Colorado Senate committee backs eliminating death penalty

DENVER—A proposal to eliminate the death penalty in Colorado cleared another hurdle at the Capitol on Wednesday.

The Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee endorsed the measure (House Bill 1274) in a party-line vote, sending in to another committee for a vote. The bill would take the $1 million now being spent to prosecute death penalty cases and use it to investigate cold cases. That would add seven employees to the state's cold case unit, which currently has only one investigator.

All three Democrats on the committee voted for the measure, and both Republicans voted against it.

Sen. Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, acknowledged the death penalty is expensive but said the state should find other ways to fund cold case investigations, such as cutting funding for tourism promotion or prison recreation programs. Sen. Dave Schultheis, R-Colorado Springs, said the state could have spent less on promoting renewable energy instead.

But bill sponsor Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, argued that no other item the state spends its money on has gotten it so little in return. She said the state has spent between $1 million and $4 million a year for about 40 years to prosecute death penalty cases but has executed only one person during that time.

The last execution in Colorado was in 1997, when 53-year-old Gary Lee Davis was put to death for his conviction in a 1986 slaying.

Two men are now on death row in the state, but their sentences wouldn't be affected by the bill.

Two Democrats who voted for the bill—Sen. Betty Boyd of Lakewood and Sen. Bob Bacon—said they backed it because they believe capital punishment is morally wrong, not because of the cold case connection.

"I do not like what capital punishment does to my soul and to the soul of the United States," Bacon said.

Sen. Suzanne Williams, D-Aurora, said she didn't think the state's money was being well spent on prosecuting death penalty cases. But she also said a comment from a witness about giving criminals time to seek redemption gave her something else to consider.

A group of families of murder victims whose cases remain unsolved are the main force behind the bill, which passed the House by a single vote last week. They lined up to testify in front of the committee, some of them with framed photographs of their slain relatives. Some recounted how their loved ones were killed, offering details about how many times they were stabbed and how their bodies were disposed of.

Howard Morton said his eldest son was killed when he was 18, and it took 12 years to find his body.

"We don't want to hear that we're sorry for your loss. We want action for our murders. We want justice for our loved ones," said Morton, executive director of Families of Missing Homicide Victims and Missing Persons.

The bill has also gained support from national anti-death penalty advocates including Bud Welch, whose daughter was killed in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and Randy Steidl, a former death row inmate from Illinois who was later exonerated.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers and all but one of the state's district attorneys oppose the bill, as do the families of other murder victims, including the mothers of Javad Marshall-Fields and Vivian Wolfe. One of the two men on Colorado's death row, Sir Mario Owens, was convicted of masterminding the slaying of the couple as Marshall-Fields was getting ready to testify in a murder trial.

The bill now heads to the Senate Appropriations Committee. If it passes the Senate, it will be sent to Gov. Bill Ritter, Denver's former district attorney. He hasn't said whether he would sign it.

Source: denverpost.com, April 29, 2009

Georgia: William Mize executed

A Georgia man has been executed for the murder of a follower of his white supremacist group.

William Mark Mize was put to death Wednesday by lethal injection at the state prison at Jackson. The 52-year-old inmate was pronounced dead at 7:28 p.m. by authorities. Mize became the second person executed in Georgia this year. Mize was convicted of the October 1994 murder of Eddie Tucker, who was shot after he failed to follow orders to burn down what Mize considered to be a crack house in Athens. Prosecutors say Mize shot Tucker in the head with a shotgun after leading him into some woods.

Mize's attorneys sought this week to block the execution. But an appeals court dismissed their appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court also rejected a request to stay the execution.

Mize becomes the 2nd condemned inmate to be put to death in Georgia this year and the 45th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1983.

Mize becomes the 23rd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1159th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin, April 30, 2009

Iran: three hanged

April 28, 2009: Iran has hanged three convicted criminals, two murderers and a drug trafficker, in a prison in the southwestern city of Ahvaz, a local newspaper reported.

The report identified the murderers as Ala H. and Mostafa Kh. who were sent to gallows some time in the Iranian month of Farvardin-March 21 until April 20.

The report in the Karoon newspaper did not name the drug trafficker. No additional information was given.

Source: Afp, 28/04/2009

Iran: Yunes Aghayan at imminent risk of execution

Yunes Aghayan, a member of Iran's Azerbaijani minority and an Ahl-e Haq follower, is at imminent risk of execution after being convicted of "enmity against God." He is held in Oromieh Prison in West Azerbaijan Province, in north-west Iran. Another man, Mehdi Qasemzadeh, was executed after being convicted in the same case around 28 February 2009, giving rise to fears that Yunes Aghayan could be executed at any time.

Yunes Aghayan was arrested around November 2004, following at least two clashes in September 2004 between members of a group of Ahl-e Haq members and police. The group had refused to take down religious slogans at the entrance to their cattle farm in Uch Tepe, West Azerbaijan Province. During the clashes, five Ahl-e Haq members and at least three members of the security forces were killed.

Yunes Aghayan and four others were tried before Branch 2 of the Mahabad Revolutionary Court. In January 2005, Yunes Aghayan and Mehdi Qasemzadeh were sentenced to death for "enmity against God," usually applied to those who take up arms against the state. Their sentences were upheld by the Supreme Court in April 2005 and Mehdi Qasemzadeh was executed around 28 February 2009. Three others -- Sehend Ali Mohammadi, Bakhshali Mohammadi, and Ebadollah Qasemzadeh -- were also sentenced to death, but their death sentences were overturned by the Supreme Court in September 2007. They are serving 13-year prison sentences in internal exile in Yazd Province, central Iran.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

The Ahl-e Haq are members of a religion founded in the 14th century, who live mainly in Iraq and western Iran. Most members are Kurdish, with smaller numbers from other ethnic minorities including Azerbaijanis.

The Iranian constitution guarantees equality to minorities in Iran, who are believed to number about half of the population of about 70 millions of inhabitants. Article 3(14) provides for equality of all before the law. Furthermore, Article 18 (1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Iran is a state party, states: "Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching."

Under Article 13 of Iran's Constitution, three religious minorities -- Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians -- are entitled to practice their faith. However, adherents of unrecognized religions, such as Baha'is, the Ahl-e Haq, and Mandaeans (Sabeans), or those who convert from Islam to another religion, are not permitted the freedom to practice their beliefs and are particularly at risk of discrimination or other violations of their internationally recognized human rights.

Click here to take action now.

Source: Amnesty International, April 28, 2009

Burundi's new criminal code abolishes the death penalty but makes homosexuality a crime punishable by jail

April 22, 2009: Burundi's President Pierre Nkurunziza (pictured) promulgated the new criminal code which abolishes the death penalty but makes homosexuality a crime punishable by jail.

The new criminal code also introduces laws against genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and torture which had previously been lacking.

More than 60 national and international rights groups have slammed the measure making homosexuality a crime punishable by jail.

According to the law, "whoever has sexual relations with a person of the same sex is punished by a prison sentence of three months to two years and a fine of 50,000 to 100,000 (CFA) francs, or one of these penalties," a joint statement said.

The lower house of Burundi's parliament in March reversed a Senate vote that rejected an amendment to the new criminal code that would make homosexuality punishable by a jail sentence of up to two years.

On March 6 thousands of Burundians took part in a government-organised demonstration to protest the senate's decision not to criminalise homosexuality.

A local human rights organization stated at the end of 2008 that there were approximately 800 people on death row.

Sources: Afp, 26/04/2009; AI, 24/04/2009

The Banality of Bush White House Evil

WE don’t like our evil to be banal. Ten years after Columbine, it only now may be sinking in that the psychopathic killers were not jock-hating dorks from a “Trench Coat Mafia,” or, as ABC News maintained at the time, “part of a dark, underground national phenomenon known as the Gothic movement.” In the new best seller “Columbine,” the journalist Dave Cullen reaffirms that Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were instead ordinary American teenagers who worked at the local pizza joint, loved their parents and were popular among their classmates.

On Tuesday, it will be five years since Americans first confronted the photographs from Abu Ghraib on “60 Minutes II.” Here, too, we want to cling to myths that quarantine the evil. If our country committed torture, surely it did so to prevent Armageddon, in a patriotic ticking-time-bomb scenario out of “24.” If anyone deserves blame, it was only those identified by President Bush as “a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values”: promiscuous, sinister-looking lowlifes like Lynddie England, Charles Graner and the other grunts who were held accountable while the top command got a pass.

We’ve learned much, much more about America and torture in the past five years. But as Mark Danner recently wrote in The New York Review of Books, for all the revelations, one essential fact remains unchanged: “By no later than the summer of 2004, the American people had before them the basic narrative of how the elected and appointed officials of their government decided to torture prisoners and how they went about it.” When the Obama administration said it declassified four new torture memos 10 days ago in part because their contents were already largely public, it was right.

