CENTRE FOR CAPITAL PUNISHMENT STUDIES

YEMEN: Demonstrators demand to execute Yemeni president

Tens of thousands of people demonstrated Sunday in Sanaa, demanding the execution of Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh and protesting against the law granting him immunity. The Yemeni Parliament on Saturday granted to Saleh “total immunity against any legal or judicial action.” It also endorsed the candidacy of Vice President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi in the presidential election, scheduled Feb. 21 in the country, which in the past year was rocked by unrest that left hundreds dead. Hadi is the only candidate for a 2-year interim term.

“No immunity at the expense of our blood,” read a banner brandished by the demonstrators, who tried to head to the U.S. embassy in Sanaa before being stopped by security forces .

The parliament amended the bill granting immunity to Saleh and his aides, based on an agreement signed to end the internal crisis. Under the new law, aides of Saleh, in power for 33 years and accused by protesters of corruption and nepotism, enjoy immunity “for politically motivated acts, performed in the exercise of their official duties.” However, immunity “does not apply to terrorist acts.”

The UN envoy to Yemen, Jamal Benomar, criticized Saturday night that law, emphasizing the right of “victims” to hold Saleh regime accountable. “The law was amended (…) but remains below our expectations. The UN has a principled stand against this kind of absolute immunity,” he said during a press conference.

He called to enact “a law on justice and reconciliation” that would allow “victims to claim compensation.”

(source: Albawaba News)

TRINIDAD & TOBAGO: ‘Govt working to implement death penalty’

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar says Government will work to implement the death penalty as part of a serious crime reduction tool.

Persad-Bissessar was delivering an address yesterday at the Ministry of National Security Planning Workshop organised by the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies (CHDS) yesterday at the Hyatt Regency (Trinidad) hotel, Port of Spain.

With 30 murders in the first 21 days of the year, she said Government is aware of the upsurge in the homicide rate although it has been reduced significantly from 2009 to 2011.

“Despite the fact the statistics for 2011 reveal a decrease in homicide and serious crime, Government is appalled at the brutal nature of the crime. The cautious optimism with which we viewed last year’s statistics…should not be misinterpreted as complacency,” she said.

She said because of this the People’s Partnership government is prepared to use all the resources including the death penalty to vigorously pursue and contain criminal activity.

“To this end my government is committed to implementation of the death penalty which remains part of the laws of Trinidad and Tobago…We shall continue in our effort to facilitate the re-implementation of the death penalty so it might both punish the guilty and deter the would-be offenders,” she stated.

She said regrettably the Constitution Capital Offences Bill 2011 which required a special majority in Parliament did not receive the support of some members.

She said her Government that had introduced 11 other pieces of legislation to aid in combatting, including the Abolishing of the Preliminary Enquiry Act, the DNA Bill among others.

Persad-Bissessar said since her Government took office back in May 2010, it had been attempting to address “the tsunami of crime that has hit Trinidad and Tobago”.

“We have pledged to the people of this country that we are going to rid the country the scourge of criminal elements which have been allowed for too long to thrive and prosper on the decent, innocent and hard-working people,” she said.

She added that the Government was compelled to admit that criminal violence occurred too regularly.

Earlier in her address, Persad-Bissessar crime and violence threatened the welfare of citizens and economic growth.

Minister of National Security John Sandy said the workshop was aimed at developing a policy where the Caribbean Basin becomes a safer and more secure place to work, live and do business.

Attending the workshop were United States Ambassador Beatrice Welters, Commissioner of Police Dwayne Gibbs and various Government MPs.

At a People’s National Movement (PNM) general council meeting yesterday in Port of Spain, PNM Public Relations Officer, Senator Faris Al-Rawi, said it is untrue that the Opposition failed to give its support to the bill.

Al-Rawi said Government is the one that has failed by its refusal to move from the Privy Council system to the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), which would deny criminals the right to have their final appeal subject to European and United Kingdom law.

“The move to the CCJ is a very important one,” Al-Rawi said.

(source: Trinidad Express)

Algeria demands death sentence for top Qaeda boss

Algerian prosecutors on Sunday requested the death sentence for Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a top leader in Al-Qaeda’s north African branch, and another person in a trial on the deaths of 2 Algerian soldiers.

Belmokhtar and nine co-defendants, of whom 4 are also on the run, are accused of perpetrating several “terrorist acts” including a May 2010 attack on soldiers in the southern Djelfa region that left 2 dead.

Belmokhtar, a native of central Algeria, is a founding member of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which later became known as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

He heads one of AQIM’s 2 main katibas (battalions), controlling the group’s southern area.

