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The Leader of Europe's 'Last Dictatorship' Is Facing an Unprecedented Challenge. Here's What It Could Mean for Belarus

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Europe’s longest serving leader Alexander Lukashenko has long worked hard to seem invincible. He has dominated past elections that the U.S. has deemed neither free nor fair and brokered no dissent and suppressed protests. Now, he is facing an unprecedented challenge as he runs for a sixth term as president of Belarus in elections on August 9. A former teacher and political novice, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, has emerged as his main rival, pledging to topple Lukashenko’s regime and restore democracy.
Tens of thousands have rallied across Belarus in some of the country’s biggest opposition protests in a decade, amid mounting frustration over the government’s mishandling of the COVID-19 crisis, combined with grievances about the economy. Referring to Lukashenko, protestors chanted ‘stop the cockroach’ and held placards reading ‘change!’.
“For the first time in his 26-year rule, Lukashenko knows the majority don’t support him,” says Aleksandr Feduta, a former aide to the incumbent, who was i…

Saudi Arabia: death row Filipino may be saved by blood money

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The Saudi Reconciliation Committee (SRC) has announced that 37-year-old Rodelio “Don Don” Lanuza who is on death row and currently detained at the Dammam Central Jail could be saved from execution if blood money is paid to the family of his victim in two months' time.

“A member of the SRC told me on Monday that it took them six years to convince the aggrieved family to forgive Lanuza in exchange for blood money,” John Leonard Monterona, Migrante-Middle East regional coordinator, told Arab News on Tuesday.

Lanuza was convicted of and detained in November 2000 for killing a Saudi national in what he claimed was self-defense.

Monterona added, however, that Lanuza is worried that the aggrieved family may change their mind unless the money is paid.

“On behalf of Lanuza and his wife and 2 kids, Migrante-Middle East is calling on President Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino lll to raise the needed money,” he said.

He added that this is a good opportunity for him to prove his critics wrong in saying that he's not giving enough attention to the concerns of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs).

On Sunday, Migrante-Middle East gave a “failing grade to President Aquino for unsatisfactory rating in his first year in office."

Monterona said that on Monday, he received a text message from Lanuza saying that the “embassy seemed to be sleeping on his case.” Arab News called Ambassador-designate Ezzedin H. Tago to get the embassy’s side but he was out of the Kingdom.

Monterona also said the SRC told him that no embassy representative attended the meeting on Monday night, during which an update on the blood money would have been discussed.

Other OFWs on death row and whose cases being monitored by Migrante-Middle East include brothers Rolando and Edison Gonzales, Eduardo Arcilla, Joselito Zapanta, Carlito Rana.

Source: Arab News, June 29, 2011
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Saudi Arabia | Execution caught on video

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A Saudi newspaper has carried a film showing the beheading of a man convicted of raping a teenaged boy before murdering him in the heart of the desert.
The rare and shocking 51-second film showed the executioner bringing down his sword on the defendant’s head, which was severed in just a split of second.
The executioner, a tall man wearing traditional Saudi dishdasha (gown) and ghutra (head cover), then wiped blood off his sword with a piece of cloth after the beheading before walking away from the rapist’s headless body.
Sharq newspaper, which published the film, did not say how it was shot as filming of executions in the conservative Gulf kingdom is banned.
Newspapers said the unnamed defendant had been convicted of abducting the Saudi boy to a desolate desert area and raping him. He then forced him to lie on the sand and crushed him with his four-wheel car.
Warning: Graphic Content


✔ RELATED VIDEO: Execution by the sword of a Burmese womanWarning: This Video Contains Extremely Dist…
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Texas executes Dale Devon Scheanette

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A Louisiana man condemned for strangling and drowning a suburban Dallas woman, charged with the slaying of a 2nd and blamed for the rapes of at least five other women was executed Tuesday evening.

Asked if he had any final statement, Dale Devon Scheanette paused and said, "My only statement is that no cases ever tried have been error free. Those are my words. No cases are error free."