Yet we still shrink from the hardest truths and the bigger picture: that torture was a premeditated policy approved at our government’s highest levels; that it was carried out in scenarios that had no resemblance to “24”; that psychologists and physicians were enlisted as collaborators in inflicting pain; and that, in the assessment of reliable sources like the F.B.I. director Robert Mueller, it did not help disrupt any terrorist attacks.

The newly released Justice Department memos, like those before them, were not written by barely schooled misfits like England and Graner. John Yoo, Steven Bradbury and Jay Bybee graduated from the likes of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Michigan and Brigham Young. They have passed through white-shoe law firms like Covington & Burling, and Sidley Austin.

Judge Bybee’s résumé tells us that he has four children and is both a Cubmaster for the Boy Scouts and a youth baseball and basketball coach. He currently occupies a tenured seat on the United States Court of Appeals. As an assistant attorney general, he was the author of the Aug. 1, 2002, memo endorsing in lengthy, prurient detail interrogation “techniques” like “facial slap (insult slap)” and “insects placed in a confinement box.”

He proposed using 10 such techniques “in some sort of escalating fashion, culminating with the waterboard, though not necessarily ending with this technique.” Waterboarding, the near-drowning favored by Pol Pot and the Spanish Inquisition, was prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II. But Bybee concluded that it “does not, in our view, inflict ‘severe pain or suffering.’ ”

Still, it’s not Bybee’s perverted lawyering and pornographic amorality that make his memo worthy of special attention. It merits a closer look because it actually does add something new — and, even after all we’ve heard, something shocking — to the five-year-old torture narrative. When placed in full context, it’s the kind of smoking gun that might free us from the myths and denial that prevent us from reckoning with this ugly chapter in our history.

Bybee’s memo was aimed at one particular detainee, Abu Zubaydah, who had been captured some four months earlier, in late March 2002. Zubaydah is portrayed in the memo (as he was publicly by Bush after his capture) as one of the top men in Al Qaeda. But by August this had been proven false. As Ron Suskind reported in his book “The One Percent Doctrine,” Zubaydah was identified soon after his capture as a logistics guy, who, in the words of the F.B.I.’s top-ranking Qaeda analyst at the time, Dan Coleman, served as the terrorist group’s flight booker and “greeter,” like “Joe Louis in the lobby of Caesar’s Palace.” Zubaydah “knew very little about real operations, or strategy.” He showed clinical symptoms of schizophrenia.

By the time Bybee wrote his memo, Zubaydah had been questioned by the F.B.I. and C.I.A. for months and had given what limited information he had. His most valuable contribution was to finger Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as the 9/11 mastermind. But, as Jane Mayer wrote in her book “The Dark Side,” even that contribution may have been old news: according to the 9/11 commission, the C.I.A. had already learned about Mohammed during the summer of 2001. In any event, as one of Zubaydah’s own F.B.I. questioners, Ali Soufan, wrote in a Times Op-Ed article last Thursday, traditional interrogation methods had worked. Yet Bybee’s memo purported that an “increased pressure phase” was required to force Zubaydah to talk.

As soon as Bybee gave the green light, torture followed: Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times in August 2002, according to another of the newly released memos. Unsurprisingly, it appears that no significant intelligence was gained by torturing this mentally ill Qaeda functionary. So why the overkill? Bybee’s memo invoked a ticking time bomb: “There is currently a level of ‘chatter’ equal to that which preceded the September 11 attacks.”

We don’t know if there was such unusual “chatter” then, but it’s unlikely Zubaydah could have added information if there were. Perhaps some new facts may yet emerge if Dick Cheney succeeds in his unexpected and welcome crusade to declassify documents that he says will exonerate administration interrogation policies. Meanwhile, we do have evidence for an alternative explanation of what motivated Bybee to write his memo that August, thanks to the comprehensive Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainees released last week.

The report found that Maj. Paul Burney, a United States Army psychiatrist assigned to interrogations in Guantánamo Bay that summer of 2002, told Army investigators of another White House imperative: “A large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful.” As higher-ups got more “frustrated” at the inability to prove this connection, the major said, “there was more and more pressure to resort to measures” that might produce that intelligence.

In other words, the ticking time bomb was not another potential Qaeda attack on America but the Bush administration’s ticking timetable for selling a war in Iraq; it wanted to pressure Congress to pass a war resolution before the 2002 midterm elections. Bybee’s memo was written the week after the then-secret (and subsequently leaked) “Downing Street memo,” in which the head of British intelligence informed Tony Blair that the Bush White House was so determined to go to war in Iraq that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” A month after Bybee’s memo, on Sept. 8, 2002, Cheney would make his infamous appearance on “Meet the Press,” hyping both Saddam’s W.M.D.s and the “number of contacts over the years” between Al Qaeda and Iraq. If only 9/11 could somehow be pinned on Iraq, the case for war would be a slamdunk.

But there were no links between 9/11 and Iraq, and the White House knew it. Torture may have been the last hope for coercing such bogus “intelligence” from detainees who would be tempted to say anything to stop the waterboarding.

Last week Bush-Cheney defenders, true to form, dismissed the Senate Armed Services Committee report as “partisan.” But as the committee chairman, Carl Levin, told me, the report received unanimous support from its members — John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman included.

Levin also emphasized the report’s accounts of military lawyers who dissented from White House doctrine — only to be disregarded. The Bush administration was “driven,” Levin said. By what? “They’d say it was to get more information. But they were desperate to find a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq.”

Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from “another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House’s illegality.

Levin suggests — and I agree — that as additional fact-finding plays out, it’s time for the Justice Department to enlist a panel of two or three apolitical outsiders, perhaps retired federal judges, “to review the mass of material” we already have. The fundamental truth is there, as it long has been. The panel can recommend a legal path that will insure accountability for this wholesale betrayal of American values.

President Obama can talk all he wants about not looking back, but this grotesque past is bigger than even he is. It won’t vanish into a memory hole any more than Andersonville, World War II internment camps or My Lai. The White House, Congress and politicians of both parties should get out of the way. We don’t need another commission. We don’t need any Capitol Hill witch hunts. What we must have are fair trials that at long last uphold and reclaim our nation’s commitment to the rule of law.

by Frank Rich, The New York Times, April 26, 2009

Petition to Remove Judge Sharon Keller from Office

To: Members of the Texas Legislature, Governor Perry and the People of Texas

Judge Sharon Keller should be removed as a judge on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals either through impeachment, resignation or at the end of her trial on misconduct charges brought by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct. Keller's unethical conduct has brought discredit on the Texas judiciary. As longs as Keller is in office, the quality of justice in Texas remains discredited.

Keller has violated the public trust placed in her to dispense justice fairly and impartially. She broke the rules of her own court when she refused to accept an appeal 20 minutes after 5 PM from a person on the day set for his execution. In addition, she has asked the people of Texas to pay for her legal expenses to defend herself while she failed to report millions of dollars in assets to the Texas Ethics Commission.

Click here to sign the online petition.

Source: Restore Integrity, April 23, 2009

Iran: man hanged for rape

April 19, 2009: a man convicted of raping a woman five years ago was hanged in a prison in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, the Etemad newspaper reported.

Source: Agence France Presse, 20/04/2009

Saudi Arabia: woman beheaded for shooting husband

April 20, 2009: Authorities have beheaded a Saudi woman convicted of shooting her husband and setting his body on fire.

Laila Bin Hamdan al-Shammari was executed in the northern city of Hayel.

The Interior Ministry said the woman killed her husband after a dispute. It did not explain the nature of the argument.

According to an Associated Press count, this execution was the 24th beheading this year in Saudi Arabia.

Source: Sapa-AP, 20/04/2009

European Nations May Investigate Bush Officials Over Prisoner Treatment

BERLIN, April 21 -- European prosecutors are likely to investigate CIA and Bush administration officials on suspicion of violating an international ban on torture if they are not held legally accountable at home, according to U.N. officials and human rights lawyers.

Many European officials and civil liberties groups said they were disappointed by President Obama's opposition to trials of CIA interrogators who subjected terrorism suspects to waterboarding and other harsh tactics. They said the release last week of secret U.S. Justice Department memos authorizing the techniques will make it easier for foreign prosecutors to open probes if U.S. officials do not.

Some European countries, under a legal principle known as universal jurisdiction, have adopted laws giving themselves the authority to investigate torture, genocide and other human rights crimes anywhere in the world, even if their citizens are not involved. While it is rare for prosecutors to win such cases, those targeted can face arrest if they travel abroad.

Martin Scheinin, the U.N. special investigator for human rights and counterterrorism, said the interrogation techniques approved by the Bush administration clearly violated international law. He said the lawyers who wrote the Justice Department memos, as well as senior figures such as former vice president Richard B. Cheney, will probably face legal trouble overseas if they avoid prosecution in the United States.

