URGENT APPEAL to the Palestinian Authority for 4 men facing execution

At least four men from Gaza City are facing execution in the Gaza Strip. One of them, Na'el Jamal Qandil Doghmosh, was sentenced to death after, according to his family, he was tortured to make him "confess" to a murder.

Na'el Jamal Qandil Doghmosh could be executed at any time, by hanging. Sentenced to death for murder in April 2011, his final appeal was rejected by the Court of Cassation on 13 May 2012. According to his family, he "confessed" under torture by police investigators after he was arrested on 9 May 2010, aged 18. When his family was first able to visit him two months later, his nails had been torn out and he had burns and bruises on his body.

According to the local human rights NGO Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), another man, known only as F.T.W., also faces execution by hanging for murder. His sentence was confirmed on 21 May by the Court of Cassation. Thirty-eight-year-old J.Z.J. may also be executed at any time, by firing squad: his appeal to the Military High Court was rejected on 14 February 2012.

Another man, known only as A.M.A., was convicted on 11 January 2012 by the Permanent Military Court of "collaboration" with the Israeli army and murder. Though he has an appeal pending in the military court against his sentence to death by hanging, Amnesty International is gravely concerned that he will face execution in the near future if his appeal is unsuccessful.

The Hamas de facto administration in the Gaza Strip executed three men by hanging on 7 April: Mohammed Baraka, from Deir al-Balah, who was convicted of murder, W.K.J., from al-Bureij refugee camp, convicted of treason and being an accessory to murder, and M.J.A., convicted of abduction and murder. Soon after the executions, Hamas officials stated that anyone found to have collaborated with Israel would be executed as a deterrent against such "treasonous" activities.

Please write immediately:

- Urging the authorities to ensure that the death sentences of the four men (naming them) are not carried out, and that all death sentences are commuted;

- Expressing concern at the allegations that Na'el Jamal Qandil Doghmosh "confessed" under torture and urging the authorities to investigate thoroughly these claims and bring anyone responsible to justice;

- Urging them to take steps to abolish the death penalty, for which no convincing evidence has ever been produced to show that it is a more effective deterrent than other forms of punishment.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE 9 JULY 2012 TO:

Minister of Justice

Muhammad Faraj al-Ghoul

HAMAS DE FACTO ADMINISTRATION IN GAZA

VIA ISRAEL

Fax: 011 970 8 288 0103 -OR- 011 970 8 282 2008 -OR- 011 970 8 288 1818

Please fax before 2pm Palestine time (GMT+2) and please keep trying. 011 970 and 011 972 may both work as country codes

Salutation: Dear Mr. al-Ghoul

Head of the High Council of Justices

Abdel Raouf al-Halabi

Email: hjc27117@moj.ps

Salutation: Dear Judge al-Halabi

Prime Minister

Isma'il Abd al-Salam Ahmad Haniyeh

HAMAS DE FACTO ADMINISTRATION IN GAZA

VIA ISRAEL

Fax: 011 972 8 288 4815

Salutation: Dear Mr. Haniyeh

Also send copies to:

Chief Representative Maen Rashid Areikat

Palestine Liberation Organization Office

1320 18th St NW Suite 200

Washington, DC 20036

Phone: 1 202 974 6360

Fax: 1 202 974 6278

Email: plomission1@aol.com

Twitter: @plodelegationus

Please check with the AIUSA Urgent Action Office if sending appeals after the above date.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has jurisdiction over the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank, which make up the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), all of which are under Israeli military occupation. However, intra-Palestinian factional violence and tensions between Fatah and Hamas, the Palestinian party which won the last parliamentary elections in 2006, resulted in the West Bank being governed by a caretaker government appointed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas and, as of June 2007, Gaza being governed by the Hamas de facto administration led by Isma'il Haniyeh.

Following Hamas' takeover of Gaza, PA President Mahmoud Abbas suspended the operations of PA security forces and judicial institutions in Gaza, creating a legal and institutional vacuum there. Hamas responded by creating a parallel law-enforcement and judicial apparatus. These lack appropriately trained personnel, accountability mechanisms or safeguards.

Under Palestinian law, all death sentences must be ratified by President Mahmoud Abbas before they can be carried out. However, the Hamas de facto administration has been carrying out executions without the requisite approval of the president. Many of the death sentences are imposed by military courts, under the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Revolutionary Code 1979, whose procedures do not meet international standards for fair trials.