Scheanette then told the warden he could proceed. He selected no witnesses for his death. 6 relatives of his 2 murder victims watched as he took his final breath. He never looked at them.

9 minutes after the lethal drugs began to flow, he was pronounced dead at 6:21 p.m.

Scheanette, 35, became known as the "Bathtub Killer" after 2 women at the same apartment complex in Arlington in 1996 were found dead in half-filled bathtubs, strangled, raped and bound with duct tape.

He was sent to death row for the Christmas Eve 1996 slaying of Wendie Prescott, 22, and charged but not tried for ki…
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Ohio executes Reginald Brooks

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Reginald Brooks’ execution was carried out. His time of death was 2:04 p.m.
An Ohio man who killed his three sons after his wife served him with divorce papers was executed Tuesday afternoon, after exhausting his final appeals, according to officials.
Reginald Brooks, who has spent nearly three decades on death row, was convicted of shooting to death each of his three sons, aged 11, 15 and 17, while they were in their beds in East Cleveland in 1982. His wife had served him with divorce papers two days before the killings.
Defense lawyers have argued that Brooks was a paranoid schizophrenic and suffered from mental illness before he killed his sons. He was denied clemency by both the Ohio Parole Board and Kasich.
Brooks, 66, was the oldest person put to death since Ohio resumed executions in 1999.
Brooks was the first person to be put to death in Ohio since a federal judge delayed the execution of Kenneth Smith in July and came after the state issued revised execution procedures in Septembe…
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Iran | Female Prisoner executed in Mashhad

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Iran Human Rights (IHR); August 7, 2020: A woman sentenced to qisas (retribution in-kind) for murder has been executed at Mashhad Central Prison.
According to the Khorasan newspaper website, on the morning of Sunday, August 2, a woman was executed in Mashhad Central Prison. 
The woman, who has only been identified as 32-year-old Mehri, had been sentenced to death for “murdering her husband.”
According to the article, Mehri killed her 36-year-old husband with a knife after a verbal argument had started over another woman.
According to Iran Human Rights’ annual report, at least 225 of the 280 of those executed in 2019 were charged with "premeditated murder." 
As there are no legal distinctions made between murder and manslaughter, whether voluntary or involuntary in Iran, those charged under the umbrella term of “premeditated murder” will receive the death penalty regardless of intent and the circumstances.
Source:Iran Human Rights, Staff, August 7, 2020


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California executions on hold, but coronavirus killing San Quentin inmates

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In June, on death row at San Quentin State Prison, 58-year-old Jarvis Masters heard a rumor that the coronavirus was ripping through the aging structure. Condemned prisoners are confined to their cells for 23 hours a day, so Masters tracked the outbreak by watching news reports on his small personal TV.
He watched as 100 cases swelled to 300 in 2 days, then 1,000. Then he started to cough. Masters soon felt like he couldn’t breathe.
Over the next 2 weeks, as calls of “man down!” rang out every few hours, several of his neighbors disappeared and didn’t come back. Staff pulled them from their cells, leaving their TV sets on to drone.
“It’s like a crime scene,” said Masters, who has been on death row since 1990.
Less than 2 years ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom halted executions of condemned prisoners, saying the death penalty system is prone to error and is a “failure.” California has faced challenges to its lethal injection protocol and has not executed a prisoner since 2006.
Now the virus has…
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Vietnam | Singaporean drug trafficker gets death sentence

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The People’s Court of the southwestern border province of Tay Ninh on August 7 handed a death penalty to a 40-year-old Singaporean man for drug trafficking. According to the indictment, Cher Wei Hon was caught in Loi Thuan commune, Ben Cau district, Tay Ninh province, on June 29, 2019, along with nearly 10kg of drugs, and 27-year-old driver Duong Hung Tam from Tan Bien ward, Tan Bien district, also Tay Ninh province.
The Singaporean man confessed that he was hired by a woman named Quynh in Ho Chi Minh City to transport the drugs from Cambodia to Vietnam to get 500-1,000 USD for each trip.
Cher said he had transported drugs from Cambodia to HCM City at the request of Quynh for about five times.
Meanwhile, Tam denied any discussions with Cher about the drugs, saying he is only the driver of Quynh. 
There is no evidence proving he is Cher’s accomplice.
Source:vietnamnet.vn, Staff, August 8, 2020