"Torture is an international crime irrespective of the place where it is committed. Other countries have an obligation to investigate," Scheinin said in a telephone interview from Cairo. "This may be something that will be haunting CIA officials, or Justice Department officials, or the vice president, for the rest of their lives."

Manfred Nowak, another senior U.N. official who investigates torture claims, said the Obama administration is violating terms of the U.N. Convention Against Torture by effectively granting amnesty to CIA interrogators. He said the United States, as a signatory to the treaty, is legally obligated to investigate suspected cases of torture. He also said Washington must provide compensation to torture victims, including al-Qaeda leaders who were waterboarded.

"One cannot buy the argument anymore that this does not amount to torture," he said. "These memos are nothing but an attempt to circumvent the absolute prohibition on torture."

Nowak, an Austrian law professor based in Vienna, acknowledged that there is no mechanism in the anti-torture treaty to punish governments that ignore its provisions. From a political standpoint, he said, it is more important for the White House or Congress to authorize an independent commission to conduct a public examination of how terrorism suspects were treated after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"I still have full trust in the Obama administration to do the right thing," he said in a telephone interview from Bangkok. "It is more important for the United States to overcome a dark chapter in its history."

On Tuesday, Obama for the first time raised the possibility of creating a bipartisan commission to examine the Bush administration's handling of terrorism suspects. He also said he would leave it up to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to determine whether to prosecute senior officials who approved waterboarding and other tactics.

Several CIA and Bush administration officials have already been targeted for prosecution in Europe, though the cases have generally not progressed very far.

In Spain, a human rights group is pushing prosecutors to investigative six senior Bush administration officials for allegedly sanctioning the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Last week, Spanish prosecutors recommended dropping the case after Attorney General Cándido Conde-Pumpido called it a politicized attempt to turn Spanish courts "into a plaything." A Spanish judge will make the final decision.

In Germany, human rights groups have tried to bring charges against former U.S. defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Germany's federal prosecutor has twice rejected the case, but supporters have appealed in court.

Wolfgang Kaleck, a Berlin lawyer who helped file the complaint against Rumsfeld, said that such cases have failed largely because European courts have ruled that they should be handled in U.S. courts instead. That could change, he said.

"Everybody prefers that prosecutions take place in the U.S.," he said. "But if nothing happens there, then that's the end of the legal argument to dismiss these cases in Europe."

John B. Bellinger III, who was legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said European governments will face a worsening legal and political dilemma if human rights groups redouble their efforts to pursue criminal investigations of U.S. officials.

"They realize this will put them in a very difficult position," said Bellinger, now a partner at the law firm Arnold & Porter in Washington. "They will be under pressure from civil liberties groups and some European parliamentarians not to oppose these cases. But if they allow them to go forward, they know it could strain their relationship with the Obama administration, which says it wants to look forward, not back."

Additionally, European governments are unlikely to favor the prosecution of U.S. officials under universal-jurisdiction statutes for practical reasons, he said. For instance, U.S. officials facing charges or indictment could no longer travel to Europe without facing the risk of arrest, a situation that could spiral out of control diplomatically.

"It just sets a bad precedent," he said. "Current and former government officials have to be able to travel. Once you allow one or two of these cases, it could really open the floodgates to actions against officials of many countries."

Source: Craig Whitlock,Washington Post Foreign Service, Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Yemen: 'Aisha Ghalib al-Hamzi executed

'Aisha Ghalib al-Hamzi was executed on 19 April for the murder of her husband; all seven of her children had refused to pardon her. In cases of Qisas (retribution in kind) the relatives of the victim have the power to seek execution, request compensation or grant a pardon freely.

'Aisha Ghalib al-Hamzi was sentenced to death for the murder of her husband in October 2003. She had been detained in the Central Prison in the capital, Sana'a. Her sentence was confirmed on appeal in 2007. In December 2008, the Supreme Court in Sana’a upheld the death sentence. The President recently ratified her death sentence. Her execution was scheduled to be carried out on 4 April 2009 but was postponed for two weeks to allow attempts to seek a pardon from the relatives of her husband.

Source: Amnesty International, April 20, 2009

Iran: Delara Darabi's execution postponed

April 19, 2009: Iranian human rights activists say the execution of juvenile offender Delara Darabi has been postponed.

Darabi, who was due to be executed on April 20, was sentenced to death for a murder she allegedly committed at the age of 17.

Darabi's lawyer, Abdolsamad Khoramshahi, said the victim's family has refused to attend the execution by hanging. Iranian law requires that the verdict be carried out only in the presence of the victim's family, resulting in the postponement.

Khoramshahi said the victim's family has not changed its demand for the execution.

Darabi originally confessed to murdering an elderly female relative during a robbery. But she subsequently retracted her confession, saying that her boyfriend committed the murder and she agreed to take the blame when he told her she was too young to be sentenced to death.

Her lawyer says there were shortcomings in the proceedings.

Sources: RFE/RL, 19/04/2009

Iranian Woman's Execution Imminent For Crime Committed At Age 17

Delara Darabi was handed a death sentence in 2003

A young Iranian woman faces imminent execution, 5 years after being convicted of committing murder at the age of 17.

Delara Darabi's lawyer, Abdolsamad Khoramshah, was quoted as saying on April 16 that her death sentence has been confirmed by the Supreme Court.

Darabi will be executed by April 20 unless the family of the elderly woman she was convicted of murdering at the age of 17 decides to pardon her.

The case has alarmed human rights activists, and put the spotlight on Iran, one of the few countries that executes people for crimes committed as juveniles.

Along with her 19-year-old boyfriend, Amir Hossein Sotoudeh, Darabi allegedly burgled the home of an elderly female relative -- the cousin of Darabi's father -- and the woman was stabbed to death in the process.

Confession

Darabi initially confessed to the murder, and was convicted of the crime and handed a death sentence in 2003, despite her subsequent retraction of her confession.

Darabi claimed that Sotoudeh had persuaded her to admit to the murder and told her that she would not face the death penalty because of her age.

Darabi's lawyer, Khoramshah, says her conviction is based solely on the confession she made. He says the death sentence was issued despite an incomplete criminal investigation and shortcomings in the proceedings.

"We have to see whether the confession she made conforms with realities or not," Khoramshah tells Radio Farda.

"It is very unlikely that the murder was committed by a girl with a frail body. A strong young man was there. How is it possible that the murder was done by a weak girl?"

Darabi's tragic fate has brought her fame and made her a symbol of the dozens of juvenile offenders who currently face execution in Iran.

Google Darabi's name and you will find thousands of entries, articles, and blogs about her in different languages.

Life Story Through Painting

On death row, she has told the story of her life through her paintings, most of them dark.

In 2006, rights activists organized an exhibition of her work in Tehran in order to bring attention to her situation and to protest against her innocence.

In a welcome message to visitors, Darabi described her paintings as an "an oath to a crime I didn't commit." It is very unlikely that the murder was committed by a girl with a frail body. A strong young man was there. How is it possible that the murder was done by a weak girl?

Khoramshahi says the years Darabi has spent in jail with a death sentence hanging over her head has taken its toll on the young artist. She reportedly attempted to commit suicide in her cell in 2007.

"Bearing prison is very difficult for a girl who was studying and at the age of 17 ended up behind prison bars. Delara's three sisters and her parents have been also [affected] by her situation, they're psychologically distressed," Khoramshahi says.

Delara's father has, in a letter, called on the head of Iran's judiciary to stave off her execution. He says living is very difficult, knowing that his 23-year-old child has been sentenced to death.

His daughter has spent the best years of her life in prison, he says, and has been denied the possibility of having a positive role in society.

Her lawyer has called on artists and others who want to save Darabi's life to try to convince the family of the victim to give up their demand for "qesas" (retribution) and let her live.

Iranians have also launched a campaign on Facebook and Twitter to spare Darabi's life.

Darabi is just 1 of over 70 juvenile offenders facing execution in the Islamic republic, according to human rights groups.

In many cases, juvenile offenders convicted of murder are kept in jail until they are 18, and subsequently executed. In the past several years, a few cases have been reported where offenders were executed before turning 18.

However, there have been cases of some sentences being overturned and some young offenders being saved at the last minute.

Rights groups say that by executing juvenile offenders, Iran violates its international obligations. According to the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Iran has signed, neither "capital punishment nor life imprisonment without the possibility of release" should be imposed for offenses committed by persons below the age of 18.

In a 2007 report, Amnesty International described Iran as the "last executioner of children," which it defines as anyone under the age of 18.

More here.

Source: Radio Free Europe, April 20, 2009

Protest the 200th Execution Under Texas Governor Rick Perry

On June 2, 2009, the 200th execution under Texas Governor Rick Perry is scheduled to take place. Since he became governor of Texas in December 2000, Perry has signed more execution orders than any other governor in U.S. history. The date of the 200th execution could change if any scheduled executions are successfully stopped.