Though no executions were carried out in Gaza between 2006 and 2009, the Hamas administration is known to have executed 11 people since 2010. There are around 30 Palestinians on death row, at least some of whom have been convicted after unfair trials, particularly before the military courts. Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees is routine in Gaza. During 2011, the local human rights organization the Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR) reported receiving over 100 allegations of torture in detention by various security agencies in Gaza and 100 allegations of torture by the police in Gaza.

Names: Na'el Jamal Qandil Doghmosh (m), F.T.W. (m), J.Z.J (m), A.M.A(m)

Issues: Legal concern, Imminent execution, Torture

---------------------------------

** POSTAGE RATES **

Within the United States:

$0.32 - Postcards

$0.45 - Letters and Cards (up to 1 oz.)

To Canada:

$0.85 - Postcards

$0.85 - Airmail Letters and Cards (up to 1 oz.)

To Mexico:

$0.85 - Postcards

$0.85 - Airmail Letters and Cards (up to 1 oz.)

To all other destination countries:

$1.05 - Postcards

$1.05 - Airmail Letters and Cards (up to 1 oz.)

Amnesty International is a worldwide grassroots movement that promotes and defends human rights.

This Urgent Action may be reposted if kept intact, including contact information and stop action date (if applicable). Thank you for your help with this appeal.

Urgent Action Network

Amnesty International USA

600 Pennsylvania Ave SE 5th fl

Washington DC 20003

Email: uan@aiusa.org

http://www.amnestyusa.org/uan

Phone: 202.509.8193

Fax: 202.675.8566

----------------------------------

END OF URGENT ACTION APPEAL

Tennessee | Questions Raised About the Doctor Who Was Overseeing Tony Caruthers’ Execution

Mark Fowler, according to a deposition, had not placed a central line in a patient for more than a decade when he attempted to put one in Carruthers Around 11 a.m. Thursday morning in the execution chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, a medical doctor stepped in and attempted to place a central IV line in Tony Carruthers’ chest. By that point, the prison staff had spent some 30 minutes trying unsuccessfully to insert a backup IV line that would allow them to proceed with the lethal injection. According to Carruthers’ attorney Maria DeLiberato, who was in the room, after asking a staff member to attempt inserting a line through Carruthers’ jugular vein, the doctor moved on to the central line, which is identified as the last resort in Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol .

Oklahoma | Richard Glossip on Life After Decades on Death Row

In an exclusive interview at home in Oklahoma City, Glossip describes his first days of freedom in a world he hasn’t experienced for nearly 30 years. For three decades, Richard Glossip lived on concrete. First at the Oklahoma County jail, after his arrest for murder in 1997, and then in the underground bunker housing death row inmates at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. As with the rest of his surroundings, he eventually got used to the hard, unforgiving floors, although recently he’d developed painful swelling in his legs.

China Executed 2,400 People in 2013, Dui Hua

A Chinese police officer lights a last cigarette for an inmate moments before his execution. The Dui Hua Foundation estimates that China executed approximately 2,400 people in 2013 and will execute roughly the same number of people in 2014. Annual declines in executions recorded in recent years are likely to be offset in 2014 by the use of capital punishment in anti-terrorism campaigns in Xinjiang and the anti-corruption campaign nationwide. Dui Hua bases its 2013 estimate on data points published in Southern Weekly that are consistent with information provided to Dui Hua by a judicial official earlier this year. The mainland magazine reported that a former senior judge of the Supreme People's Court (SPC) stated at a seminar in July that the number of executions had reached 1/10 of the highest number recorded since 1979. In 1983 - the 1st year of the Strike Hard campaign during which the power to approve capital punishment was given to provincial high courts - 2...

20 Minutes to Death: Witness to the Last Execution in France

The following document is a firsthand account of the final moments of Hamida Djandoubi, a convicted murderer executed by guillotine at Marseille’s Baumettes Prison on September 10, 1977. The record—dated September 9—was written by Monique Mabelly, a judge appointed by the state to witness the proceedings. Djandoubi’s execution would ultimately be the last carried out in France before capital punishment was abolished in 1981. At the time, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing—who had publicly voiced his "deep aversion to the death penalty" prior to his election—rejected Djandoubi’s appeal for clemency. Choosing to let "justice take its course," the President allowed the execution to proceed, just as he had in two previous cases during his term: Christian Ranucci , executed on July 28, 1976 and Jérôme Carrein , executed on June 23, 1977. Hamida Djandoubi , a Tunisian national, was sentenced to death for killing his former lover, Elisabeth Bousquet. He was execu...

