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Japan | Hakamada found religion, but then felt under attack by ‘the devil’

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Editor's note: This is the last in a four-part series on letters that Iwao Hakamada wrote while on death row. About a decade after cursing God, Iwao Hakamada was baptized Catholic at the Tokyo Detention House on Dec. 24, 1984. “Since I have been given the Christian name Paul, I am keenly feeling that I should be aware of the greatness of Paul.” (June 1985)

Ukraine: Donetsk Separatists Introduce Death Penalty for Treason

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In a sign that separatist leaders in eastern Ukraine are struggling with discord in the ranks, Donetsk separatists announced Monday they were setting up military tribunals and bringing in the death penalty.

The self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, or DNR, said it would bring in military tribunals with the right to pass the death sentence for a string of offences including treason, espionage, attempts on the lives of the leadership and sabotage.

The announcement, issued on the Donetsk's separatists website, quoted leading rebel officials as saying that other serious violations including looting would also be dealt with harshly.

"Introducing the death penalty is not revenge, it is the highest degree of social protection," a senior separatist leader, Vladimir Antyufeyev, was quoted as saying.

Reports of executions orchestrated by separatists in eastern Ukraine have, for months, been used as a propaganda tool by both sides in the Ukraine conflict, though none of the reports has been independently verified.

In one of the most high-profile incidents to date, a document surfaced in May purportedly showed one of the separatists' main leaders, Igor Strelkov, had ordered the executions of two DNR militants on charges of looting.

The document apparently showed Strelkov, a Russian citizen also known as Igor Girkin, had based the ruling on a 1941 Stalin-era law introducing capital punishment for theft of property.

A month later, in June, separatist leader Igor “The Imp” Bezler published a video showing two blindfolded Ukrainian army officers apparently being shot to death by a firing squad as a warning to Ukraine government forces. He later dismissed the video as fake.

Sources: Reuters, Moscow Times, August 18, 2014
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First Third Of 2024 In Saudi Arabia: Executions Rise By 189% And Portend Another Bloody Year. At Least 71 Currently Facing Execution.

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Missouri | Man Facing Execution Next Month Is Hospitalized With Heart Problem

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

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The following document is a written record of convicted killer Hamida Djandoubi's last moments before he was guillotined in a Marseilles prison on September 10, 1977. This written record -- dated September 9 -- was written by a judge appointed to witness the execution. Djandoubi's execution was the last execution carried out in France before capital punishment was abolished in 1981. Then-President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who had voiced his "loathing for the death penalty" before he was elected to office, flatly turned down Djandoubi's appeal for clemency and chose to let "Justice run its course", as he did on two previous instances ( 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 executed in Marseilles' Baumettes prison in September 1977. The following text was writ
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