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Indonesia | 14 years on death row: Timeline of Mary Jane Veloso’s ordeal and fight for justice

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MANILA, Philippines — The case of Mary Jane Veloso, a Filipina on death row in Indonesia for drug trafficking, has spanned over a decade and remains one of the most high-profile legal battles involving an overseas Filipino worker. Veloso was arrested on April 25, 2010, at Adisucipto International Airport in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, after she was found in possession of more than 2.6 kilograms of heroin. She was sentenced to death in October – just six months after her arrest. Indonesia’s Supreme Court upheld the penalty in May 2011.

India sentences three rapists to death

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May 30, 2014: An Indian court sentenced to death three men who raped a photojournalist inside an abandoned textile mill last year in Mumbai, India's biggest city.

A fourth defendant was sentenced to life in prison, prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam said. He said he asked for the death sentence under a strict anti-rape law introduced following public outrage over a fatal gang rape in New Delhi in 2012.

"This is the first case in India in which the death penalty has been given to convicts while the victim is alive," Nikam said. The three men were also found guilty last month of raping a call-centre operator at the same abandoned mill in July 2013, a month before the attack on the photojournalist. Nikam described the three as habitual offenders.

Judge Shalini Phansalkar-Joshi said the offence was diabolical in nature and the punishment would send a strong message to Indian society. 

Source: webmadam noelene, May 30, 2014
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