inconsistent with the mission of the United Nations to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights and the dignity and worth of the human person," Ms. Kang read, during an event at the Human Rights Council in Geneva organized by the International Commission against the Death Penalty, an independent body opposed to capital punishment.
The UN General Assembly first voted on a moratorium in 2007, and again in December 2012 with the support of 111 countries, 41 against and 34 abstentions. The resolution called for a progressive restriction on the use of capital punishment and eliminating it entirely for felons below the age of 18 and pregnant women.
"The United Nations system has long advocated the abolition of the death penalty. International and hybrid tribunals supported by the UN do not provide for capital punishment, nor does the International Criminal Court," Mr. Ban's message noted.
source: Hands Off Cain |
| February 26 - Abolition Day in Serbia
On the 26th February 2002, the Serbian Parliament abolished the death penalty. The Act on the Amendments to the Penal Code of Serbia, including the amendment abolishing the death penalty, was adopted with 131 against 56 votes.
On the February 26th the following letter was sent to the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia by Serbia Against Capital Punishment:
On this day eleven years ago you abolished the death penalty in Serbia.
Do not bring it back ever again!
This letter has been also signed by many other Non-Governmental Organizations and individuals.
For more about the 2002 abolition, read here. |
| TEXAS (USA): CARL BLUE PUT TO DEATH
February 21, 2013: Carl Blue, 48, black, was executed in Texas. He had been condemned to die for killing Carmen Richards-Sanders, his former girlfriend, at her apartment in September 1994.
Hours after the attack, Blue turned himself in to police and gave a partial confession.
Blue becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas and the 493rd overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982.
source: Hands Off Cain |
| JAPAN: THREE DEATH-ROW INMATES EXECUTED
February 21, 2013: Japan has hanged a child killer and two other convicted murderers, its first executions since a conservative government swept to power in landslide elections in December.
Kaoru Kobayashi, 44, killed a seven-year-old girl and sent a photograph of the dead body to her mother in 2004, while Masahiro Kanagawa, 29, killed one person and injured seven others in a knife attack outside a suburban Tokyo shopping mall in 2008. He also murdered another man in a separate incident the same year.
The third man executed was Keiki Muto, 62, who strangled a bar owner for money in 2002.
The number of death-row inmates in Japan now stands at 134.
source: Hands Off Cain |
| Information About Foreign Citizens on U.S. Death Rows
February 21, 2013: New information on foreign nationals facing the death penalty in the U.S. is now available through Mark Warren of Human Rights Research. This DPIC page includes information on 143 foreign citizens from 37 countries on state and federal death rows. California has the most (59 inmates), followed by Texas (24), and Florida (23). Many of these inmates were not informed of their right to contact their country's represenatives under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, a treaty the U.S. has ratified and relies upon to protect its citizens when they travel abroad. Thirty-one (31) foreign nationals have been executed in the U.S. since 1976, many of whom were not properly informed of their rights under this treaty. Among countries, Mexico has the largest number (60) of its citizens on death row in the U.S.
Among this foreigners is Avram Vineto Nika, Roma from Pancevo, citizen of Serbia. He is sentenced to death in Nevada.
source: DPIC |
| Zimbabwe: 'Execution fears' after hangman appointed
February 8, 2013: The announcement that Zimbabwe has a new hangman raises fears that executions may resume in the country, Amnesty International has said.
The post of hangman has been vacant since 2005 and Zimbabwe's state-run Herald newspaper says the job is believed to have gone to a Malawian.
The UK-based rights groups said the recruitment was "macabre" and appealed for the death penalty to be abolished.
The prison service head says there are 74 men and two women on death row.
Zimbabwe's last hangman retired in 2005, but the prison service had struggled to find a replacement, with the job repeatedly advertised in the local media.
No-one has been executed in the past 12 years.
source: BBC |
| Serbian Death Row Record Holder Released
February 5, 2013: Vu
ko Manojlovi was sentenced to death in 1986 for murder. He remained on the death row in Niš for sixteen years, longer than anyone else before or since. In 2002, his death sentence was commuted to 40 years in prison. After serving 27 years, Manojlovi was pardoned by the President of the Republic last week. He walked out of the Niš Prison a free man on 1 February.
|
| Sri Lanka recruits 2 executioners to implement capital punishment
February 4, 2013: Sri Lanka which is considering to implement the death penalty, has recruited 2 executioners, Ministry of Prison Reforms and Rehabilitation said.
The 2 executioners, elected from 145 short-listed candidates, are presently undergoing a 14-day special training.
In Sri Lanka where capital punishment is delivered, over 225 prisoners remain in the death row until the President orders their execution. However, the last execution took place in 1976.
source: Colombo Page |
| INDIA: DALAI LAMA SAYS DELHI GANG RAPISTS SHOULD NOT BE EXECUTED, DEATH PENALTY NOT THE ANSWER
February 1, 2013: One of the world's most respected spiritual leaders has asked that mercy be shown in the case of the men accused of last month's brutal gang rape and murder of a woman on a bus in New Delhi.
“I do not like the death sentence,” he said, adding that there are other ways to deal with the alleged perpetrators.
The Dalai Lama said the 21 century belonged to dialogue and not to confrontation or violence.
The Tibetan leader has been a steadfast opponent of the death penalty, which contradicts the Buddhist philosophy of nonviolence.
source: Hands Off Cain
|
| Politics hinder abolishment of RS death penalty
|
January 28, 2013: The EU has urged Republika Srpska to eliminate Article 11 of its constitution, which prescribes the death penalty for the most heinous crimes, but politics on the national level in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) have prevented action.
"Republika Srpska is part of BiH's legal system, which aspires to be a part of the EU. Even if BiH fulfills all obligations and Republika Srpska does not change Article 11, EU membership will remain a dream," Momir Malic, president of BiH's Council of Nations, told SETimes.The last person to be executed in the region was put to death in 1992 in Serbia. Since, several people have been sentenced to death, but the sentences have since been commuted to long-term imprisonment.
By 2002, all regional countries officially abolished the death penalty but Republika Srpska has not.Malic said the EU is again urging changes to the BiH entity's constitution, but the latest initiative failed when Bosniak MPs did not agree to verify all 29 amendments in a package that Republika Srpska's national assembly adopted four years ago.
All assembly decisions are submitted in package form and must be verified by the BiH Council of Nations MPs in their entirety.
The Bosniak MPs said they do not advocate the death penalty, but have issues with the other proposed changes to the entity's constitution.The Republika Srpska assembly would now have to start from scratch to address the issue."The death penalty does not prevent crime and it is one of the biggest reasons for being cut out of the laws. Because capital punishment can be used to eliminate political opponents, there is always a danger that somebody innocent will be executed," Ivan Jankovic, member of Serbia Against Death Penalty, which conducts an annual poll on death penalty, told SETimes.Jankovic said support for capital punishment in the region oscillates; it increases when the media reports extremely brutal crimes but drops if innocents are convicted to death.Nevertheless, BiH is a member of the Council of Europe, and as such has accepted the European Convention on Human Rights, which requires all member states not to implement capital punishment.
"Republika Srspka will be the biggest obstacle on BiH's way to the EU. The parties which participate in the Council of Nations must find a way to resolve the issue before we achieve a higher phase of negotiations with the EU," Malic told SETimes.Legal experts said the issue is needlessly taxing the country's EU integration. BiH criminal law does not prescribe capital punishment, so having it on paper in the entity's constitution constitutes a legal issue since capital punishment cannot legally be used.
"While the death penalty represents a violation of the right to life as defined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is up to the Republika Srspka authorities to decide whether they will abolish it," Lejla Hadzimesic, analyst for Amnesty International for BiH, Croatia and Slovenia, told SETimes.
Meanwhile, polls show that half of the citizens in the region strongly support reinstituting the death penalty in the belief that it is an effective measure against crime.
source: Mladen Dragojlovic for Southeast European Times in Banja Luka |
| Bundesbank Limits China and Vietnam Cooperation on Death Penalty
|
January 27, 2013: Germany's Bundesbank said it will exclude Chinese and Vietnamese central bank officials from anti- counterfeiting seminars over concerns about the countries'
use of the death penalty for serious cases of forgery.