The Texas anti-death penalty community asks people around the world to focus your attention on Texas and join us in protesting the 200th execution carried out under Rick Perry. Altogether, Texas has executed 436 people since 1982, including 152 under former Texas Governor George W. Bush.

How you can protest the 200th execution under Texas Governor Rick Perry

1) On the day of the 200th execution, call Governor Perry at 512-462-1782 and tell him your opinion on the death penalty. If you live in the U.S., you can use his the form on his website to email him. We suggest you both call him and email him. If you live outside the U.S., you can fax him at (512) 463-1849 or send him a letter in the postal mail. We would like to hand deliver letters to him, so please send your letter to the address below and we will deliver it to Rick Perry: You can send us your letter to Perry for us to deliver whether you live in the U.S. or another country.


Texas Moratorium Network
3616 Far West Blvd, Suite 117, Box 251

Austin, Texas 7831

2) Attend a protest in your city either on the day of the 200th execution or sometime before. If a protest is not scheduled, you can organize a protest. If you live outside the U.S., organize a protest at the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate. Send us a photo or video of your protest by email and we will post it on this website and on YouTube. Or you can upload your photos and videos yourself to our social networking site or directly to our group on YouTube. If your organization is planning a protest, please let us know so that we can list your protest on this site.

3) Sign the petition and add your name to the list of people who are raising their voices to protest the 200th execution under Texas Governor Rick Perry.

4) Donate a symbolic 200 cents towards helping us organize against the Texas death penalty. That is one penny for every execution under Rick Perry. We are asking everyone to donate $2, which is the equivalent of 200 pennies. You are welcome to donate more if you can afford it, but everyone can afford to donate $2.

The artwork above by German artist Jasmin Hilmer represents the isolation of Texas in the world community. While most of the rest of the world, including all of Europe, have turned their backs on the use of capital punishment, Texas continues to execute people at a shocking rate.

This campaign is sponsored by Texas Moratorium Network, Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, Campaign to End the Death Penalty - Austin, Students Against the Death Penalty, Texas Death Penalty Education and Resource Center, Abolish the Death Penalty Project on Amazee. If your organization would also like to be a sponsor, email us at admin@texasmoratorium.org or call 512-961-6389.

Source: Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, April 18, 2009

Saudi Arabia: new execution

April 14, 2009: a Yemeni was beheaded by the sword in Saudi Arabia for garrotting a compatriot with a length of wire in a dispute over money, the interior ministry said in a statement carried by the SPA news agency.

Fikri Mohammed Hassan Saleh was executed in the southwestern town of Jazan for killing a fellow Yemeni, identified only as Najib.

Saleh was allegedly under the influence of alcohol when he committed the crimes.

Source: Agence France Presse, 14/04/2009

Iran: Delara Darabi has now been scheduled for execution

Delara Darabi has now been scheduled for execution, according to the Iranian newspaper Etemad on 18 April, according to another source on 20 April. She was convicted of murdering a relative when she was 17. Unless the Judiciary intervenes, she can now escape execution only if the woman’s entire family accept payment of diyeh, or blood money. One of the familly is said to be undecided.

Iran is a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibit the use of the death penalty against people convicted of crimes committed when they were under 18.

RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible:

- expressing concern that Delara Darabi is in imminent danger of execution for a crime committed when she was under 18;
- calling on the authorities to halt the execution of Delara Darabi immediately, and commute her death sentence;
- reminding the authorities that Iran is a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which prohibit the use of the death penalty against people convicted of crimes committed when they were under 18.

APPEALS TO:

Head of the Judiciary
Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi
c/o Director, Judiciary Public Relations and Information Office
Ardeshir Sadiq
Judiciary Public Relations and Information Office
No. 57, Pasteur St., corner of Khosh Zaban Avenue
Tehran, IRAN
Email: info@dadiran.ir (In the subject line write: FAO Ayatollah Shahroudi)
Salutation: Your Excellency

Judiciary spokesperson
Alireza Jamshidi
Howzeh Riyasat-e Qoveh Qazaiyeh / Office of the Head of the Judiciary
Pasteur St, Vali Asr Ave., south of Serah-e Jomhuri
Tehran 1316814737
IRAN
Email: info@a-jamshidi.ir
Salutation: Dear Sir

Leader of the Islamic Republic
Ayatollah Sayed ‘Ali Khamenei, The Office of the Supreme Leader
Islamic Republic Street – End of Shahid Keshvar Doust Street
Tehran
ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN
Email: info_leader@leader.ir
via website: http://www.leader.ir/langs/en/index.php?p=letter (English)
http://www.leader.ir/langs/fa/index.php?p=letter (Persian)
Salutation: Your Excellency

COPIES TO:

Director, Human Rights Headquarters of Iran
Mohammad Javad Larijani
Howzeh Riyasat-e Qoveh Qazaiyeh / Office of the Head of the Judiciary
Pasteur St, Vali Asr Ave., south of Serah-e Jomhuri
Tehran 1316814737, Iran
Fax: 011 98 21 3390 4986 (please keep trying)
Email: info@dadgostary-tehran.ir (In the subject line write: FAO Javad Larijani)
Salutation: Dear Mr Larijani

Iran does not presently have an embassy in the United States. Instead, please send copies to:

Iranian Interests Section
Embassy of Pakistan
2209 Wisconsin Ave NW
Washington DC 20007
Phone: 202 965 4990
Fax: 202 965 1073
Email: requests@daftar.org

PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Delara Darabi, an Iranian woman convicted of murdering a relative when she was 17, is reported to be facing execution in the next few days.

Her lawyer, Abdolsamad Khorramshahi, received a phone call from Delara Darabi on 21 March in which she said that she had heard rumours in Rasht Prison that she would be executed in the coming days. Delara Darabi has been detained at Rasht Prison in northern Iran since her arrest in 2003.

According to information received by Amnesty International, Delara Darabi is facing execution between 18 and 20 April.

Amnesty International has urged the Iranian authorities to commute her death sentence. Iran is a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibit the use of the death penalty against juvenile offenders - people convicted of crimes committed when they were under 18.

The Iranian authorities have executed at least 42 juvenile offenders since 1990, eight of them in 2008 and one on 21 January 2009.

Amnesty International has also called for a re-trial for Delara Darabi in proceedings that meet international standards for fair trial and that are in line with the Convention of the Rights of the Child.

In September 2003, a then 17-year old Delara Darabi and her 19-year-old boyfriend, Amir
Hossein Sotoudeh, broke into the house of her father's 58-year-old female cousin, Mahin, to commit a burglary. Amir Hossein is alleged to have killed the woman during the burglary.

Delara Darabi initially confessed to the murder in order to protect her boyfriend from execution, claiming that he had told her that as she was 17 she could not be executed. She subsequently retracted her confession.

Delara Darabi was initially sentenced to death by Branch 10 of the General Court in Rasht on 27 February 2005. In January 2006, the Supreme Court found "deficiencies" in the case and sent it to a children’s court in Rasht for retrial.

Following two trial sessions in January and June 2006, Delara Darabi was sentenced to death for a second time by Branch 107 of the General Court in Rasht. Amir Hossein Sotoudeh was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment for complicity in the murder.

Both received sentences of three years' imprisonment and 50 lashes for robbery, and 20 lashes for an "illicit relationship". Delara Darabi’s death sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court on 16 January 2007.

In March 2007, her lawyer filed an appeal against her death sentence. Her death sentence was confirmed in April 2007 following a further review by Branch 7 of the Supreme Court, after which the verdict was sent to the Head of the Judiciary for consideration.

In December 2007, as a result of procedural flaws having been identified, the Head of Judiciary reportedly returned the case to Rasht for a further review. It is not known if this has been completed though normal legal avenues in her case appear now to have been exhausted.

Human rights lawyer Mohammad Mostafaie was reported to have visited Delara Darabi in prison in February 2008. She was said to be very depressed.

Domestic and international concerns about her situation appear to have resulted in repeated and slow-moving legal reviews, some initiated by senior judicial officials.

It nevertheless appears that Delara Darabi can now escape execution only if the victim’s entire family accept payment of diyeh or blood money. One member of the family is said to be undecided.

Florida: The Daily Routine of Death Row Inmates

The breakfast carts rattle through the concrete prison at about 5:30 am and as they approach Death Row the first sounds of morning repeat the last sounds of night - remote controlled locks clanging open and clunking closed, electric gates whirring, heavy metal doors crashing shut, voices wailing, klaxons blaring. A maximum security prison has no soft or delicate sounds.

At the end of each corridor of death row cells a guard opens a heavy door of steel bars and a prison trusty pushes a breakfast cart inside. The door closes behind him and when it locks a second door opens and admits the trusty to the wing. He steers his cart along the wing stopping at each cell to pass a tray of powdered eggs and lukewarm grits through a small slot on the bars. Food is prepared by prison staff and transported in insulated carts to the cells. The food carts are full of cockroaches, the food is often undercooked or just rotten and is served on Styrofoam plates with a plastic "spork" - fork/spoon combination.

Inside the cell, on a thin mattress about 30 inches wide, an inmate awakes, blinks his eyes. He looks around his cell - his home. A dull concrete wall to his right, the same dull wall to his left, or the identical dull ceiling of his box. In any case, he gathers himself, stands, takes one step to the bars and hauls in his tray. He sits on his bunk and eats with his tray on his knees. When finished he returns the tray to the slot and typically goes back to sleep. Sleeping is the best way to pass time on death row.

Sometime around 9:00 am, the day resumes as the men of death row reluctantly awake again and face the world. An inmate contemplates his home. There are three concrete walls, a concrete floor and a concrete ceiling. The fourth wall is the steel bars which open onto a wing about 8 ft wide. On the other side of this wing beyond another grille of steel bars are grimy little windows and beyond those are empty prison grounds bounded by coils of razor wire. From side to side his “home” is about two paces wide, and from front to back about three paces deep. One stride brings him to the steel sink and toilet combo. The toilet has no seat, just a molded rim of inevitable steel. Concrete and steel, steel and concrete. Under the bunk or next to it is a small steel locker for the prisoner’s belongings. Tightly fixed to one wall is a bar on which a towel can be hung. High up on the back wall is a ventilation grill about a foot square and the inmate will have run a clothes line from this to the front bars. Dangling from the line are damp socks, boxers, orange pants and orange shirt. The men of death row must wear orange to distinguish themselves from the rest of the prison population. The inmate does his own laundry in his sink or his toilet and hangs it on the line to dry.

Sometimes the walls of the inmates cell are bare or they may be decorated with his own art work or with pictures of nude women. A Florida death row inmate spends his time in a cell 6 x 9 x 9.5 feet high. He is allowed outside 2 times a week for 2 hours each time. These “yards,” as they are known as, are randomly selected. The inmate is allowed a shower twice per week. At all other times the inmate is locked in his cell 24 hours per day. There are no common rooms or day rooms where inmates may collectively gather.

There is no heating or air conditioning. In winter, it’s cold on the wing and an inmate makes do with a thin blanket as coverage. A Florida summer is extremely hot, with temperatures well over a hundred degrees and with no escape from the heat or humidity. Small portable fans are allowed and they do allow some movement of air. Death Row stinks the same regardless of the season, the air thick with the stale odor of cigarette smoke and sweaty, dirty, defecating men.

The monumemental task that is every man’s burden on death row is how to fill his hours until he can sleep again. The options are few. There is endless talk, endless disembodied mostly inane chatter. The prisoner steps to the front of his cell - getting on the bars is the prison jargon - and begins talking loudly. His voice echoes along the wing. No other inmate can see him because the cells all face the same way and have thick walls between them. Some men will be “on the bars” for hours on end, yammering on about cars, politics, sport, sex or just about every other topic under the sun. They’ll bet whether it will rain before night, or other useless subjects. Fourteen men live on each wing so conversation soon gets old. Yet the same thing continues day after day, month after month, year after year. Ofttimes it is possible to yell into the vent and talk to people on the floors upstairs or downstairs. It becomes tiresome to hear all the noise so ingenious ways have been found to create some quiet time. Some inmates cut pieces from their shower shoes and use them as earplugs. Most men own a radio with a set of earphones which they slip on to drown out the noise and to enter a different world. Reading passes some time for those who are literate. Books, newspapers and magazines make their way from cell to cell. There is no clear logic to Florida’s list of permitted publications. Gun magazines are understandably denied but so are travel mags of far away places. Such mags may contain a map of Borneo or Cambodia and these could be invaluable to a man on death row in Florida!

Around 11:00 am, the trusties rattle in again, this time with the lunch trays. A typical lunch might be a thin sandwich, a carton of milk, a starchy vegetable and a slice of cake. After lunch an inmate can lose another hour with a nap. Then a literate inmate can commence his “office” work. This will include letters to friends, lawyers and similar. Writings consist of poems, novels, journal entries, claims of innocence, legal protests challenging prison regulations or conditions. No art or crafts are allowed. Such activities were banned years ago. No computers, internet, word processors, typewriters, telephones. All these “cannot do without” things of the free world are not for the men of death row. Some creative men make articles from aluminum foil. Others play poker with the man in the next cell, each of them crouched close to the bars on either side of their common wall, dealing cards onto a towel on the corridor floor. Some play chess with the man 3 or 4 cells away by shouting their respective moves. And still all these daily activities do not fill the time, not when there are 365 identical days to kill. Days become months, months become years.

Caged in a room 6 ft by 9 ft, even the most creative inmate needs something more powerful than his own wits or skills to get him through. That something is TV. It drives the hardliners in the legislative crazy to think that death row prisoners can watch TV. However, it would be hard to find a guard who does not approve of it. It is the only thing that makes death row manageable. Small black and white TV’s, tuned to ABC, NBC, Fox, UPN, PBS, no cable at all. Some inmates watch cartoons all day, some watch the soaps. Whole wings watch Jeopardy and vie with each other to give the right answers first. Some watch the cop shows and cheer for the bad guys.

Dinner arrives around 4:00 pm. A processed pork chop or a piece of liver or half raw chicken together with the obligatory starchy vegetables. Florida prison kitchens have a million ways to serve potatoes and they come with every meal.

But the one luxury is the canteen! For each man the prison maintains a type of bank account where the inmate deposits money he gets from family and friends. He is allowed to spend $99 per week on canteen items. Since he is locked in his cell the canteen comes to him. On Saturdays, assuming he has money in his account, the inmate fills out an order sheet and the canteen trusties make up the order and bring the goods on Monday. Cigarettes, chips, soap, soup, sandwiches, pastries. Even shoes! There are limits on certain items but the bartering system is alive and well on the row. Perhaps a man does not smoke but craves extra pastries? If his neighbor has opposite requests, they will agree a swap. The canteen also sells orange juice which can be used on the row for making homemade wine or “buck” as it is called. The amateur winemakers mix orange juice, sugar and bread and let it sit for several days. Most buck does not equate to a good Cabernet or Chardonnay but a clever planner can brew enough during the week to have a merry old time during the season football games.

Inmates on the row make nearly anything for any purpose. Hand mirrors can be used to look down the halls and see if a guard is on his way. Some learn to make a “waterbug,” a crude wire heating element that can boil water for coffee and soup. Some men learned to make zip guns using a section of radio antenna for the barrel, match heads for gun powder and any small piece of metal for the bullet. The zip gun problem became so bad that matches were eventually banned and now only Bic lighters are sold because they cannot be used to make such weapons.

When a “yard” (or outside recreation) takes place, it gives the condemned man a chance to change his surroundings. However, this yard consists of a small concrete slab area surrounded by a 14 ft fence. Inmates can play basketball and volleyball. Prisoners on death row have not stood on grass or ground for years. Some men do not go outside for reasons of safety. Older weaker men might go out only twice a year and then in pairs for safety. Snitches and child molesters never go outside because someone will probably seriously harm them. There is honor even amongst the men of death row.

Inmates are counted at least once an hour. When out of their cells, they are escorted in handcuffs and wear them everywhere except in the exercise yard and the shower. Twice a week after dinners there are showers. An inmate strips to his boxers, puts on his shower shoes and walk with a guard to the shower which is about the size of his cell. He is locked in to luxuriate for 10 mins then put back into his cell. Lights in the cells go out at 11:00 am, but the corridor lights always stay on. TV’s stay on 24 hours a day.

An inmate is given a “visitors day,” usually a Saturday or Sunday. He can receive an authorized visitor between 9:00 am and 3:00 pm. At the visit commencement and end, inmates can receive one hug or kiss. Otherwise no other physical contact is allowed. Items can be purchased by the visitor for himself and the inmate from rows of vending machines.

Prison is never completely quiet. Gates are always clanging, there’s the constant tread of guard’s boots, nightmare ravings of the mentally unstable prisoners, muffled sobs of despair. Night eases into morning and another day on death row begins.

It costs approximately $72.39 per day to incarcerate a death row inmate in Florida.

Read more here.

Source: Angelfire.com, April 17, 2009

Obama Statement on Release of Torture Memos

The Obama administration said it won’t prosecute CIA officials who carried out harsh interrogation of terror suspects under Justice Department legal guidance. The decision was part of a hard-fought compromise in which the administration released four Bush-era memos from the Department of Justice giving legal guidance to the CIA on interrogations. Parts of the memos involving names of detainees and the way techniques were applied to particular prisoners were blacked out. Below is the text of Obama’s statement accompanying the move.

The Department of Justice will today release certain memos issued by the Office of Legal Counsel between 2002 and 2005 as part of an ongoing court case. These memos speak to techniques that were used in the interrogation of terrorism suspects during that period, and their release is required by the rule of law.