Prosecutors also sought capital punishment for Abdelkader Benchneb, the chief accused present in court. They urged 15-year jail terms for the others, defence lawyer Hassiba Boumerdessi said.

Algeria has observed a moratorium on capital punishment since 1993.

A ruling was due later Sunday.

Nicknamed “the uncatchable,” Belmokhtar rules over a large swathe of desert that straddles Algeria, Chad, Niger, Mali and Mauritania and where his men are believed to hold several Europeans hostage.

Belmokhtar has already been sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment in 2004 and 2008, and to 20 years in prison in 2007, over similar charges and the killing of 13 customs officers.

In November Belmokhtar told a Mauritanian news website that AQIM had acquired Libyan weapons during fighting that ended in the overthrow and killing of strongman Moamer Kadhafi.

He said AQIM was still demanding the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan in exchange for the release of its French hostages.

On January 2, an Algiers court sentenced Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, the leader of the other key AQIM katiba who is also on the run, to life in prison for creating “an international terror group”.

(source: Africasia.com)

Iran to execute programmer

Imagine you are a furniture retailer and one of your customers bought furniture from your shop for a brothel, unfortunately, police raid that brothel and they find the furniture used in there came from your shop. With that, you face charges of associating with prostitution and you’re sentenced to death.

Iran’s Supreme Court has rejected an appeal and upheld the death sentence for a web programmer who faces imminent execution for associating with porn websites.

Saeed Malekpour, an Iranian who hold permanent residency in Canada, was picked up by plain-clothed officers in October 2008, while visiting his relatives in Iran, and taken to Evin prison in Tehran, where he spent a year in solitary confinement without access to lawyers and without charge.

1 year after his arrest, the 35-year-old appeared in a state television program confessing to a series of crimes in connection with a porn website. On the basis of his TV confessions, he was convicted of designing and moderating adult materials online by a court in Tehran, which handed down death penalty.

Malekpour later wrote a letter to his wife from prison, in which he said the TV confessions had been made under duress. He was blindfolded, handcuffed and attacked by several individuals armed with cables, batons and their fists struck and punched him. At times, they would flog his head and neck. They forced him to write what the interrogators were dictating, and compel him to play a role in front of the camera based on their scenarios.

Speaking from Toronto in tears, Malekpour’s wife, Fatemeh Eftekhari, said her husband was a freelance web programmer who had written a photo uploading software that has been used by a porn website without his knowledge.

Eftekhari said, “Even if my husband’s charges were true, which they are not, it’s hard to imagine why he should be sentenced to death. If he was engaged in developing and administrating porn website as charged by the Iranian regime, why would he step into Iran?”

His sister, Maryam Malekpour, speaking to RFE/RL’s Radio Farda from Tehran on January 18: “All of Saeed’s activities were within the law, he didn’t commit anything illegal. Saeed just wrote a computer program to help others upload and manage their photos, and market it online; it could have been used by any website on the internet. Unfortunately, without his knowledge, the program was sold and used to upload photos on these immoral websites.”

“All the evidence they have against him is from his confessions,” she said. “Saeed was in solitary confinement for about one and a half years and was under extreme physical and emotional pressure. For sure, anyone who is in this condition and wants it to end will confess to anything they’re asked.”

Ms. Malekpour believes that one of the reasons behind her brother’s imprisonment and conviction could be his ties to Canada. Canadian media said he was awaiting citizenship at the time of his arrest. Canada has recently joined the United States and European countries in stepping up sanctions on Iran in recent months, amid mounting concern as its nuclear program and in response to the country’s abysmal human rights record.

Ms. Malekpour says her own letters to Iranian judicial officials defending her brother have gone unanswered. She has pledged to continue her efforts and says she remains hopeful.

The Iranian Supreme Court sentenced Saeed to death for ‘insulting the sanctity of Islam’, being responsible for ‘spreading corruption on earth’ and ‘threatening to destroy the Iranian nation’, a vaguely worded charge which attracted the death penalty in Iran.

Saeed’s sentence has prompted reactions from human rights activists and organisations who have launched a campaign to save his life. In a January 17 statement, Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird condemned the Iranian Supreme Court’s decision.

Gloria Nafziger of Amnesty International in Canada, an organisation that has sought for Malekpour’s sentence to be commuted said: “Amnesty International is very concerned that Saeed Malekpour is facing a death sentence in Iran after an unfair trial and reports that he was tortured in order to confess to his crimes.”