"The Bundesbank wants to make sure it doesn't give advice on the subject of counterfeiting to countries that impose the death penalty for money forgery," a spokesman for the Frankfurt-based central bank said today, adding that this is currently the case "in at least 2 countries, China and Vietnam."
The Bundesbank will stop inviting officials from the 2 countries' central banks to its seminars on "cash management and combating counterfeit money," it said.
It will continue to cooperate on other subjects, from monetary policy to banking supervision.
The Bundesbank said on Jan. 17 it had shelved an anti-counterfeiting venture with the Central Bank of Bangladesh over concerns the country planned to impose the death penalty for serious cases of forgery. Bangladesh's central bank said the next day it would drop the plans.
The Bundesbank is currently examining if countries other than China and Vietnam are imposing the death penalty for forgery, the spokesman said. It has not yet made a decision on whether it will restart the anti-counterfeiting venture with Bangladesh.
source: Business Week |
| Beheaded Rizana Nafeek: Saudi Authorities Refuse to Return Body to Parents in Sri Lanka
|
January 25, 2013: The parents of Rizana Nafeek, the Sri Lankan maid beheaded in Saudi Arabia, say they have forgiven those responsible for her death but want her body returned home.
The Saudi authorities, however, have said no, according to Nafeek's mother.
Rafeena Nafeek told BBC reporter Azzam Ameen: "Even our request to get her body to Sri Lanka was refused."
She said of her daughter's death: "There's no point in blaming anyone - Rizana has gone. We only got to know [about] her execution from the media. They [the Saudi authorities] should have at least told us about it."
She urged other girls not to travel to Saudi Arabia for domestic work, no matter how impoverished they are, a warning echoed by the United Nations. Nafeek was sentenced to death in 2007 for the murder of a 4-month-old baby who died in her care 2 years earlier. She denied murdering the child.
She had travelled to Saudi Arabia on a false passport to work as a maid. The passport put her age at 23 although she was actually 17 when the baby died.
Because she was underage, the death sentence breached international child rights, said UN human rights experts. The death penalty cannot be imposed for crimes committed when the defendant is under 18.
But authorities claimed Nafeek could not be pardoned because the baby's parents insisted she be executed.
Her mother rejected compensation from Riyadh city officials, saying she could not accept money from the country that killed her daughter. She was, however,presented with $7,800 (???4,900) from Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse.
There has been wide criticism of how Nafeek was treated during her incarceration. She was not given access to lawyers and competent interpreters during her interrogation or trial. She was also beaten and made to sign a confession - which she later retracted.
The UN said Saudi was particularly dangerous for female migrant workers: "In Saudi Arabia, women do not have equal access to the courts or an equal opportunity to obtain justice," a spokesperson said. "The Secretary-General is concerned that this is a situation which is even moreprecarious for women migrant workers given their foreign status."
source: International Business Times |
| SAUDI ARABIA: 1,200 DEATH ROW INMATES SENT TO FIGHT IN SYRIA
January 24, 2013: A leaked internal memo shows how Saudi officials commuted 1,200 death row inmates under the condition they go and fight against Assad in Syria, according to the Assyrian International News Agency.
From the memo: We have reached an agreement with them that they will be exempted from the death sentence and given a monthly salary to their families and loved ones, who will be prevented from traveling outside Saudi Arabia in return for rehabilitation of the accused and their training in order to send them to Jihad in Syria.
Saudi officials apparently gave them a choice: decapitation or jihad? In total, inmates from Yemen, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Jordan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Egypt, Pakistan, Iraq, and Kuwait chose to go and fight in Syria.
source: HANDS OFF CAIN |
| VIETNAM TO PRODUCE POISON FOR LETHAL INJECTION
|
Minister of Public Security
Tran Dai Quang
|
January 23, 2013: At the meeting of the National Assembly Standing Committee on crime prevention this morning, Minister of Public Security Tran Dai Quang said Vietnam would produce poison to serve the policy on conducting the death penalty by lethal injection. The Minister of Public Security said the relevant bodies had submitted to the Government a draft amendment to the decree on the implementation of the death penalty by lethal injection, towards the use of domestically made drugs.
The draft is now being verified by the Ministry of Justice. Currently, 532 prisoners are waiting for the death penalty execution but they will have to wait for the approval of the new decree.
According to the Ministry of Public Security, preparation for the application of lethal injection has completed, with the construction and installation of equipment in five detention centers in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Son La, Nghe An and Dak Lak. The training on the implementation of lethal injection has also completed. Lethal injection will be applied immediately when the poison is available.
source: HANDS OFF CAIN |
| PUBLIC OPINION: 2012 Gallup Poll Shows Support for Death Penalty Remains Near 40-Year Low
|
January 22, 2013: A recent Gallup Poll measured Americans' abstract support for the death penalty at 63%, the second-lowest level of support for capital punishment since 1978, and a significant decline from 1994, when 80% of respondents were in favor of the death penalty. Gallup noted the results of the poll may have been affected by the fact that it was conducted a few days after the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. In 2011 Gallup found 61% in support of the death penalty, the lowest level in 40 years. When Gallup and other polls offer respondents a choice of the proper punishment for murder--the death penalty or life in prison without parole--the public is nearly evenly split on the question. Among the groups most supportive of the death penalty in this latest Gallup poll were conservatives, Republicans, men, older respondents, and those with a high school or less education. The poll was conducted December 19-22, 2012. The margin of error was +4 percentage points.
Source: Death Penalty Information Center
NOTE: The support for the death penalty in Serbia 2012 was significantly lower than in the U.S., at 51%.
|
| TEXAS: new execution date
January 20, 2013: John Quintanilla has been given an execution date of May 14; it should be considered serious.
Executions under Rick Perry, 2001-present---253
Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982-present---492
Perry #---scheduled execution date---name---Tx. #
254---January 29---Kimberly McCarthy---493
255----February 21----Carl Blue---494
256---February 27----Larry Swearingen---495
257---March 21---Michael Gonzalez---496
258---April 9---Rickey Lewis---497
259---April 10---Ribogerto Avila, Jr.---498
260---April 16---Ronnie Threadgill---499
261---April 24---Elroy Chester---500
262---May 14---John Quintanilla---501
263---July 31---Douglas Feldman---502
(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)
|
| Virginia inmate Robert Gleason dies by electric chair
January 17, 2013: The US state of Virginia has used the electric chair to put to death a man who killed two fellow prisoners to speed up his own execution.
Robert Gleason, 42, was the first Virginia inmate to choose electrocution over lethal injection since March 2010.
The former tattoo artist pleaded guilty to a 2007 murder and subsequently killed two fellow prisoners, while waiving all his rights to an appeal.
Only 157 death-row electrocutions have taken place out of 1,320 executions since the US death penalty was reinstated in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
source: BBC |
| 2 prisoners executed in north-eastern Iran: 1 of them hanged in public
January 16, 2013: According to the state run Iranian news agency Aftab, 2 prisoners were hanged in north-eastern province of Khorasan early this morning January 16. According to the report 1 of the prisoners was hanged publicly in the town of Sabzevar while the other prisoner was hanged in the prison of Mashhad. Both the prisoners were convicted of rape and age and name of none of them were mentioned in the report.
source: ncr-iran |
| Serbian Judge Pines for Capital Punishment!
January 9, 2013: Lepomir Milosavljevic, a judge of the Higher Court in Jagodina, believes that „the death penalty should exist for extreme cases“, as such criminals „deserve the death penalty“. „The death penalty is a threat that should hang over the heads of all criminals“, said Milosavljevic.
Milosavljevic made this statement after pronouncing prison sentences of 40 and 20 years, respectively, to Sasa Banovic and Nenad Vlajkovic, who had tortured, sexually abused and murdered Zivotije Zivkovic from Jagodina.