My judgment on the content of these memos is a matter of record. In one of my very first acts as President, I prohibited the use of these interrogation techniques by the United States because they undermine our moral authority and do not make us safer. Enlisting our values in the protection of our people makes us stronger and more secure. A democracy as resilient as ours must reject the false choice between our security and our ideals, and that is why these methods of interrogation are already a thing of the past.

But that is not what compelled the release of these legal documents today. While I believe strongly in transparency and accountability, I also believe that in a dangerous world, the United States must sometimes carry out intelligence operations and protect information that is classified for purposes of national security. I have already fought for that principle in court and will do so again in the future. However, after consulting with the attorney general, the director of national intelligence, and others, I believe that exceptional circumstances surround these memos and require their release.

First, the interrogation techniques described in these memos have already been widely reported. Second, the previous administration publicly acknowledged portions of the program and some of the practices associated with these memos. Third, I have already ended the techniques described in the memos through an executive order. Therefore, withholding these memos would only serve to deny facts that have been in the public domain for some time. This could contribute to an inaccurate accounting of the past, and fuel erroneous and inflammatory assumptions about actions taken by the United States.

In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution. The men and women of our intelligence community serve courageously on the front lines of a dangerous world. Their accomplishments are unsung and their names unknown, but because of their sacrifices, every single American is safer. We must protect their identities as vigilantly as they protect our security, and we must provide them with the confidence that they can do their jobs.

Going forward, it is my strong belief that the United States has a solemn duty to vigorously maintain the classified nature of certain activities and information related to national security.

This is an extraordinarily important responsibility of the presidency, and it is one that I will carry out assertively irrespective of any political concern. Consequently, the exceptional circumstances surrounding these memos should not be viewed as an erosion of the strong legal basis for maintaining the classified nature of secret activities. I will always do whatever is necessary to protect the national security of the United States.

This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong views and emotions that these issues evoke. We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history. But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past. Our national greatness is embedded in America’s ability to right its course in concert with our core values, and to move forward with confidence. That is why we must resist the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future.

The United States is a nation of laws. My administration will always act in accordance with those laws, and with an unshakeable commitment to our ideals. That is why we have released these memos, and that is why we have taken steps to ensure that the actions described within them never take place again.

Source: Associated Press, April 17, 2009

Bush-era interrogation memo: No torture without 'severe pain' intent

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Interrogation tactics such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation and slapping did not violate laws against torture when there was no intent to cause severe pain, according to a Bush-era memo on the tactics released Thursday.

"To violate the statute, an individual must have the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering," said an August 2002 memo from then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee to John Rizzo, who was acting general counsel for the CIA.

"Because specific intent is an element of the offense, the absence of specific intent negates the charge of torture. ... We have further found that if a defendant acts with the good faith belief that his actions will not cause such suffering, he has not acted with specific intent," Bybee wrote.

The Bybee opinion was sought on 10 interrogation tactics in the case of suspected al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah.

The memo authorized keeping Zubaydah in a dark, confined space small enough to restrict the individual's movement for no more than two hours at a time. In addition, putting a harmless insect into the box with Zubaydah, who "appears to have a fear of insects," and telling him it is a stinging insect would be allowed, as long as Zubaydah was informed the insect's sting would not be fatal or cause severe pain.

"If, however, you were to place the insect in the box without informing him that you are doing so ... you should not affirmatively lead him to believe that any insect is present which has a sting that could produce severe pain or suffering or even cause his death," the memo said.

Other memos allowed the use of such tactics as keeping a detainee naked and in some cases in a diaper, and putting detainees on a liquid diet.

On waterboarding, in which a person gets the sensation of drowning, the memo said, "although the waterboard constitutes a threat of imminent death, prolonged mental harm must nonetheless result" to violate the law.

Authorities also were allowed to slap a detainee's face "to induce shock, surprise or humiliation" and strike his abdomen with the back of the hand in order to disabuse a detainee's notion that he will not be touched, the memos said.

Bybee noted in the memo that the CIA agreed all tactics should be used under expert supervision. Other memos said waterboarding can be used only if the CIA has "credible intelligence that a terrorist attack is imminent" and if a detainee is believed to have information that could prevent, disrupt or delay an attack, and other methods fail to elicit the information.

Another memo to Rizzo, from Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Steven G. Bradbury on May 10, 2005, noted that nudity could be used as an interrogation technique.

"Detainees subject to sleep deprivation who are also subject to nudity as a separate interrogation technique will at times be nude and wearing a diaper," it said, noting that the diaper is "for sanitary and health purposes of the detainee; it is not used for the purpose of humiliating the detainee and it is not considered to be an interrogation technique."

"The detainee's skin condition is monitored, and diapers are changed as needed so that the detainee does not remain in a soiled diaper," the memo said.

Another Bradbury memo laid out techniques and when they should be used in a "prototypical interrogation."

"Several of the techniques used by the CIA may involve a degree of physical pain, as we have previously noted, including facial and abdominal slaps, walling, stress positions and water dousing," it said. "Nevertheless, none of these techniques would cause anything approaching severe physical pain."

All of the CIA techniques were adapted from military "survival evasion resistance escape" training, according to a May 30, 2005, memo from Bradbury to Rizzo.

"Although there are obvious differences between training exercises and actual interrogations, the fact that the United States uses similar techniques on its own troops for training purposes strongly suggests that these techniques are not categorically beyond the pale," the memo said.

The memo said waterboarding and other techniques were used on Zubaydah; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, believed to be the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and identified as "KSM" in the memo; and another suspected al Qaeda leader, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

"The CIA believes that it would have been unable to obtain critical information from numerous detainees, including KSM and Abu Zubaydah, without these enhanced techniques," the memo said.

"These legal memoranda demonstrate in alarming detail exactly what the Bush administration authorized for 'high value detainees' in U.S. custody," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in a statement. "The techniques are chilling. This was not an 'abstract legal theory,' as some former Bush administration officials have characterized it. These were specific techniques authorized to be used on real people."

In releasing the memos in response to a public records request from the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups, the Obama administration informed CIA officials they will not be prosecuted for past waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics.

Attorney General Eric Holder promised in a separate statement that officials who used the controversial interrogation tactics were in the clear if their actions were consistent with the legal advice from the Justice Department under which they were operating at the time.

"My judgment on the content of these memos is a matter of record," President Obama said in a statement released from the White House.

Obama prohibited the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" such as waterboarding shortly after taking office in January. Such techniques "undermine our moral authority and do not make us safer," he said Thursday.

The president said that while United States must sometimes "protect information that is classified for purposes of national security," he decided to release the memos because he believes "strongly in transparency and accountability" and "exceptional circumstances surround these memos and require their release."

Obama argued that "withholding these memos would only serve to deny facts that have been in the public domain for some time."

"This could contribute to an inaccurate accounting of the past, and fuel erroneous and inflammatory assumptions about actions taken by the United States," he said.

He added that the officials involved in the questionable interrogations would not be subject to prosecution because the intelligence community must be provided "with the confidence" it needs to do its job.

The president pledged to work to ensure the actions described in the memos "never take place again."

More here.

Source: CNN.com, April 17, 2009

Alabama: Jimmy Lee Dill executed

Alabama death row inmate Jimmy Lee Dill died at 6:16 p.m. today [April 16, 2009] by lethal injection at Holman Correctional Facility.

His final words were: "I just hope God's will be done and everybody finds the peace they need. I'm good."

Dill had been on death row at Holman since Aug. 15, 1989. He was convicted in May of that year of shooting Leon Shaw in the back of the head and robbing him of cocaine and money in Birmingham on Feb. 8, 1988.

Shaw, a 33-year-old drug dealer who at the time was on federal work release, died about nine months later.

Shaw's wife Junatha Shaw and their son Leon Shaw Jr., both of Birmingham, were among those who witnessed tonight's execution. Also watching were 2 of Dill's nieces, Kimberly Allums and Linda Dill.

A few moments before losing consciousness, Dill turned to his victim's family and apologized. He also mouthed words of comfort to his two nieces who were holding hands as one of them sobbed.

Afterward, Leon Shaw Jr. said: "I told him I forgave him. I see him a victim, a victim of his raising, a victim of the circumstances. I see my dad as a victim, too, and it's continuing."

Jeanette Carr, the victim's advocate for Alabama Attorney General Troy King was with the Shaws and said Dill's expression of remorse was what victims' really want to hear. "It's not very often that they get that," she said.

Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said Dill spent the day in a holding cell near the execution chamber. He had 19 visitors, mostly family members, and received communion from his spirtual advisor Donald Blocker.

Dill gave his 13-inch TV set to fellow death row inmate Randy Lewis and assorted clothing and toiletries to another inmate, William Bush. In addition, Dill left a check for $1.26 to sister-in-law Carolyn Dill.

Dill's attorneys had asked the Alabama Supreme Court to stay his execution. They argued, among other things that he did not have effective legal representation during his murder trial. In an 8-0 vote, the high court denied that petition this morning.

