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As clock ticks toward another Trump presidency, federal death row prisoners appeal for clemency

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President-elect Donald Trump’s return to office is putting a spotlight on the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, which houses federal death row. In Bloomington, a small community of death row spiritual advisors is struggling to support the prisoners to whom they minister.  Ross Martinie Eiler is a Mennonite, Episcopal lay minister and member of the Catholic Worker movement, which assists the homeless. And for the past three years, he’s served as a spiritual advisor for a man on federal death row.
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Iran: Stop the Executions of Zeynab Jalalian and Hossein Khezri

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Zeynab Jalalian and Hossein Khezri are awaiting execution in Iran. Their crime? "Enmity against God."

They are both members of the minority Party for Free Life of Kurdistan, and the Iranian government is using this catch-all phrase to persecute political dissenters under the guise of a religious charge.


Their sentencing is unjust, their treatment while imprisoned atrocious: Jalalian was granted only a few minutes of access to her lawyer and was told to "shut up" when she asked to say goodbye to her mother.

The EU "is profoundly concerned by the repeated sentencing to death in Iran of people belonging to minorities, as well as of those involved in the post-election protests." Five people were hanged for similar "offenses" on May 9.

These prisoners, and the Iranian people, deserve a fair government, fair trials, and the right to express basic human rights without punishment.


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