Maryam Nayeb Yazdi, a human rights activist based in Toronto, said, “Saeed is in imminent danger of execution. He has never been provided with a fair trial at any point during this horrific and twisted ordeal.”

(source: Zimbabwe Metro)

IRAN

Iranian authorities in 2011 carried out more than 600 executions and imprisoned more journalists and bloggers than any other country, Human Rights Watch said today in issuing its World Report 2012 Iran chapter. Iran’s judiciary works hand-in-hand with security and intelligence forces to harass, imprison and convict opposition and rights activists, despite increasing international condemnation of the country’s rights record.

In March the United Nations Human Rights Council appointed Ahmed Shaheed to be the first special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran since 2002. Since Shaheed’s appointment the Iranian government has refused him entry to the country, executed more than 400 prisoners – including people convicted of committing crimes when they were children, and prosecuted dozens of outspoken lawyers, journalists, and rights activists for their peaceful speech and associational activities. In February the authorities placed the 2009 presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi under house arrest, where they remain.

“The Iranian government crushes all voices of opposition while scoffing at the international community’s growing concern over human rights,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

In its 676-page World Report 2012, Human Rights Watch assesses progress on human rights during the past year in more than 90 countries, including popular uprisings in the Arab world that few would have imagined. Given the violent forces resisting the “Arab Spring,” the international community has an important role to play in assisting the birth of rights-respecting democracies in the region, Human Rights Watch said in the report.

In Iran, the authorities carried out more than 600 executions, according to several rights groups, even though the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and four UN experts pressed Iranian officials for an immediate moratorium on the death penalty, “particularly for drug-related and juvenile cases.” Government sources announced only around 350 of these executions. The vast majority were for drug-related offenses, including trafficking and possession. The pace of executions accelerated following the entry into force in December 2010 of an amended anti-narcotics law, drafted by the Expediency Council and approved by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Despite the hundreds of executions, Yuri Fedotov, executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), made no mention of the wave of executions taking place in Iran for drug-related offenses and praised the country’s anti-drug efforts during a visit to Tehran in July. The UNODC has provided up to $22 million since 2005 to support training projects for Iran’s anti-drug forces, and the European commission, European Union member states, and several other governments including Japan, Norway, Australia and Canada, provide money, technical assistance, and legislative support to Iran’s anti-drug efforts.

Iran also led the world in the reported execution of people convicted of offenses they allegedly committed before age 18, despite the prohibition on such executions under international law. Iranian law allows capital punishment for people who have reached puberty, defined as age 9 for girls and 15 for boys. The judiciary allowed the execution of at least 3 children in 2011.

Authorities have executed at least 30 people since January 2010 on the charge of moharebeh (“enmity against God”), for alleged ties to armed or terrorist groups. On January 9, 2012, a revolutionary court in Tehran sentenced Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, an Iranian-American, to death on charges of moharebeh, “corruption on earth,” and espionage. The judiciary sentenced Hekmati after authorities detained him for more than 4 months without providing him access to a lawyer, his family, or the Swiss consular officials who represent American interests in Iran.

As of December 42 journalists and bloggers were in prison in Iran, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. More than 60 journalists were forced into exile in 2011 alone, and authorities have shut down at least 40 publications since 2009. On January 17, 2012, Iran’s Supreme Court confirmed the death sentence for blogger Saeed Malekpour, a Canadian resident who was convicted of “insulting and desecrating Islam” in October 2011. At least 2 other individuals have been sentenced to death by the judiciary on internet-related charges. The government blocks certain websites that carry political news and analysis, slows down internet speeds to hinder web access, and jams foreign satellite broadcasts.

In January 2011 a revolutionary court sentenced Nasrin Sotoudeh, a prominent rights lawyer, to 11 years in prison and barred her from practicing law and leaving the country for 20 years on charges of “acting against the national security” and “propaganda against the regime.” The judiciary later reduced her sentence to 6 years and a 10-year ban on travel and practicing law. The judiciary prosecuted, convicted, or sentenced several other prominent lawyers to prison terms and bans on the practice of law. Earlier in the year Sadegh Larijani, the Head of the Judiciary, warned lawyers that they should refrain from giving interviews that damage the government’s reputation.

On January 10, 2012, the Interior Ministry’s election commission disqualified several dozen candidates from running in the upcoming March 2 parliamentary elections because of their “lack of adherence to Islam and the Constitution.” The disqualified candidates include several incumbents who were critical of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government. In November and December reformist and opposition activists, some of whom are currently serving prison terms, issued several statements calling the parliamentary elections a sham and concluding there was no reason to field candidates. In December the Iranian judiciary announced that anyone calling for a boycott of the upcoming parliamentary elections would be subject to prosecution.