According to Article 24 of the Constitution, „There shall be no capital punishment in the Republic of Serbia“. In addition, Serbia has ratified Protocols 5 and 13 to the European Convention of Human Rights, which state: „The death penalty shall be abolished. No one shall be condemned to such penalty or executed“.
source: Blic |
| America’s Retreat From the Death Penalty
January 2, 2013: Following the themes of DPIC's recent 2012 Year End Report, the lead editorial for Jan. 2 in the New York Times concluded that "capital punishment is cruel and unusual" as judged by the country's "evolving standards" of decency and "should be abolished" by the Supreme Court. The Times’s editorial noted the fewer number of states carrying out executions, the lack of any meaningful rationale, the arbitrariness of its application, and the risk of executing the innocent as major problems with the current death penalty. The editors said the primary purposes for imposing capital punishment--deterrence and retribution--"have been seriously undermined by a growing group of judges, prosecutors, scholars and others involved in criminal justice, conservatives and liberals alike." Read the full editorial below.
Read more |
| SRI LANKA: GOVERNMENT UNDECIDED ON IMPLEMENTING DEATH PENALTY
|
January 2, 2013: The Sri Lankan government said it has not yet taken a policy decision on the implementation of the death penalty.
External Affairs Ministry Secretary Karunatillaka Amunugama said the issue that the death penalty should or should not be implemented in Sri Lanka has been debated in society in recent times.
"However the government has not taken a policy decision on this," he told reporters.
Sri Lanka had recently abstained from voting at the UN General Assembly in favour of abolishing the death penalty.
However while Sri Lanka contemplates the implementation of the death penalty it has also begun recruiting hangmen.
Interviews to select the suitable candidates were carried out last year and four people had been selected from the final list.
The Prisons Department hopes to select two people from the final list and they will be appointed as the hangmen.
Over 1,600 people are on death row and serving life in prison in Sri Lanka, the Prisons Department said.
Since June 23, 1976, there have been no executions, although death sentences were handed down continuously by the High and Supreme Courts for murder and drug trafficking convictions.
source: http://www.handsoffcain.info/news/index.php?iddocumento=16313999 |
| Japan death row inmates want warning
December 29, 2012: Tokyo - Death row inmates in Japan want to be told of their execution in advance, instead of on the day they are to be hanged, a lawmaker's survey said.
A majority of those sentenced to die would also like the present method of administering punishment to be reviewed, with the largest bloc saying their preferred choice would be lethal injection.
It covered 133 people on death row, two of whom were executed at the end of September, taking this year's total in Japan to seven.
Of the 78 who replied, 51 said they wanted to know ahead of time that they would be put to death, with opinions varying from a day to a month in advance. Many said they wanted the chance to say goodbye to loved ones.
source: http://www.iol.co.za/news/world/japan-death-row-inmates-want-warning-1.1445979#.UN8BaeTO3C4 |
| Capital Punishment in Serbia now in Malayalam!
December 23, 2012: Wikipedia article Capital Punishment in Serbia is available in English and Serbian.
Every month, some 300 visitors read the English version and another 250 the Serbian.
A few days ago, someone calling themselves Drajay1976 translated the article into Malayalam. Malayalam is a Dravidian language spoken by some 38 milion people in India.
Here is Article 24 of the Serbian Constitution („Human life is inviolable. There shall be no death penalty in the Republic of Serbia“) in Malayalam: മനുഷ്യജീവൻ അമൂല്യമാണ്. അതിനാൽ റിപ്പബ്ലിക്ക് ഓഫ് സെർബിയയിൽ വധശിക്ഷ ഉണ്ടാവില്ല” എന്ന് വ്യവസ്ഥ ചെയ്യുന്നു.
Another Wikipedia article, Capital Punishment in Montenegro, is now also available in Malayalam. |
| NEW UN RESOLUTION FOR A GLOBAL MORATORIUM ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT VOTED FROM A RECORD NUMBER
December 20, 2012: A record 111 countries have voted for a moratorium on capital punishment at a keynote U.N. General Assembly human rights meeting.
Although not legally binding, campaigners say the vote held every two years sends a strong signal to the slowly shrinking number of nations—including China, Iran and the United States—that still execute prisoners.
There were 111 votes in favor of a moratorium, four more than in 2010.
Among the 41 countries that voted against the moratorium were the United States, China, Japan, India, Iran, North Korea and Saudi Arabia. Thirty-four countries abstained.
About 150 countries now have a moratorium or an outright ban on capital punishment. Just 21 nations were reported to have carried out executions in 2011, according to rights groups.
source: http://www.japantoday.com/category/crime/view/111-countries-vote-against-death-penalty-at-u-n-japan-among-41-voting-for-it |
| Presentation of the book “On White Bread Diet" and the website www.deathpenalty.rs
December 13, 2012: Union University School of Law held a promotion of the Ivan Jakovi's book “On White Bread Diet”.
People who spoke on the promotion were Dean of Union University School of Law Zlatko Stefanovi, professor. dr. Emeritus Mom
ilo Gruba
, assistant professor dr. Jelena Voli - Hellbusch, and the author himself, who also presented the website www.deathpenalty.rs to the professors and students.
|
| Singapore to abolish death penalty for some drug couriers
December 12, 2012: Singapore is planning to abolish the mandatory death penalty for some drug couriers if they meet some requirements including cooperating with police.
(source: ABC News)
|
| December 10 - Human Rights Day
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted on 10th December 1948.
It proclaims the right to life.
The death penalty destroys human lives.
For this reason, the United Nations have proposed a global moratorium on the death penalty.
|
| CITIES FOR LIFE – BELGRADE AGAINST THE DEATH PENALTY
November 30, 2012: 1,580 cities, including 70 capital cities, from 88 countries worldwide took part in this year’s international campaign Cities for Life. Belgradeparticipated for the second time (the first was in 2007).
Belgrade City Administration lit up the ukur-
esma monument, while three NGOs – Serbia Against Capital Punishment, Center for Cultural Decontamination and Women in Black – staged an urban happening at two city locations.
At ukur-
esma, Ivan Jankovi (SACP) explained why Belgrade was for life and against capital punishment, while Borka Pavievi (CZKD) enacted a hangman and everyone was welcome to have a picture with her taken as a souvenir. Daniel Kova
(Jesenji orkestar) sang and played his guitar.
Everyone then took a walk to a nearby house, where Ksenija Atanasijevi, philosopher and feminist, used to live. On the way, they passed four of her portraits, created by the mysterious stencil artist, TKV.
Sne~ana Klisinska-Taba
ki (WiB) explained how and why a memorial plaque was placed on the facade of Ksenija’s house. Actress Cvijeta Mesi read an essay by Ksenija on the rape and murder of a young Belgrade feminist in 1930. The murderer was sentenced to death and hanged, but his death only demonstrated the futility of the death penalty. Ljiljana Vuleti announced an imaginary interview with Ksenija Atanasijevi in the forthcoming issue of the ELLE magazine. Daniiel Kova
sang some more.
Photos
Video 15 minutes version
Video 5 minutes version
Video Cities for Life 2002-2012.
Facebook page of the event
|
| China will stop relying on executed prisoners organs
November 22, 2012: Chinese government announced that it will stop relying on prisoner organs. Huang Jiefu, the vice health minister said to the press that, "Chinese organ transplants will completely end their reliance on donations from executed prisoners within 2 years."
International Human Rights Groups accused the Chinese government of harvesting organs from executed prisoners without their consent. China, is the world's leader in capital punishment and a US based NGO estimated that 4,000 executions took place in 2011.
On 2 November, Wang Haibo the director of the China Organ Transplant Response System Research Center of the Ministry of Health said, "while we cannot deny the executed prisoner's right to donate organs, an organ transplantation system relying on death-row prisoners' organs is not ethical or sustainable."
source: New Europe Online |
| UNITED NATIONS: NEW RESOLUTION PRO MORATORIUM VOTED BY A RECORD NUMBER OF 110 COUNTRIES
|
November 21, 2012: The UN General Assembly’s Third Committee in New York adopted a new resolution on a moratorium on the use of the death penalty, the fourth since 2007.