The U.S. Supreme Court followed suit this afternoon.

Dill becomes the 3rd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Alabama and the 41st overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1983; he is the 194th condemned inmate to be put to death in Alabama since 1927.

Alabama has 203 death row inmates, most of them in Holman, which is near Atmore in southwest Alabama. 2 Alabama inmates already have been executed by lethal injection this year. The most recent was Danny Joe Bradley, who on Feb. 12 was put to death for the murder of his stepdaughter. Rhonda Hardin, who was 12, was sexually assaulted and strangled in Piedmont on the night of Jan. 24, 1983.

The next scheduled execution is May 14. The inmate to be executed is Willie McNair, for the robbery and murder of Ella Foy Riley of Henry County in 1990. McNair has been on death row 18 years.

Dill becomes the 22nd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1158th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Sources: Birmingham News & Rick Halperin, April 17, 2009

Georgia: Court rejects Troy Davis' appeal

The federal appeals court in Atlanta on Thursday rejected death-row inmate Troy Anthony Davis' appeal to get a new trial on claims he is innocent.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Davis' bid in a 2-1 decision, saying he could not file a new appeal raising claims of innocence. But the court continued his stay of execution for 30 more days so Davis can pursue his final appeals before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Davis sits on death row for the 1989 killing of Savannah police Officer Mark MacPhail. MacPhail was working off-duty when he was gunned down in a Burger King parking lot.

The 27-year-old former Army Ranger and father of 2 was unable to draw his weapon. He was shot 3 times.

Since the 1991 capital trial, 7 of 9 witnesses who testified against Davis have recanted their testimony.

Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 17, 2009

Death penalty foe's 'awakening' still a compelling story

Sister Helen Prejean was only slightly exaggerating Tuesday when she told her Human Rights Day audience at Indiana State University, "I have crisscrossed this nation 44 hundred thousand times."

Since 1982, when someone asked if she would consider writing to a prisoner on death row, Prejean has been on the move to raise awareness her own and America's about the inequities and false promises of capital punishment. Her best-selling book, "Dead Man Walking," has become a critically acclaimed film and an opera that is performed to sold-out houses all around the globe.

Prejean, who will turn 70 next week, shows no sign of slowing down. Other than a limp, left over from an ankle fusion last year, she seems ageless and even more energized for a cause that keeps expanding to include all human connections to one another and to our surroundings.

No matter how many times she stands before a crowd to deliver her message and Prejean is on the road more than she is in New Orleans with her Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille community it is as if for the 1st time. Whether the audience is packed with grade school children or skeptical law enforcement representatives, Prejean is in a state she recommends for all of us "ablaze with the fire of human rights."

A natural storyteller, Prejean would give any Southern Baptist preacher, Broadway actress or stand-up comedian a run for his or her money. Tuesday, as the keynote speaker for the eighth-annual Human Rights Day at ISU, she used her down-home Louisiana drawl, impeccable timing and irrepressible sense of humor to full advantage.

"All I need is just 5 minutes with President Barack Obama," she said, stretching the word to evoke images of the commander in chief listening intently to this little ol' nun or else.

Her bone to pick with Obama is his equivocation on capital punishment. While he advocates curbing the current system, Obama still believes some crimes are deserving of state execution.

"As if we can have a designer death penalty," Prejean scoffed, then dropped into imitations of people making various exceptions for specific crimes: "I don't want it for everybody, I just want it for my criminal."

Once a government decides it is all right to kill anybody, she said, "You are going to have the whole spectrum."

Whether an execution is by Kenyan officials who bury a woman up to her neck and stone her to death for having a child out of wedlock, or by an anonymous official who administers a lethal IV, governments always insist sanctioned killing is for the good of society.

But it is not, Prejean said. Killing is killing, and it is immoral.

"What do you think they write in as the cause of death" after an execution, she asked her audience in Dede I in Hulman Memorial Student Union. "Homicide."

Referring to Indiana's 20-some executions, the nun reminded her largely student audience, "Every single person who's been strapped down and killed in this state has been killed in your name."

By now, Prejean has told the story of her "awakening" through prison ministry thousands of times. But if anything, the account is more dramatic today because it encompasses Prejeans expanded view of human rights abuses, along with more than 2 decades of travel and listening, and six trips to the execution chamber with death row inmates she came to know.

Never in denial about the crimes committed by her incarcerated spiritual charges, Prejean has long based her anti-death penalty argument on these premises:

- None of us, including murderers, amounts only to his or her worst deeds.

- No society's legal system is so perfect, omniscient and equally applied that it can guarantee innocent people will not be executed or even that all defendants will receive proper legal representation. Thanks to efforts such as "The Innocence Project," Prejean noted, more than 130 people have gotten off death row in the United States via DNA or other exonerating evidence.

- Killing someone for having killed someone else not only contradicts Christ, it doesn't heal the wounds of loss in loved ones left behind.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, Prejean said, capital punishment has been dangled in front of grieving, broken-hearted families of homicide victims as the only way to "win" or, worse, to "prove" how much they loved their relative.

Victims' families she has spoken with who did not want prosecutors to press for execution, she said, have been told they must have "condoned" their loved one's slaying or, incredibly, "It's a shame you didn't love your child."

Working with those families has broadened and deepened Prejean's work. Together they have addressed state legislatures to advocate for repeal of the death penalty. 62 family members of murder victims helped convince New Jersey lawmakers to throw out that state's capital punishment statutes, she said, and others just persuaded New Mexicos Legislature to do the same.

"They told them, 'Don't kill for us,'" she said.

Prejean urged the students in the audience to begin lobbying their state Legislature so Indiana will someday repeal the death penalty. If not capital punishment, she encouraged them to find their own niche of the human rights/civil rights struggle and get involved.

"But you've got to get real knowledge," she said about educating themselves for a cause. "You can't just walk around and glow with human rights."

Source: Tribune-Star, April 16, 2009

Texas: Michael Rosales executed

Texas has executed a parole violator for beating and using kitchen tools to kill a 67-year-old woman during a burglary at her Lubbock apartment.

35-year-old Michael Rosales was pronounced dead at 6:17 p.m. CDT Wednesday.

He confessed to the 1997 slaying of Mary Felder a day after Felder's body was found by her grandson, who routinely checked on her. Rosales told police he was high on cocaine and looking for money when he broke into her home as she slept. She was attacked when she woke up.

At a tight-knit apartment complex community in Lubbock, 67-year-old Mary Felder "Miss Mary" to the residents was everybodys grandmother, known for candy and cookies and other goodies available to the neighborhood kids.

"She was such a wonderful woman," said Ken Hawk, a former Lubbock district attorney.

That made it all the more shocking nearly a dozen years ago when her grandson, who routinely would check on Felder at her place at the Four Seasons Apartments, found her viciously beaten and stabbed to death.

Attorneys from the Texas Defender Service, a legal group involved in death penalty issues, lost a bid Tuesday in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to halt the punishment. Their appeal argued Rosales was entitled to a qualified lawyer who should have at least 6 months to draw up a state clemency petition and further pursue claims Rosales may be mentally retarded and ineligible for execution.

This month, the U.S. Supreme Court, ruling in a Tennessee case, said the government should pay for federally appointed lawyers to work on state clemency requests for condemned inmates.

The Texas Attorney General's Office had opposed Rosales' appeal, arguing he'd already missed a state deadline for filing a clemency petition and allowing him to do so now would circumvent state procedures and open the door for every condemned inmate to file a last-minute clemency request after the deadline had passed. They also pointed out Rosales mental retardation claims previously were rejected by the courts.

The New Orleans-based 5th Circuit, acting on claims Rosales was mentally retarded, stopped Rosales' scheduled execution in 2004.

Rosales becomes the 13th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas and the 436th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on Dec. 7, 1982. Rosales becomes the 197th condemned inmate to be put to death since Rick Perry became governor in 2001. Rosales becomes the 21st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1157th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin, April 16, 2009

Malaysia: Two policemen sentenced to death

April 9, 2009: a Malaysian court sentenced two policemen to death for murdering a Mongolian woman who was blown up with explosives after she ended an affair with the prime minister's friend.

Ending the 159-day trial, High Court Judge Zaki Yasin convicted Chief Inspector Azilah Hadri and Corporal Sirul Azhar Umar with murdering Altantuya Shaariibuu, 28, sometime between October 19 and October 20, 2006.

In 2008, Zaki acquitted Abdul Razak Bangida, a close associate of Prime Minister Najib Razak, of charges of abetting the murder.

Source: Wall Street Journal, 09/04/2009

Saudi Arabia: man beheaded for rape and robbery

April 14, 2009: a Saudi Arabian man convicted of rape and robbery was beheaded.

An Interior Ministry statement said the man committed the crimes after drinking alcohol.

Sources: Associated Press, 12/04/2009

Sudan: nine men executed

April 13, 2009: Sudanese authorities executed nine men from Darfur for murder, state media and a police source said.

The state news agency SUNA later confirmed the men were hanged at Kober prison in Khartoum and named them.

The decapitated body of newspaper editor, Mohamed Taha Mohamed Ahmed, was found on a dirt road in Khartoum in September 2006. The men were found guilty in November 2007.

Ahmed was a journalist and owner of the Arabic-language al-Wifaq newspaper.

During the trial the lead police investigator, Abdul Rahim Ahmed Abdul Rahim, said the defendants' motives were "political, ethnic and financial".

Abdul Rahim said the defendants had been infuriated by an article in Taha's paper. A defence lawyer said the article had played down reports about rape in Darfur and used unflattering language to describe Darfurian women.

Source: Reuters, 13/04/2009

Welcome to a bright new day in the Allan Polunsky Unit!

The Allan Polunsky Unit where Roger McGowen is imprisoned houses about 3500 inmates, 370-450 of which are on death row (depending on the year and number of executions). It is a huge, poorly built "bunker" that is deteriorating so rapidly that some of the cells get flooded during heavy rainfalls. The living conditions in this very peculiar place are as utterly desolate and horrifying as one could expect from a place called "death row."

However, it is important to emphasize that in the years since we started corresponding with Roger, in 1997, those conditions have worsened steadily, to an extent that is little short of inconceivable, and unquestionably constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment" (see Death Penalty, The Death Penalty in the United States of America). For example, the food served to the inmates is of an appallingly poor quality, and is barely enough to keep them alive. Roger mentions in a letter (summer of 2004) that their daily intake is probably around 1600 calories, which the World Health Organization (WHO) describes as the minimum intake for the survival of a male adult. Since then, things have only gotten worse.

In the spring of 2003, all Texas death row inmates were moved to the Terrell Unit, later rebaptized Allan Polunsky Unit, in Livingston, near Houston, and since then the severity of the prison regime has increased dramatically.

The inmates cannot watch television anymore. They are allowed to have a radio, but the reception is often very poor in many of the cells and depends on a stellite dish whose position is constantly shifted. Only three (music) stations are available, alternatively Mexican or Rock/Country, and Rap. They used to be allowed to make use of a simple word processor, if they could afford one, but now they can only use primitive typewriters that Roger recently described as "just a step above a chisel and a rock." The typewriter ribbons they need are sold for an absurdly high price, and are of such poor quality that no more than about ten pages can be typed with one ribbon. The amount of stamps they are allowed to purchase diminishes each year.

They used to be able to play a game of volleyball, basketball, or chess during their daily recreation hour outside their cell, but since 2003 they spend that hour alone, just as they spend every hour of every day. They have been deprived of almost all their personal belongings. They used to be able to engage in creative art work, an activity that not only provided some relief and a (renewed) sense of self-worth, but was for many inmates a way to express their feelings of appreciation and love to family and friends. All that had been prohibited, with the exception of a few colour pencils and some paper and cardboard for those who can afford them. They are not allowed to do any work that could generate some income, which is depriving many of them of the only means they have to purchase even the most basic items of toiletry, such as toothpaste, a toothbrush, shaving cream and razor blades, a comb, shampoo, or soap for laundry (the clean clothes and sheets they get every week are often so filthy that they must be washed again, with cold water, in the tiny cell sinks).

Whenever the inmates are allowed to leave their 10 x 6.5 ft. cells, for example to go to the showers or to exercise on their own in the "dayroom" (see below), they are cuffed, sometimes shackled as well, and escorted by two guards. If they have a visitor, they are escorted in the same way, and led to a metallic cubicle of 3 x 3 x 6 ft. with a Plexiglas window for a non-contact visit. The only physical contact on Texas death row is that of the guards' hands restraining the arms of the inmate. After the visit, the inmate is strip searched before being escorted back to his cell.

The heating/air-conditioning system that regulates the temperature in the entire unit is more often than not out of order, or the thermostat is set so low in the winter months that the inmates suffer badly from the cold (they wear only light cotton pants and shirts-- the most fortunate ones own a sweatshirt-- and they have only one thin blanket for the sometimes intensely cold nights). During the summer months, the temperature often gets so high in the cells, 113 degrees (45 degrees C) or even higher on some days, that the inmates nearly suffocate. The same happens with the water in the showers, often icy cold in the winter, and scorching hot during the summer.

The daily routine on death row is highly disruptive and a source of constant stress for the inmates. It is never possible to sleep for more than two or three hours at a time. Unpleasant surprises and changes in the daily schedule are sprung on the inmates at all times, depriving them of one of the only things that could help them maintain some degree of balance and sanity: a sense of safety, and of relative control over what is left of their lives and their identity.

One can say, without overstating it, that everything in that prison is designed to make the lives of the death row inmates as miserable as possible. Every means to dehumanize and humiliate them seems to be put into practice. There is an ombudsman the inmates can send complaints to, but as soon as the guards know that a complaint has been received, they will take their revenge by any means on the inmate himself, or on a whole group. At least twice a year, a "lockdown" is enforced. A lockdown is a disciplinary, twenty-four hours/day confinement period, imposed on a whole wing of death row (60-63 inmates), or to the entire death row population, lasting usually from two to four weeks, during which the severity of the prison rules is intensified, and during which the only food served to the inmates would typically be two pieces of white bread with a little bit of peanut butter, three times a day.

Death row truly does justice to its name. It is a place where men, and a few women, are waiting, each in turn, in a row, for their institutional death, in the most inhuman circumstances imaginable in a modern democratic society.

A "typical" day for Roger

As Roger explains in his book, there is seldom what one could call a "typical" day, especially in an environment where inmates are purposely deprived of a regular schedule. However, many days can approximately enfold according to the following routine:

Roger frequently suffers from insomnia that can last for up to two-three nights. But normally he will get up at around 6 am, which means he will have missed breakfast, usually served at…3 am! At 6 am, the first change of guards takes place. Before that, between 5 and 6 am, the guards from the previous shift will have turned on all the lights and made the first roll call of the day; every inmate in turn must call his name and number, just to make sure nobody is missing. Half an hour later, the new shift guards repeat the whole procedure. Then Roger can start his day, usually with some physical exercise, a condition for survival for someone living 23 hours a day (and sometimes non-stop for days on end during a lockdown) in a 10 x 6.5 foot cell.

Lunch is usually served at around 9 am. After lunch, Roger often spends a long moment, if it is at all possible, in quiet prayer and meditation. He wrote once, in February, 2004: "I have to meditate and pray just about hourly, because it is almost impossible to set any kind of schedule in here. Every minute is a new reality that must be dealt with and prayed upon. So one learns to sort of pray on one's feet, so to speak. But I always pray for the same thing mostly: more love to be shared between mankind. I ask God to grant wisdom and insight to us all, that we may have clearer vision to see beyond the illusion." (Roger is referring here to the illusion or veil of material beliefs which prevent us from being aware of the ultimate reality, which many believe is purely spiritual in nature). "I pray so much through the day that I do it unconsciously. I study the Bible regularly. I try to keep from reading too much structured and organized religious material, because I feel in my heart I know what is expected of me by my Creator."

On most days, if inmates are not under a lockdown, Roger will have one hour to recreate, either in the prison yard—the only time the inmates ever leave the prison building, but even then they are confined in a roofless, enclosed space of roughly the same dimensions as their cell—or in what is called the "dayroom," an open room in the corridor next to the cells, where they have a little more space to move around. At some point during the day, he will normally have the possibility of taking a shower, in a tiny space close to the cells. Showers are frequently cancelled during lockdowns.

Inmates spend hours talking, or rather shouting, to each other through the small grid of their cell doors. Some inmates prefer to use the times between meals to take a nap if they can, read a book, pace back and forth in their cell, or write to family or pen pals. Roger spends a lot of time answering letters from friends around the world. But he also enjoys reading, which is actually the only way to "escape" death row for a while. The level of noise is almost constantly very high, day and night, with people shouting, heavy cell doors being slammed, inmates screaming at the tops of their lungs because they lost their sanity, or because they simply do not see any other way to express their frustration, fear, anxiety, anger, sadness, pain. At other times, there is a deathly silence that is almost as unnerving.

Dinner is served between 3:30 and 4 pm. The second change of guards will take place 6 pm, with again two roll calls. Any incoming mail will be distributed between 7 and 8 pm. Between midnight and 2 am, clean underwear, socks, pants, and shirts will be distributed a couple of times during the week, and once a week bed sheets (since 2008, the pillows have been integrated to the mattrasses, making it impossible to take them out or move them around). And at 3 am…breakfast is served… Welcome to a bright new day in the Allan Polunsky Unit!

Click here to see recent pictures of the 'living' conditions on Texas death row.

Source: Roger McGowen's Website, April 15, 2009