Mousavi and Karroubi were placed under house arrest in February 2011 after they called for mass protests. Several days earlier, beginning on February 8, security forces had arbitrarily arrested dozens of political opposition members in Tehran and several other cities.

“The continued detention of Mousavi and Karroubi, not to mention the dozens of reformist candidates arrested after the disputed 2009 presidential election, is a reminder to all of us that Iran’s human rights crisis is linked to the demand of citizens to participate in free and fair elections,” Whitson said.

(source: human Rights Watch)

Iran using death penalty more and more, says HRW

Death penalty still persists in a number of countries worldwide.

CAIRO: Iran used the death penalty in an alarmingly increasing manner last year, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in Cairo while launching their global rights report.

The New York-based organization reported that the country had the highest execution rate for minors.

Iran executed at least three children in 2011, one of them in public, while more than 100 juvenile offenders remain on death row, the report said. Iranian law allows capital punishment for those who have reached puberty, defined as 9 years for girls and 15 years for boys.

The number of executions increased after the entry into force in December 2010 of an amended anti-narcotics law. Since then, more than 400 prisoners were executed – including 67 drug offenders in January alone, HRW said.

Crimes punishable by death include espionage, sodomy, adultery and apostasy.

In 2011, Iranian authorities targeted lawyers, human rights activists, students and journalists; refused to allow regime critics to hold demonstrations and used force to break up massive demonstrations in Tehran and other major cities in support of the uprisings in the Arab world.

The New York-based group charged that the government continues to shut down newspapers, and target journalists and bloggers, accusing them of crimes such as “propaganda against the state.”

According to Reporters Without Borders, there were 49 journalists and bloggers in prison as of October.

EU condemns death sentencing in Gaza

(Source: maannews.net)

USA- Forgiveness key in group’s fight against death penalty

USA- Artist raises awareness about capital punishment

The death penalty has always been a hot topic issue in the United States. There are currently 34 states with the death penalty, with Nebraska being one of them. One artist who doesn’t believe in the death penalty is taking a stand to try and abolish capital punishment entirely.

Julie Green is an associate professor who teaches painting, drawing and contemporary issues in art at Oregon State University. Green has spent over a decade studying the final meals requested by inmates before dying. Her collection features 476 painted plates, each of which depict a unique last meal request of a former prisoner on death row.

“I have always been focused on food,” Green said on her website. “As a kid, I won eating contests; these days I grow organic produce. The years I spent in Oklahoma, which has the highest per capita rate of executions, turned my interest in food towards final meals.”

When Green lived in Oklahoma, she began reading the final meal requests of local inmates, which were published in the newspaper. “The Last Supper project” is currently on display in UNO’s art gallery, located on the first floor in the Weber Fine Arts building, as part of a four-week exhibition.

Green’s plates are painted with mineral paint and then porcelain fired. Her project has received national media attention from National Public Radio as well as magazines like Ceramics Monthly and Gastronomica.

The UNO exhibition marks the first time that all of Green’s plates created to date have been on display in a public location. The exhibition opened Jan. 13 with a reception from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. People lined the walls of the art gallery during the reception, carefully reading about each plate and the person who requested the final meal.

“The exhibit is so utterly demanding on the imagination of the viewer,” exhibit viewer Jacqueline Scoones said. “It’s entirely flat and almost cliché if all you do is look at the plates because really where it starts to resonate is if you bring to it your imagination. Each plate is a scene, each plate compels you to imagine.”

Green recently received a grant from the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation. The award is given to only 25 contemporary artists a year to acknowledge painters and sculptors nationwide who create work of exceptional quality.

Green’s “Last Supper” project is exceptional and thought provoking. The project begs the viewer to wonder about the personalities of the former death row inmates. The pictures depicted on the plates vary from a traditional dinner like chicken and mashed potatoes to a bag of Jolly Ranchers. Some inmates have no request at all.

“When looking at the inmates’ humble choices, it is important to note that while rituals and traditions vary, most states limit final-meal allowances to twenty dollars,” Green said on her website. “Texas, home to cattle ranches and more death-row executions (477) than any other state, doesn’t allow steak for a final meal. If you order steak in Texas, you get hamburger.”

Green says she plans to continue adding 50 more plates to “The Last Supper” project each year until capital punishment is abolished. The exhibition is free to the public and closes on Thursday, Feb. 9 at 3 p.m.

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