A record number of countries voted in favor of the Resolution, and there was a decrease in vote against it. The result was 110 votes in favor (+2 compared to 2010 Resolution), 39 against (-2), 36 abstentions (=) and 8 absent (+1).
UN Member States are now 193, one State more than in 2010, South Sudan, which voted in favor of the Resolution despite still maintains the death penalty. The Central African Republic, Niger and Tunisia, which had abstained in 2010, for the first time voted in favor.
The United States, Japan, China, Iran, India, North Korea, Syria and Zimbabwe were among the 39 countries that voted against the Resolution in the assembly’s rights committee. Israel joined European Union nations, Australia, Brazil and South Africa among major countries backing the motion.
Norway, which played a leading role campaigning for the resolution, said on its Twitter account that the increased support was a "great result".
The General Assembly is expected to endorse the Resolution in its plenary session in December.
source: http://www.handsoffcain.info/news/index.php?iddocumento=16312569 |
| India executes last gunman from Mumbai attacks
November 21, 2012: India on Wednesday executed Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the last surviving gunman from the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai that killed more than 160 people, a government official said.
The execution took place after Kasab's last attempt to avoid the death penalty, a clemency petition, was rejected earlier this month by President Pranab Mukherjee.
Kasab was one of 10 heavily armed men who in November 2008 attacked landmarks around Mumbai, including high-end hotels, the city's historic Victoria Terminus train station and the Jewish cultural center Chabad House.
A Mumbai court sentenced Kasab to death in 2010 after he was convicted of murder, conspiracy and waging war on India.
source: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/11/20/world/asia/india-mumbai-execution/index.html |
| IRAN: 45 PRISONERS HANGED IN ONE DAY
November 13, 2012: Iran hanged 45 prisoners, bringing the total number of executions this year in that country to 440, said oppositions sources.
Besides all hangings, there have numerous reports of prisoners dying under torture in Iran. A blogger named Sattar Beheshti was killed last week when in custody of police.
Source: stopfundamentalism.com |
| Turkey could bring back death penalty
November 13, 2012: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday Ankara would consider bringing back capital punishment in terror related crimes, a decade after it abolished the practice. "The authority (to forgive a killer) belongs to the family of the slain, not to us," Erdogan was quoted as saying by Anatolia news agency. "We need to make necessary adjustments." Given that the death penalty existed in China, Japan, Russia and the United States, Turkey needed to review its position, he said.
Already last week, the premier had raised the issue, citing popular support for such a move over the case of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of Turkey's armed Kurdish rebellion. Ocalan was charged with treason and sentenced to hang in 1999. But the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in October 2002 after Turkey abolished the death penalty under pressure from the EU, which Ankara wants to join.
source: Agence France-Presse |
| California voters reject measure to end death penalty
November 7, 2012: California voters rejected the latest attempt to repeal California's death penalty, dealing a blow to activists who saw the election as their best chance in 35 years to end capital punishment in the state.
Officials were still counting ballots, but it was apparent Wednesday that voters rejected Proposition 34 by a margin of 52 percent to 48 percent. The defeat came even though recent polling showed concern growing over the cost of capital punishment and its paltry results in California.
The state has executed just 13 convicts, and its death row has ballooned to 726 inmates since 71 percent of the electorate voted to reinstate capital punishment in 1978. No executions have taken place since 2006 because of federal and state lawsuits filed by death row inmates.
The Legislative Analyst has said ending the death penalty would save the state $130 million annually.
Still, it appears a majority of California voters still support capital punishment in California as the best way to deal with the state's most heinous killers, but would like to see reforms.
source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20121107/us-prop-34-death-penalty/ |
| World Medical Association strengthens opposition to capital punishment
|
November 4, 2012: The World Medical Association has strengthened its opposition to capital punishment with a resolution at its recent conference in Bangkok that "physicians will not facilitate the importation or prescription of drugs for execution."
It also reaffirmed previous resolutions that "it is unethical for physicians to participate in capital punishment, in any way, or during any step of the execution process, including its planning and the instruction and/or training of persons to perform executions", and that physicians "will maintain the utmost respect for human life and will not use medical knowledge to violate human rights and civil liberties, even under threat."
In any case, campaigners against the death penalty in the US are successfully lobbying to block supply of lethal drugs for executions. Maya Foa, head of the lethal injection project at the anti-death penalty organisation Reprieve, told a conference in London in mid-October, "Executions in certain states can't go ahead because they've run out of drugs and others are running out."
Reprieve has launched what it calls a "Pharmaceutical Hippocratic Oath" for drug companies which pledge themselves not to supply lethal drugs for executions. Under the oath, companies pledge that:
"We dedicate our work to developing and distributing pharmaceuticals to the service of humanity; we will practice our profession with conscience and dignity; the right to health of the patient will be our first consideration; we condemn the use of any of our pharmaceuticals in the execution of human beings." |
| Iran: 24 executions in 10 days
November 4, 2012: The anti-humane clerical regime collectively executed 8 prisoners on October 31st in Tehran's Evin Prison. Prior to this, 16 prisoners were hanged on the 22nd and 24th of October in Ghazvin and Gohardasht prisons, respectively. Therefore, the number of executions in just the past 10 days has reached 24 counts.
"The number of executions in the past 20 months in Ghazvin is equivalent to that of the past 20 years," the city's public prosecutor said.
The Iranian Resistance calls on all international and human rights organizations for urgent measures to stop the atrocious trend of human rights violations in Iran, especially the increasing and collective executions by the clerical regime.
source: Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran |
| VIETNAM SAYS IT’S UNABLE TO EXECUTE ITS CRIMINALS BECAUSE EU REFUSING TO EXPORT LETHAL DRUGS
November 1, 2012: Vietnam says it can’t execute its hundreds of death row criminals because the European Union is refusing to export the lethal drugs used in the executions.
Vietnam changed its execution mode from firing squad to lethal injection in July 2011, but no one has been executed since then because the drugs are unavailable.
The Laborer newspaper quoted Vietnam’s health minister, Nguyen Thi Kim Tien, as saying the EU — the main producer of the drugs — is refusing to export them, adding that authorities are considering producing the drugs locally.
Vice Chairman of the National Assembly Huynh Ngoc Son was quoted as saying the EU is trying to pressure Vietnam to give up capital punishment.
source: http://www.handsoffcain.info/news/index.php?iddocumento=16311930 |
| SOMALIA: AL-SHABAAB ORDER WOMAN STONED TO DEATH FOR SEX OFFENCE
October 25, 2012: A young woman was stoned to death in Somalia after being convicted of engaging in out-of-marriage sex, reports say.
Residents of Jamama town, 425km south of Mogadishu in Lower Juba region, said that militants loyal to Al-Shabaab carried out the stoning at the town’s main square in late afternoon.
“Many residents were called to attend the execution of the punishment,” a resident who requested anonymity for own safety told Kulmiye, an independent broadcaster in Mogadishu.
He added that Al-Shabaab officials in the town witnessed the stoning.
“The woman admitted having out-of-marriage sex,” said an Islamist official who talked to the crowd after the stoning was completed.
“This type of punishments that are compatible with Sharia (Islamic laws) will be administered,” said the official.
source: http://www.handsoffcain.info/news/index.php?iddocumento=16311699# |
| Death penalty amounts to torture: UN
October 25, 2012: The UN's anti-torture expert says that the death penalty should be considered cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment prohibited under international conventions banning torture.
UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan E Mendez presented the General Assembly with a report today that found a growing momentum toward abolition of the death penalty around the world, mainly fuelled by concerns over the legality of executions.
He said currently the death penalty is treated as an exception to the right to life provided for by international law. The United States, Singapore and Egypt all took exception to his argument, rejecting the notion that there was an evolving international consensus toward the abolition of the death penalty, Mendez said.
