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Biden Fails a Death Penalty Abolitionist’s Most Important Test

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The mystery of Joe Biden’s views about capital punishment has finally been solved. His decision to grant clemency to 37 of the 40 people on federal death row shows the depth of his opposition to the death penalty. And his decision to leave three of America’s most notorious killers to be executed by a future administration shows the limits of his abolitionist commitment. The three men excluded from Biden’s mass clemency—Dylann Roof, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Robert Bowers—would no doubt pose a severe test of anyone’s resolve to end the death penalty. Biden failed that test.
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Campaign Intensifies in Iran to Spare a Kurdish Activist

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As reports circulated Tuesday that Iran was preparing to execute a 27-year-old Kurdish activist, the campaign to save her life intensified, with a prominent opposition figure publicly urging the authorities to show compassion.

“Does she deserve her punishment or is it better to give everyone, especially women and the youth, an opportunity to find their position in life, and in political and social establishment?” said a statement released by Zahra Rahnavard, a distinguished professor and artist who is married to the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi.

The activist, Zeinab Jalalian, was arrested in May 2008 in the Kuridsh city of Kermanshah and accused of having ties to a Kurdish rebel group, PJAK, which has carried out armed attacks in Iran. She was convicted of moharebeh, meaning waging war against God, and the death sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court.

Human rights and opposition Web sites have circulated reports that her execution may be imminent. A Tehran lawyer who is blocked from formally representing her said by telephone that she faced “death any minute.”

The lawyer, Khalil Bahramian, has urged her supporters to write to the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, to try to intervene. He has not been allowed to meet with Ms. Jalalian, so she has never signed the legal papers Iran requires for his representation to be recognized.

Nine political activists — among them 7 Kurds — have been put to death since last year, when antigovernment protests began. At least 15 other Kurdish activists are on death row.

The wave of executions has raised the specter of 1988, when the government executed more than 3,000 political prisoners.

Some rights experts say that the possibility of another flood of executions has deeply stirred public emotions. “It looks like people feel if they tolerate one execution, there will be a flood of them,” said Hadi Ghaemi, director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, based in New York.

Source: The New York Times, June 29, 2010
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