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USA | Angela McAnulty, Only Woman on Oregon’s Death Row, Resentenced to Life in Prison

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The only woman on Oregon’s death row has been resentenced to life in prison.  On August 3, 2020, the Lane County Circuit Court accepted a settlement agreement in which Lane County prosecutors agreed to drop their appeal of a 2019 ruling overturning the death sentence imposed on Angela McAnulty in February 2011 and McAnulty agreed to drop her appeals of her murder conviction.
McAnulty is the only woman to have been sentenced to death in the state of Oregon since voters reinstated capital punishment in the state in 1984.
McAnulty was sentenced to death for the aggravated murder of her 15-year-old daughter, Jeanette Maples, in 2009. She was represented at trial by court-appointed counsel Kenneth Hadley and Steven Krasik, who were simultaneously handling a second capital case in which Joshua and Bruce Turnidge were sentenced to death in Marion County for a fatal bank bombing in Woodburn, Oregon. The Turnidge case concluded December 22, 2010 and, expecting Lane County prosecutors to offer…
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Iran | Young woman, 32, hanged in Mashhad after 6 years on death row

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A young woman, 32, was hanged in the Central Prison of Mashhad on Sunday, August 2, 2020. The woman identified only by her 1st name, Mehri, had already served 6 years in prison on the death row.
The state-run Shahraranews.ir reported the woman’s execution on Tuesday, August 4, 2020. The executed woman was accused of murdering her husband.
The Iranian Resistance has registered 106 women executed during the tenure of the mullahs’ President, Hassan Rouhani, since he took office in 2013.
The substantiated information is based on the news and information published in the state-run media in Iran, human rights activists, and other reliable sources inside Iran with ties to the Iranian opposition movement. The actual figure must be considered higher, as most executions in Iran are carried out secretly out of the public eye with no witnesses but the executioners who carry them out.
The Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran has published a list of the women executed du…
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The Leader of Europe's 'Last Dictatorship' Is Facing an Unprecedented Challenge. Here's What It Could Mean for Belarus

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Europe’s longest serving leader Alexander Lukashenko has long worked hard to seem invincible. He has dominated past elections that the U.S. has deemed neither free nor fair and brokered no dissent and suppressed protests. Now, he is facing an unprecedented challenge as he runs for a sixth term as president of Belarus in elections on August 9. A former teacher and political novice, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, has emerged as his main rival, pledging to topple Lukashenko’s regime and restore democracy.
Tens of thousands have rallied across Belarus in some of the country’s biggest opposition protests in a decade, amid mounting frustration over the government’s mishandling of the COVID-19 crisis, combined with grievances about the economy. Referring to Lukashenko, protestors chanted ‘stop the cockroach’ and held placards reading ‘change!’.
“For the first time in his 26-year rule, Lukashenko knows the majority don’t support him,” says Aleksandr Feduta, a former aide to the incumbent, who was i…
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USA | Execution set for sole Native American on federal death row

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The only Native American on federal death row is scheduled to be executed in late August, the U.S. government announced July 29.
Lezmond Mitchell, who is Navajo, had been among the first of a handful of inmates set to be put to death after the Trump administration restored federal executions after an informal, 17-year moratorium. Mitchell has been spared temporarily by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals where his attorneys argued they should be able to interview jurors for potential racial bias.
Mitchell lost the bid in late April, but the case hasn't technically been closed, preserving a stay of execution. His attorneys have asked the appeals court to essentially keep the stay in place while they seek review at the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. attorney in Arizona urged the appeals court July 29 to make a quick decision.
The execution date for Mitchell, who was convicted of the 2001 murder of a Navajo woman and her 9-year-old granddaughter, now is Aug. 26 at the Federal Correc…
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