(source: First Post |
| North Korean army minister 'executed with mortar round'October 25, 2012: A North Korean army minister was executed with a mortar round for reportedly drinking and carousing during the official mourning period after Kim Jong-il's death.
Kim Chol, vice minister of the army, was taken into custody earlier this year on the orders of Kim Jong-un, who assumed the leadership after the death of his father in December.
On the orders of Kim Jong-un to leave "no trace of him behind, down to his hair," according to South Korean media, Kim Chol was forced to stand on a spot that had been zeroed in for a mortar round and "obliterated."
The execution of Kim Chol is just one example of a purge of members of the North Korean military or party who threatened the fledgling regime of Kim Jong-un.
So far this year, 14 senior officials have fallen victim to the purges, according to intelligence data provided to Yoon Sang-hyun, a member of the South Korean Foreign Affairs, Trade and Unification Committee.
Those that have fallen from favour include Ri Yong-ho, the head of the army and Ri Kwang-gon, the governor of the North Korean central bank.
source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/9630509/North-Korean-army-minister-executed-with-mortar-round.html |
| Anthony Hines executed
October 25, 2012: Convicted killer Anthony Hines was executed Wednesday for strangling and repeatedly stabbing a suburban Dallas woman at her apartment 21 years ago.
Hines becomes the 11th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas and the 488th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982.
sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin |
| Serbia Commemorates the World Day for the First Time |
| Serbia Lends Support to the Joint EU and CoE Statement on the Death PenaltyIn a joint statement, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe (CoE), Thorbjørn Jagland, and the European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, said that abolition of the death penalty throughout Europe was a common objective to all member states and pointed out that no execution has taken place during the past 15 years on the territory of the Union.
Furthermore, the CoE and the EU encouraged all European states which have not yet abolished the death penalty de jure under all circumstances, to do so by ratifying the relevant protocols to the European Convention on Human Rights.
In that respect, Jagland and Ashton pointed out that Belarus was the only country in Europe which still resorted to capital punishment.
They called for a moratorium on executions in the country, while at the same time welcomed the abolitionist trend worldwide. The joint statement of the CoE and the EU, as well as its remarks about Belarus, was supported also by the acceding country Croatia, the candidate countries Turkey, FYROM, Montenegro, Iceland, Serbia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ukraine and Moldova.
source: http://www.neurope.eu/article/belarus-urged-abolish-death-penalty-world-day |
| EU CALLS FOR ABOLITION OF DEATH PENALTY
October 10, 2012: “Today is World and European Day against the Death Penalty. The European Union is opposed to the use of capital punishment in all cases and under any circumstances. Its universal abolition is one of the key objectives of EU human rights policy”, a press release of the European Commission informs.
Catherine Ashton, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, said: "Capital punishment is a cruel, inhumane and irreversible action that violates the basic human right to life and dignity. In the case of any miscarriage of justice, from which no legal system is immune, it represents a terrible and irreversible loss of human life. The death penalty can neither reverse the crime it seeks to punish nor mitigate a victim's loss. It should be a relic of the past."
While global momentum continues to build toward abolition, 20 of the 58 retentionist countries around the world continue to carry out executions at an alarming rate. Where the death penalty still exists, the EU calls for its use to be progressively restricted and to respect internationally-agreed minimum standards. (Sources: enpi-info.eu, 10/10/2012)
source: http://www.handsoffcain.info/news/index.php?iddocumento=16311003 |
| A new book by Ivan Jankovic about the death penalty in Serbia from 1804 to 2002“On White Bread Diet"
2 October 2012: A new book by Ivan Jankovic about the death penalty in Serbia from 1804 to 2002, “On White Bread Diet”, published jointly by “Sluzbeni glasnik” and “Clio”, was presented at a press conference today. Stressing that this multidisciplinary work is a credit to the Serbian legal and sociological scholarship, Professor Jovica Trjulja said:
- The author investigated how the idea of abolition of the death penalty came to Serbia, how it took root there and under what circumstances it finally triumphed after two centuries. The book shows how the death penalty was really used in Serbia in the past, what purposes did it serve and what traces it left in Serbian politics, law, culture and language. Professor Smilja Marjanovic Dusanic added that the book was written in a surprisingly light and entertaining language, not usually expected from a lawyer. The author said that the abolition of capital punishment is a tender flower that needs permanent care. He also reminded the audience the World and European Day Against Capital Punishment will be commemorated for the first time in Serbia this year.
source: http://www.novosti.rs/vesti/kultura.71.html:399577-Kome-smeta-quotSluzbeni-glasnikquot |
| In Memoriam: Vojin Dimitrijević
October 6, 2012: Vojin Dimitrijevi died yesterday. He was a coryfee of human rights in Serbia and the former Yugoslavia. He taught international law in the law faculties of the University of Belgrade and the Union University. Dimitrijevi was a member and vice-chairperson of the UN Human Rights Committee (1982–1994) and a member of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission, since 2000). He was a founding director of the Belgrade Center for Human Rights. Vojin Dimitrijevi opposed capital punishment unconditionally. |
| OSCE AND THE DEATH PENALTY, 2012October, 1, 2012: Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) has presented its annual background paper on the death penalty in OSCE region.
Of the 56 participating States, 51 have completely abolished the death penalty.
Three participating States - Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation and Tajikistan - retain the death penalty in law but with moratoria on executions.
Belarus and the United States remain the only countries in the OSCE area that still carry out executions.
OSCE commitments do not require participating States to abolish capital punishment. However, participating States have committed themselves to using the death penalty as punishment only for the most serious crimes and in a manner not contrary to their international commitments, as well as to keeping the elimination of capital punishment under consideratio |
| Serbian Death Row Record Holder Seeks Pardon Again
Vu
ko Manojlovi, sentenced to death in 1986 for the murder of a public prosecutor in Leskovac, had had his sentence commuted to 40 years in prison on 2 August 2002. Having spent 16 years on death row and a total of 27 years in prison, Manojlovi has now petitioned the new President of the Republic of Serbia for full pardon. He believes that commutation of his death sentence to 40 years was illegal and that the maximum prison sentence he could have recieved at the time was 20 years.
source: Politika Online, 30.09.2012 |
| IRAN: MAN HANGED IN PRISON
September 25, 2012: One prisoner was hanged in the prison of Semnan, reported the Iranian media.
According to the official web site of the Iranian judiciary in Semnan (northern Iran) the prisoner who was identified as "H. Ch." (from Baluchestan province) was convicted of carrying 3400 grams of crack.
The charges have not been confirmed by independent sources.(Sources: Iran Human Rights, 25/09/2012)
source: http://www.handsoffcain.info/news/index.php?iddocumento=16310459 |
| TEXAS (USA): CLEVE FOSTER EXECUTED
September 25, 2012: Cleve Foster, 48, white, was executed in Texas. He had been sentenced to death on Feb. 12, 2004 in the Feb. 14, 2002 kidnapping, rape and shooting of Nyanuer “Mary” Pal, a 30-year-old immigrant from Sudan.
3 times last year the justices stopped his scheduled punishment, once when he was moments from being led to the death chamber.
Foster becomes the 9th condemned individual to be put to death this year in Texas and the 486th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982. Foster becomes the 30th condemned individual to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1307th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977. (Sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin, 25/09/2012)
source:http://www.handsoffcain.info/news/index.php?iddocumento=16310449&srcday=0&srcmonth=0&srcyear=0&mover= |
| IRAN: ONE MAN WAS HANGED PUBLICLY
September 23, 2012: One prisoner was hanged in public in the Northwestern Iranian province of Azarbaijan.
According to the official Iranian news agency IRNA, the man was identified as "Reza M." convicted of murdering another man identified as "Ali V.". The prisoner was hanged publicly in "Shahr-e-Tork", near the town of Mianeh, said the report.(Sources: Iran Human Rights, 23/09/2012)
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source: http://www.handsoffcain.info/news/index.php?iddocumento=16310317 |
| IRAN: 6 PEOPLE EXECUTED TODAYSeptember 20, 2012: According to official and unofficial reports from Iran, at least six prisoners were executed in three different prisons today.
According to the official Iranian news agency, IRNA, one prisoner was hanged in Doroud prison in the province of Lorestan (western Iran). The prisoner, who was not identified by name, was convicted of possessing 9 kilograms and 618 grams of heroin, said the report.
According to the official website of the Iranian Judiciary in the province of Semnan (northern Iran), three prisoners were hanged in Shahroud prison early in the morning.
The prisoners were identified as "M.M.", "A. M." and "M. R." . They were convicted of "Possession of large amounts of the narcotic substance, crack", said the report.
According to the unofficial Kurdish news agency Kurdpa, six prisoners were hanged in Urmia prison early this morning. The execution of two of the prisoners was been confirmed by another independent source. The prisoners are identified as "Hashem Jahangiri" and "Iraj Deylami", both charged with drug-related offences. (Sources: Iran Human Rights, 20 /09/2012)
source: http://www.handsoffcain.info/news/index.php?iddocumento=16310250# |
| SAUDI ARABIA: PAKISTANI NATIONAL EXECUTED FOR DRUG SMUGGLING
September 19, 2012: Saudi Arabia beheaded a Pakistani national in the holy city of Medina after convicting him of drug smuggling, the interior ministry said.
Bashir Khamis Ahmad was found guilty of trying to smuggle large quantities of heroin into the kingdom, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.
The beheading brings to 60 the number of people executed in Saudi Arabia so far this year, according to an AFP tally based on official reports. (Sources: AFP, 19/09/2012)
source: http://www.handsoffcain.info/news/index.php?iddocumento=16310119# |
| SAUDI ARABIA: FOUR BEHEADED OVER SEPARATE CRIMES
September 11, 2012: At least four person including three of its citizens and a Palestinian were beheaded after they were found guilty in separate cases, the Saudi Arabian interior ministry said.
The kingdom executed two citizens in the southwestern city of Jizan after they were convicted of armed robbery, the ministry said in a statement published by SPA news agency.
"Mohammed bin Ahmed Kharmi and Musa bin Mohsen Kharmi lured a man and opened fire on him," the ministry said, adding the victim, whose identity was not disclosed, was wounded.
The pair "stole the money he was carrying which belonged to the company he works for," said SPA. They were sentenced to death "due to the danger of their crime."
In a separate statement, the ministry said a Palestinian identified as Wael Anbar was beheaded in the Red Sea city of Jeddah for stabbing to death a Yemeni, Naser Haqqash.
SPA quoted a third statement saying that Saad al-Mansuri, a Saudi, was beheaded in the central city of Buraida after he was convicted of shooting dead a fellow citizen, Munif al-Maqati, with a machinegun "following a dispute between the two."
The beheadings bring to 57 the number of people executed in Saudi Arabia so far this year, according to an AFP tally based on official reports. (Sources: post.jagran.com, AFP, 11/09/2012)
source: http://www.handsoffcain.info/news/index.php?iddocumento=16309811 |
| IRAN: ONE MAN HANGED IN PUBLIC IN TEHRAN
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September 11, 2012: One man was hanged in public in Tehran early this morning.
According to the state-run Iranian news agency Fars, the man was 27 years old and identified as Sadegh Moradi, also known by the media as Black Scorpion. He was convicted of raping four women and kidnapping and stealing from 14 other women, said the report.
Sadegh Moradi had previously been exonerated from the rape charges and sentenced to 10 years in prison. But, the decision was met with protests and the case was sent to the Supreme Court where the death sentence was reinstated.
Prior to the execution, Sadegh Moradi’s brother told reporters that the family had been unable to meet with Sadegh in more than a month , and despite waiting outside Evin Prison until 2:00am last night, they were not permitted to meet with him for the last time.
According to eye witnesses and various other reports, before he was executed Sadegh Moradi said: "I am innocent." He was hanged at 6:06am at Sabalan Square in Tehran. (Sources: Iran Human Rights, 11/09/2012)
source: http://www.handsoffcain.info/news/index.php?iddocumento=16309795 |
| IRAN: ONE MAN HANGED IN PUBLIC
September 10, 2012: According to the official website of the Iranian Judiciary in the province of Semnan, one man was hanged publicly in Shahroud. According to the report, the man, 35, identified as "H. A", was convicted of sodomy and rape.
According to official and unofficial reports, at least 17 people have been executed so far in September. (Sources: Iran Human Rights, 10/09/2012)
source: http://www.handsoffcain.info/news/index.php?iddocumento=16309759 |
| IRAN. 11 PRISONERS HANGED IN PRISON
September 8, 2012: According to unofficial reports in Iran, eleven prisoners were hanged in Tehran’s Evin prison early this morning.
The group, Human rights and Democracy activists in Iran (HRDAI), reported that eleven prisoners among them one Afghan citizen were hanged in Evin prison early today. The Afghan prisoner was identified as Mohammad Dahmardeh, 37. According to this report, another Afghan prisoner identified as Nemat Qureishi, 33, was scheduled to be executed this morning but his execution was halted at the last moment.
The report didn’t mention what charges these prisoners were convicted of.
The eleven executions have also been confirmed by a second unofficial source. Official Iranian sources have not yet announced these executions.
Iran Human Rights warned earlier about a new wave of executions in September. A political prisoner identified as Gholamreza Khosravi is scheduled to be executed in the coming days. (Sources: Iran Human Rights, 08/09/2012)
source: http://www.handsoffcain.info/news/index.php?iddocumento=16309708# |
| SAUDI ARABIA: SAUDI MAN EXECUTED IN RIYADH
September 7, 2012: A Saudi national convicted of torturing his wife before strangling her to death was executed in Riyadh.
Majed Abdulrahman Saleh Obeid was found guilty of strangling his Saudi wife Noorah Muhammad Saad Al-Qabili after repeatedly torturing her.
The Interior Ministry said Obeid kicked his wife, beat her with a cane and a wrench, and banged her head on the floor before killing her.
The Saudi Gazette reports he also burned her with cigarettes and a hot iron in the horrific assault.
Obeid attempted to cover up his crime but confessed to imprisoning and torturing his wife when confronted with evidence by police.
He admitted taking her to a remote location in the desert to beat her with a cane and to burn her on different parts of her body with cigarette butts.
The General Court heard that none of the incidents of torture were accidental.
When sentencing him to death, a judge said: 'The man had no consideration for his wife as a human being and he did not care for her life. All his actions were intentional and premeditated. This proved that he was an evil doer and a threat to society.'
The verdict was ratified by the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. A royal order was issued to carry out the sentence. (Sources: Daily Mail Reporter, 07/09/2012)
source: http://www.handsoffcain.info/news/index.php?iddocumento=16309723 |
| SAUDI ARABIA: PAKISTANI EXECUTED FOR HEROIN TRAFFICKINGSeptember 4, 2012: Saudi Arabia executed a citizen of Pakistan in the city of Medina for drug trafficking.
Hayat Sayed Lal Sayed had attempted to smuggle heroin in his stomach, the Saudi Interior Ministry said in a statement. A common method for so-called drug mules who transport narcotics is to swallow condoms containing the substances.
The date and place of Sayed's arrest were not given in the statement.
The Interior Ministry in its statement said the death penalty is used to combat drug use which runs counter to Islamic beliefs. (Sources: AKI, 04/09/2012)
source: http://www.handsoffcain.info/news/index.php?iddocumento=16309554 |
| SOUTH SUDAN: TWO INMATES HANGED AT PRISON IN JUBAAugust 31, 2012: Two prisoners were executed by hanging on August 28 at a prison in the capital of the newly-independent nation of South Sudan, the United Nations (UN) reported, adding that they may have been convicted without having proper legal assistance.
Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said during a news conference in Geneva that two men were hanged in the Central Prison in Juba. "One of the issues there is that they did not have proper legal assistance," Colville said, without giving other details.
the whole story: http://www.handsoffcain.info/news/index.php?iddocumento=16309531 |
| IRAQ: 26 EXECUTIONS IN THREE DAYS
August 29, 2012: Iraq executed 26 people convicted of terror-related charges between 27 and 29 August 2012, including a Syrian and Saudi national, a justice ministry spokesman said. The death sentences were carried out after the Iraqi Presidency Council approved the penalty verdicts for all the convicts.
On 27 August, "the justice ministry carried out 21 executions against those condemned of terrorist charges, including three women terrorists," Haidar al-Saadi, spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Justice, said in a text message. He did not give any further details.
On 29 August , Iraq executed five other convicted prisoners over similar charges of terrorist crimes, the justice ministry announced.
The 26 executions, which brought to at least 96 the number of people executed this year, were a significant and worrying increase compared to the previous year when at least 68 people were executed.
On 31 August, the spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Justice confirmed that Saudi citizen Mazin Masawee was executed by hanging, ending speculation about his fate. Haydar Al-Sadi told Okaz/Saudi Gazette that Masawee together with 25 other prisoners, charged with terrorism, were transferred on 27 August to the condemned cell and they were hanged separately over a period of three days. There were Jordanians and Syrians among the prisoners.
Masawee was arrested on Aug. 4, 2010, for allegedly joining a terrorist group which blew up a police station in Baghdad and was sentenced to death, the Iraqi Ministry of Justice’s spokesman said.
Prison sources said Arab prisoners, especially Saudis, started a hunger strike following the execution of Masawee. They called for Iraqi authorities to stop executions and release prisoners who were wrongly accused of terrorist activities without strong evidence.
Talal Al-Zawbaee, an MP from the Iraqiya List, also called upon the Ministry of Justice to stop the executions. At a press conference, he wondered why the executions were taking place just days before the Parliament was going to vote on a public pardon law. “This is unprecedented and unheard of in the Iraqi history. It puts the government in a tight position vis-à-vis the human rights reports made by global organizations.” (Sources: AFP, 28/08/2012; IANS, 29/08/2012; Okaz/Saudi Gazette, 31/08/2012)
source: http://www.hansoffcain.info/news/index.php?iddocumento=16309521 |
| SAUDI ARABIA: MAN BEHEADED IN ASIR PROVINCE
August 28, 2012: A Saudi man was executed in Saudi Arabia after being convicted of murdering a compatriot, the interior ministry said. Mohammed Al Salala Asiri was beheaded by sword in the southwestern province of Asir after being found guilty of stabbing to death Amir Al Zayadi, the ministry said in a statement carried by SPA state news agency.
His execution is the 49th person to be beheaded in Saudi Arabia this year, according to an AFP tally based on official reports. (Sources: Agence France-Presse, 28/08/2012)
source: http://www.handsoffcain.info/news/index.php?iddocumento=16309536 |
| Amnesty International | Executions in The Gambia giant leap backwards
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Amnesty International has received credible reports that nine persons were executed last night in Gambia, and that more persons are under threat of imminent executions today and in the coming days.
According to reliable sources nine persons, including one woman, were removed from their prison cells last night and executed. Two of those said to have been executed are supposed to have been Senegalese.
In Gambia, capital punishment can be imposed for murder and treason. Three of the reportedly executed have been sentenced for treason.
“The decision of the Gambian president Yahya Jammeh to execute nine prisoners after more than a quarter of a century without execution would be a giant leap backwards”, said Paule Rigaud, Amnesty International’s Africa deputy director.
“If confirmed the reported executions are a hugely retrograde step – they would bring The Gambia back into the minority of countries which are still executing, and we are urging the authorities to immediately halt any further possible executions” said Rigaud.
The last execution in the country took place in 1985, 27 years ago. Amnesty International had classified Gambia as abolitionist in practice, and therefore as one of the more than two thirds of states worldwide which have abolished the death penalty either in law or practice.
In Africa, 22 of the 54 member states of the African Union are abolitionist in practice, and 16 are abolitionist in law for all crimes.
On both 19 and 20 August, in a television address broadcast to mark the Muslim feast of Eid-al-Fitrt, President Jammeh had announced to the nation that by the middle of September all existing death sentences would be “carried out to the letter”.
According to The Gambian government, there were 42 men and two women on death row as of 31 December 2011, 13 of whom had been sentenced during that year. This year, three men have reportedly also received the death sentence, making a total of 47 people currently on death row.
“President Jammeh should establish an immediate moratorium on the death penalty, in line with resolutions of the UN General Assembly and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights,” said Rigaud.
Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases as a violation of the right to life and the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.
24 August 2012
source: http://www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-releases/executions-gambia-giant-leap-backwards-2012-08-24 |
| IN MEMORIAM: Hugo Adam Bedau August 13, 2012Long-time death penalty scholar Hugo Adam Bedau died on August 13, 2012 . Dr. Bedau had been the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University, and is best known for his work on capital punishment. Dr. Bedau frequently testified about the death penalty before the U.S. Congress and many state legislatures. He authored several books about the death penalty, including The Death Penalty in America (1964; 4th edition, 1997), The Courts, the Constitution, and Capital Punishment(1977), Death is Different (1987), and Killing as Punishment (2004), and co-authored In Spite of Innocence (1992). This last book, written with Prof. Michael Radelet of the University of Colorado and Constance Putnam (Dr. Bedau's wife), contained one of the best early collections of people who had been wrongly convicted in death penalty cases. In 1997, Bedau received the August Vollmer Award of the American Society of Criminology, and in 2003 he received the Roger Baldwin Award from the ACLU of Massachusetts. Dr. Bedau was a founding member of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. |
| ARIZONA (USA): MAN EXECUTED FOR 1987 RAPE, MURDER OF CO-WORKERS
August 8, 2012: A man who tortured, raped and strangled two co-workers in 1987 was put to death in Arizona, more than a year after the Supreme Court temporarily blocked his execution to consider whether he had adequate counsel.
Daniel Wayne Cook, 51, was pronounced dead at 11:03 a.m. from a lethal injection administered at the state prison in Florence, 60 miles southeast of Phoenix, state officials said.
Cook was convicted of first-degree murder for killing Carlos Cruz-Ramos, 26, and Kevin Swaney, 16, in northwestern Arizona, together with an accomplice, a roommate named John Matzke. All four worked together at a restaurant in Lake Havasu City.
Cook initially won a reprieve in April 2011 when the nation's highest court blocked the execution to consider claims that he did not have effective legal counsel during his trial or appeals process.
Lawyers for Cook said previous counsel failed to present evidence that he was physically and sexually abused by family members and a foster care worker when he was a child, according to court documents.
But the Supreme Court later dismissed the appeal, clearing the way for him to be executed.
Cook was sent to the state's death row for a brutal crime spree that authorities say began on July 19, 1987, when he stole money from Cruz-Ramos, who was also his roommate, then tied him to a chair in their apartment before he and Matzke began beating Cruz-Ramos with their fists and a metal pipe.
Cook cut Cruz-Ramos with a knife, burned him with cigarettes and raped him before he and Matzke lethally crushed Cruz-Ramos's throat with the pipe, according to court documents. The ordeal lasted some six hours.
Swaney, a dishwasher at the restaurant, arrived the next morning at the apartment, where he had been staying as a guest. He was tied to a chair and raped by Cook before he was strangled with a bed sheet by Cook and Matzke together, court records say.
Cook was later arrested at the apartment, where he told police: "We got to partying. Things got out of hand. Now two people are dead." He admitted to choking Swaney to death, but said: "My roommate killed one and I killed the other."
Matzke was persuaded by a friend to go to the police to confes, according to court testimony. He later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and testified against Cook. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison and has since been released.
Cook, who was sentenced to death in 1988, became the fifth person to die by lethal injection in Arizona this year and the 33rd since the state reintroduced the death penalty in 1992.
