Skip to main content

South African Janice Linden executed in China

Janice Bronwyn Linden
China has executed a South African woman for drug smuggling, rejecting an appeal by President Jacob Zuma to spare her life, an official says.

Janice Bronwyn Linden, 38, was executed more than three years after her arrest.

Human rights groups have repeatedly condemned China for imposing the death penalty, saying its legal system did not guarantee a fair trial.

South Africa's government said the execution would not affect its close diplomatic relations with China.

Chinese authorities allowed two of Ms Linden's sisters to spend an hour with her before she was executed with a lethal injection, South Africa's privately owned e.News reports, quoting a correspondent in China.

'Not enough done'

Ms Linden was arrested in November 2008 after being found in possession of 3kg of methamphetamine on her arrival at the airport in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou.

She maintained her innocence, saying the drugs had been planted in her suitcase.

However, both the Guangdong High Court and the Supreme Court in Beijing rejected her appeal.

A spokesman for South Africa's Department of International Relations and Cooperation, Clayson Monyela, told the BBC that Mr Zuma had intervened in a bid to commute the death sentence to a life sentence.

"All the necessary interventions were done at every possible level, even the highest ones," Mr Monyela said.

The Chinese authorities would hand her ashes to her family, following her cremation, in accordance with an arrangement made between the two states, he said.

A foreign affairs spokesman for South Africa's opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) party, Stevens Mokgalapa, said the government had not done enough to save Ms Linden's life, South Africa's privately owned Times Lives reports.

"A commitment to human rights is a guiding principle of South Africa's international relations," he is quoted as saying.

"There has been little evidence of this commitment in our dealings with China of late."

Amnesty International has repeatedly appealed to China to halt the death penalty.

The human rights group argues that no-one sentenced to death receives a fair trial in China, where thousands are people are executed for drug trafficking every year - more than the rest of the world combined


Source: BBC News, December 12, 2011


Linden family lashes out at Chinese govt

The family members of Janice Bronwyn Linden, who was executed in China for alleged drug smuggling, say they are unhappy about the way that country's government handled her case.

Speaking on behalf of the family, Ntando Mthalane says the family does not believe that she was a drug mule. Thirty five-year-old Linden, who comes from KwaZulu- Natal, was executed by lethal injection yesterday. She was arrested in Guangzhou in November 2008 after she was caught with three kilograms of crystal methamphetamine in her luggage. Mthalane says they don't believe Linden was a drug mule.

He says the fact that she pleaded her innocence right till the end is also proof that in itself, "Because if you know that you are guilty, a sure point your conscience does play a role, and make you say sure okay I'm guilty of the crime, I will rather have a life sentence than to die. Sure something I know I did not do. It was not fair," said Mthalane.

Meanwhile, a Grahamstown woman is the latest South African to be arrested for drug smuggling. Twenty-three year old Nolubabalo Nobanda was arrested at Bangkok international airport last night. She is the 12th South African to be arrested on drug trafficking charges in Thailand this year.

The South African drug mule smuggled a kilogram and a half of cocaine braided into her dreadlocks. Alert customs officials noticed white powder in her hair. She's understood to have admitted smuggling the drugs, valued at close to R2 million for a fee of R16 000.

Back home - her family is devastated. Friends and family want government to intervene. A friend, Asanda Gqeke, says she saw her two weeks ago and she said she was going to Brazil. South Africa's Ambassador to Thailand, Douglas Gibson has confirmed the arrest. Gibson will speak to her once she's taken to an awaiting trial prison.

A group called The Locked-Up Campaign has been pushing for stronger government intervention. It says the use of South African drug mules is spiraling out of control. About 600 South Africans have been arrested around the world for alleged drug trafficking since March this year. The risks for carrying illegal substances across most borders are extremely high, with harsh jail terms and possibly even the death penalty.

Source: SABC, December 13, 2011

Related articles:
15 hours ago
Janice Bronwyn Linden, 35, from KwaZulu-Natal is due to be executed on Monday by the Chinese government after she was caught carrying three kilograms of crystal methamphetamine at an airport in that country in ...
Apr 09, 2010
Janice Bronwyn Linden, 35, was caught at the airport in the southern city of Guangzhou in November 2008 with more than three kilos of 'ice', or crystal methamphetamine, the Xinhua news agency said. She was sentenced on...

Recommended articles: 
"Photos: The final 12 hours of Chinese women on death row", Ministry of Tofu, November 29, 2011

Labels

Labels:
Location: China

Most viewed (Last 7 days)

'No Warning': The Death Penalty In Japan

Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite criticism over how it is carried out. Tokyo: Capital punishment in Japan is under scrutiny again after the world's longest-serving death row prisoner, Iwao Hakamada, was awarded $1.4 million in compensation this week following his acquittal last year in a retrial. Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite international criticism over how it is carried out.
Post a Comment
Read more

USA | Federal death penalty possible for Mexican cartel boss behind 1985 DEA agent killing