New Mississippi billboard warns criminals: ‘Firing squad is legal’

DESOTO COUNTY, Miss. (WREG) — A billboard standing on Interstate 55 southbound as you cross the Tennessee state line and enter Mississippi from Memphis is sending a grim message to those coming into the state. DeSoto County District Attorney Matthew Barton recently announced the new billboard campaign, which features the sign reading, “WELCOME TO MISSISSIPPI. WHERE THE FIRING SQUAD IS LEGAL. THINK TWICE.” It references Mississippi’s law permitting execution by firing squad under certain circumstances for inmates sentenced to death. Barton says this campaign is aimed at deterring violent crime and sends a direct message to criminals entering Mississippi.

EU GSP+ Reform: Will Brussels Finally Enforce Its Own Conditions on Pakistan?

The EU has tightened the rules governing GSP+ trade preferences, but Pakistan’s record raises a harder question: whether Brussels is prepared to suspend market access when a major beneficiary fails to demonstrate sustained compliance with human rights, labour and governance obligations. The European Union has formally adopted revised rules for its Generalised Scheme of Preferences, strengthening the conditions attached to preferential market access for developing countries. The new framework will apply from 1 January 2027 and is intended to tighten monitoring, widen the list of international conventions, and make suspension of benefits easier in cases of serious violations.

Iraq: German schoolgirl, 17, turned jihadi bride escapes death penalty and is jailed for six years

GERMAN Jihadi bride Linda Wenzel has been jailed for six years in Baghdad for her role as an Islamic enforcer with terror group ISIS. Wenzel, 17, who last year sobbed on TV “I have ruined my life,” could have faced the death penalty. German media reported that a German embassy representative in Iraq was in court yesterday to witness her sentencing. She received five years for joining IS and one year for entering Iraq illegally. Wenzel was found in the rubble of IS stronghold Mosul back in the summer of 2017. Charges were laid against her and three other German women captured with her. Schoolgirl Wenzel fled to Turkey then into Syria last year from her hometown of Pulsnitz in eastern Germany after being groomed online by a Chechen IS fighter who she married. He was killed in the savage fighting for Mosul while she was employed by the terror group enforcing the strict Islamic dress code on women in the city. She burst into tears after her capture and said s...

Iran executes Esma Zarei in Ardabil Prison after she gave birth in custody

Hengaw – Saturday, May 23, 2026. Iranian authorities have executed Esma Zarei, a 28-year-old Turkish woman from Parsabad in Ardabil Province, who had previously been sentenced to death on charges of “premeditated murder” in connection with the killing of her husband. She is the sixth woman executed in Iran since the beginning of 2026. According to information received by Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Zarei was executed at dawn on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, in Ardabil Central Prison. She had been sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) after being convicted of her husband’s murder.

US | Federal judge upholds constitutionality of nitrogen gas executions

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday ruled that execution by nitrogen gas does not violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, rejecting an Alabama inmate’s claim that it causes excessive suffering. The ruling came after the first bench trial in the country to examine the constitutionality of the execution method that has now been used to put eight people to death, seven in Alabama and one in Louisiana. The ruling clears the way for Alabama and other states to continue with the method and is a setback for critics who hoped a fuller examination of Alabama’s protocol would halt its use.

Florida: The Daily Routine of Death Row Inmates

The breakfast carts rattle through the concrete prison at about 5:30 am and as they approach Death Row the first sounds of morning repeat the last sounds of night - remote controlled locks clanging open and clunking closed, electric gates whirring, heavy metal doors crashing shut, voices wailing, klaxons blaring. A maximum security prison has no soft or delicate sounds. At the end of each corridor of death row cells a guard opens a heavy door of steel bars and a prison trusty pushes a breakfast cart inside. The door closes behind him and when it locks a second door opens and admits the trusty to the wing. He steers his cart along the wing stopping at each cell to pass a tray of powdered eggs and lukewarm grits through a small slot on the bars. Food is prepared by prison staff and transported in insulated carts to the cells. The food carts are full of cockroaches, the food is often undercooked or just rotten and is served on Styrofoam plates with a plastic "spork" - fork/spoon...

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog