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Communist Vietnam's secret death penalty conveyor belt: How country trails only China and Iran for 'astonishing' number of executions

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Prisoners are dragged from their cells at 4am without warning to be given a lethal injection Vietnam's use of the death penalty has been thrust into the spotlight after a real estate tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to be executed in one of the biggest corruption cases in the country's history. Truong My Lan, a businesswoman who chaired a sprawling company that developed luxury apartments, hotels, offices and shopping malls, was arrested in 2022.

China to review murder case 19 years after execution

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Execution in China (file photo)
BEIJING, Dec. 12 (Xinhua) -- China's Supreme People's Court (SPC) has decided to review a rape-murder case 19 years after the convict was executed, as another man insists he is is guilty.

Shandong Higher People's Court will review the case of Nie Shubin and Wang Shujin. Nie was executed in 1995 at the age of 21 for the 1994 rape and murder of a woman in Hebei's provincial capital, Shijiazhuang.

Wang Shujin, 47, was apprehended by police in 2005 for three unconnected rape and murder cases, and confessed to the rape and murder of the same woman in Nie's case.

Wang, sentenced to death in March 2007, claimed that he raped and murdered a woman in a cornfield on the outskirts of Shijiazhuang in 1994 and Nie was innocent. 

Hebei Higher People's Court, which approved the death penalty on Nie in 1995, did not believe his claim in a retrial last year and Nie's verdict still stands.

Wang's claims have raised public questions of judicial impartiality.

The review of Nie's case is aimed at "ensuring judicial fairness and responding to public concerns," according to the SPC's announcement.

Source: Xinhua, December 13, 2014
Location: China
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