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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.

Egypt court confirms death sentence of Islamist extremist

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Cairo, Egypt
Cairo, Egypt
An Egyptian top court confirmed on Saturday as a final verdict the death sentence against Islamist extremist Adel Habbara over a 2013 deadly anti-security attack in Sinai, official MENA news agency reported.

The Court of Cassation rejected Habbara's appeal against his death penalty and handed 15 other fellow convicts various jail terms in the case known by the Egyptian media as "Rafah 2nd massacre."

The case dates back to Aug. 19, 2013, when militants gunned down 25 military conscripts after they stopped their 2 vehicles in Rafah city of restive North Sinai province bordering Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

The court convicted the defendants of deliberate murder, terrorism, espionage, vandalism, resistance of the authorities and possession of weapons , ammunition and explosives.

North Sinai has been the springboard of anti-government armed attacks since the military removed former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 following mass protests against his 1-year controversial rule and his now-blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood group.

Later security crackdown on Morsi's followers left about 1,000 of them killed and thousands more arrested, while terrorist attacks killed several hundreds of police and military men.

"Sinai State," a Sinai-based militant group loyal to the Islamic State (IS) regional terrorist group, claimed responsibility for most of the anti-government attacks.

A security campaign in Sinai killed over 1,200 militants and arrested a similar number of suspects over the past couple of years as part of the country's "anti-terror war," declared by former military chief and current President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi following Morsi's ouster.

On Friday, a bomb attack on a checkpoint in Cairo killed 6 policemen and wounded 3 others. A newly-emerged militant group calling itself "Hasm Movement" claimed responsibility for this attack via an online post as it claimed several others in recent months.

Source: Global Times, December 11, 2016

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