Rafael Caro Quintero, extradited from Mexico in 2022, appeared in Brooklyn court as feds weigh capital charges for the torture and murder of Agent Enrique Camarena NEW YORK — The death penalty is on the table for notorious drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, the so-called “narco of narcos” who orchestrated the torture and murder of a DEA agent in 1985, according to federal prosecutors. “It is a possibility. The decision has not yet been made, but it is going through the process,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Saritha Komatireddy said in Brooklyn Federal Court Wednesday.
Post a Comment
Read more

Execution date set for prisoner transferred to Oklahoma to face death penalty

An inmate who was transferred to Oklahoma last month to face the death penalty now has an execution date. George John Hanson, also known as John Fitzgerald Hanson, is scheduled to die on June 12 for the 1999 murder of 77-year-old Mary Bowles.  The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday set the execution date. The state’s Pardon and Parole Board has a tentative date of May 7 for Hanson’s clemency hearing, executive director Tom Bates said.
Read more

Inside Florida's Death Row: A dark cloud over the Sunshine State

Florida's death penalty system has faced numerous criticisms and controversies over the years - from execution methods to the treatment of Death Row inmates The Sunshine State remains steadfast in its enforcement of capital punishment, upholding a complex system that has developed since its reinstatement in 1976. Florida's contemporary death penalty era kicked off in 1972 following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Furman v. Georgia , which temporarily put a stop to executions across the country. Swiftly amending its laws, Florida saw the Supreme Court affirm the constitutionality of the death penalty in 1976's Gregg v. Georgia case.
Post a Comment
Read more

Louisiana's First Nitrogen Execution Reflects Broader Method Shift

Facing imminent execution by lethal gas earlier this week, Jessie Hoffman Jr. — a Louisiana man convicted of abducting, raping and murdering a 28-year-old woman in 1996 — went to court with a request: Please allow me to be shot instead. In a petition filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on March 16 seeking a stay of his execution by nitrogen hypoxia, a protocol that had yet to be tested in the state, Hoffman requested execution by firing squad as an alternative.
Post a Comment
Read more

A second South Carolina death row inmate chooses execution by firing squad

Columbia, S.C. — A South Carolina death row inmate on Friday chose execution by firing squad, just five weeks after the state carried out its first death by bullets. Mikal Mahdi, who pleaded guilty to murder for killing a police officer in 2004, is scheduled to be executed April 11. Mahdi, 41, had the choice of dying by firing squad, lethal injection or the electric chair. He will be the first inmate to be executed in the state since Brad Sigmon chose to be shot to death on March 7. A doctor pronounced Sigmon dead less than three minutes after three bullets tore into his heart.
Post a Comment
Read more

Bangladesh | Botswana Woman Executed for Drug Trafficking

Dhaka, Bangladesh – Lesedi Molapisi, a Botswana national convicted of drug trafficking, was executed in Bangladesh on Friday, 21 March 2025. The 31-year-old was hanged at Dhaka Central Jail after exhausting all legal avenues to appeal her death sentence. Molapisi was arrested in January 2023 upon arrival at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka, where customs officials discovered 3.1 kilograms of heroin hidden in her luggage. Following a trial under Bangladesh’s Narcotics Control Act, she was sentenced to death in May 2024. Her execution was initially delayed due to political unrest in the country but was carried out last week.
Post a Comment
Read more

564 People On Death Row In India, Highest Since The Turn Of The Century

In 90% of of all death penalty sentences in 2024, trial courts imposed sentences in the absence of adequate information about the accused, finds a recent report Bengaluru: Following the uproar and the widespread protests after the August 2024 rape and murder of a medical professional in Kolkata’s RG Kar hospital, there were demands for death penalty for the accused. The state government passed the Aparajita Woman and Child (West Bengal Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill 2024 (awaiting presidential assent) which included mandatory death sentence for rape which results in death of the victim or if the victim is left in a vegetative state, despite such a mandatory sentence being unconstitutional.
Post a Comment
Read more

South Carolina | Spiritual adviser of condemned inmate: 'We're more than the worst thing we've done'

(RNS) — When 67-year-old Brad Sigmon was put to death on March 7 in South Carolina for the murder of his then-girlfriend's parents, it was the first time in 15 years that an execution in the United States had been carried out by a firing squad. United Methodist minister Hillary Taylor, Sigmon's spiritual adviser since 2020, said the multifaceted, months long effort to save Sigmon's life, and to provide emotional and spiritual support for his legal team, and the aftermath of his execution has been a "whirlwind" said Taylor, the director of South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
1 comment
Read more

Arizona | The cruelty of isolation: There’s nothing ‘humane’ about how we treat the condemned

On March 19, I served as a witness to the execution of a man named Aaron Gunches, Arizona’s first since 2022. During his time on death row, he begged for death and was ultimately granted what is likely more appropriately described as an emotionless state-assisted suicide. This experience has profoundly impacted me, leading to deep reflection on the nature of death, humanity, and the role we play in our final moments. When someone is in the end stages of life, we talk about hospice care, comfort, care, easing suffering and humane death. We strive for a “good death” — a peaceful transition. I’ve seen good ones, and I’ve seen bad, unplanned ones. 
Post a Comment
Read more