Twenty-six people have been executed in the United States this year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. (Sources: Reuters, 08/08/2012)
Source: http://www.handsoffcain.info/news/index.php?iddocumento=16309256&srcday=0&srcmonth=0&srcyear=0&mover= |
| JAPAN: TWO KILLERS HANGED, IN TOKYO AND OSAKA
August 3, 2012: Two death-row inmates were hanged in Tokyo and Osaka, in the second round of executions this year after three men went to the gallows in March.
The two hangings were the first ordered by Justice Minister Makoto Taki, who assumed the post June 4. Prisoners on death row now number 130.
Junya Hattori, 40, and Kyozo Matsumura, 31, were hanged because "there was no uncertainty surrounding their convictions," said Taki, who supports the death sentence.
Hattori, who was hanged at the Tokyo Detention House, raped a 19-year-old university student in the city of Mishima, Shizuoka Prefecture, in his car and burned her to death in January 2002.
Matsumura was executed in the Osaka Detention House for the robbery-murders of a 57-year-old aunt in the city of Nagaokakyo, Kyoto Prefecture, and a 72-year-old uncle in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, within eight days in January 2007.
"I signed documents authorizing the executions after carefully considering each case," Taki told journalists.
"As I said when I assumed the post, unless there is any uncertainty concerning a conviction, a justice minister should respect the trial process and the decision of the court," he said.
Taki is the third justice minister to sign off on executions since the Democratic Party of Japan took office in September 2009. His predecessor, Toshio Ogawa, sent three inmates to the gallows on March 29, while Keiko Chiba personally witnessed two hangings despite her opposition to capital punishment. The four ministers who preceded Chiba refused to condemn any prisoners to death, apparently due to their personal beliefs.
No inmates were hanged last year, but two were executed in 2010. Under the previous Liberal Democratic Party government, seven prisoners were hanged in 2009, 15 in 2008, nine in 2007 and four in 2006.
The ministry has been debating capital punishment since the DPJ swept to power in the 2009 general election. But Ogawa scrapped an internal study panel in March and also canceled plans to set up a broader discussion panel on the issue, arguing the pros and cons have been discussed sufficiently and that the ultimate decision should be left up to the public, of which the overwhelming majority supports the death sentence, a government poll suggested in 2009.
Japan and the U.S. are the only countries in the Group of Eight major industrialized economies where death-row inmates are still executed, according to Amnesty International, which said executions are still carried out in 57 nations in total.
"I am very disappointed. Last year, there were no executions for the first time in 19 years," Hideki Wakabayashi, executive director of Amnesty International Japan, told The Japan Times. "But this year, prisoners were hanged in March and again today. Such acts demonstrate the government's willingness to stick with capital punishment."
The Japan Federation of Bar Associations also released a statement Friday urging the government to freeze all executions and hold a national debate about abolishing the death sentence.
A total of 141 countries have either abolished the death sentence or have effectively abolished it and have not conducted any executions in years, even though their courts can in theory still hand down the punishment. (Sources: japantimes.co.jp, 03/08/2012)
Source:http://www.handsoffcain.info/news/index.php?iddocumento=16309038&srcday=0&srcmonth=0&srcyear=0&mover= |
| INTERNATIONAL: Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Calls for Hold on ExecutionsOn August 3, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States (OAS), which includes the U.S., called for a moratorium on executions in the region and released a report reviewing key areas of concern about the death penalty. The report made a series of recommendations for member States, including:
- States should refrain from any measure that would expand the application of the death penalty or reintroduce it,
- States should take any measures necessary to ensure compliance with the strictest standards of due process in capital cases,
- States should adopt any steps required to ensure that domestic legal standards conform to the heightened level of review applicable in death penalty cases, and
- States should ensure full compliance with decisions of the Inter-American Commission and Court, and specifically with decisions concerning individual death penalty cases and precautionary and provisional measures.
With respect to the U.S., the IACHR report cites the failure of the U.S. to provide some foreign nationals facing the death penalty with their rights under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and raised concerns about racial bias in some cases.
IACHR seeks to promote respect for human rights in the region and acts as a consultative body to the Organization of American States.
(Press Release, "IACHR Calls on a Moratorium in the Application of the Death Penalty," August 3, 2012 (contains link to the IACHR Report, THE DEATH PENALTY IN THE INTERAMERICAN HUMAN RIGHTS SYSTEM: FROM RESTRICTIONS TO ABOLITION). See International. Listen to our podcast on the International context of the American death penalty.
Source : http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/international-inter-american-commission-human-rights-calls-hold-executions |
| INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES: Texas Stands Alone in Its Unusual Test of Mental Retardation and ExemptioDespite the U.S. Supreme Court's ban on the death penalty for defendants with mental retardation, Texas is planning to execute Marvin Wilson on August 7. Wilson has an IQ of 61 and adaptive functioning levels even lower; the only board-certified expert to evaluate Mr. Wilson concluded he has mental retardation (now known as intellectual disability). Wilson struggled in school, and dropped out after the 10th grade. According to experts who assessed his mental health, Wilson continues to be unable to perform even the simplest tasks without assistance. This intellectual disability typically manifests itself before the age of 18 and is objectively determined by mental health professionals, independent of the crime that put the defendant on death row. Texas, however, insists that it can layer additional factors onto the test for retardation, factors not used by any other states, not based on scientific criteria, and which do relate to the original crime. This test is based on the “Briseño factors” (named after the Texas court decision that announced them), and allows an execution if (among other factors) the court determines the criminal offense required forethought, planning and complex execution. The American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities wrote in their recent brief in Chester v. Thaler, another case involving the Briseño factors that is pending before the Supreme Court: “[The Texas] impressionistic ‘test’ directs fact-finders to use ‘factors’ that are based on false stereotypes about mental retardation that effectively exclude all but the most severely incapacitated.” Attorneys for Wilson have filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to consider whether the Briseño factors represent an unreasonable application of the Supreme Court’s ruling on mental retardation .
(See Wilson v. Thaler, petition for cert. filed July 19, 2012; DPIC Posted, July 31, 2012). See Intellectual Disability.
Source: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/intellectual-disabilities-texas-stands-alone-its-unusual-test-mental-retardation-and-exemption-execu |
| NEW VOICES: UN Secretary-General Calls for Worldwide End to the Death Penalty
On July 3, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on UN Member States that use the death penalty to abolish the practice, stressing that the right to life lies at the heart of international human rights law. During a panel organized by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Ban said, “The taking of life is too absolute, too irreversible, for one human being to inflict on another, even when backed by legal process… Where the death penalty persists, conditions for those awaiting execution are often horrifying, leading to aggravated suffering.” Mr. Ban especially emphasized the need for change among Member States that impose the death penalty on juvenile offenders. He said, “I am also very concerned that some countries still allow juvenile offenders under the age of 18 at the time of the alleged offence to be sentenced to death and executed. The call by the General Assembly for a global moratorium is a crucial stepping stone in the natural progression towards a full worldwide abolition of the death penalty.” In 2007, the UN General Assembly first endorsed a call for a worldwide moratorium of the death penalty, a resolution that has been repeated in subsequent years. Today, more than 150 States have either abolished the death penalty or do not practice it.
Source: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/new-voices-un-secretary-general-calls-worldwide-end-death-penalty |
| IRAN: FOUR MEN HANGED FOR RAPE
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Four hanged in Tehran |
June 20, 2012: According to the Iranian state-run media, four prisoners were hanged publicly in Tehran early in the morning.
According to the official website of the Iranian judiciary in Tehran the prisoners were all convicted of rape in four separate cases.
According to the report, the prisoners have been identified as: Iman Amani, son of Mohammad Hashem; Farshid Aliari, son of Farid; Behzad Tajik, son of Kazem; and Mohammad Aikahi, son of Hassan.
The four men had raped not only women but also girls and boys, the ISNA news agency reported.
The ages of the prisoners were not mentioned in the report.(Sources: Iran Human Rights, 20/06/2012)
Source: http://www.handsoffcain.info/news/index.php?iddocumento=16307292
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| Guinea, a new abolitionist de facto state |
| Belarus must release bodies of convicts executed over Minsk metro bombing (19 March 2012) |
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