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Communist Vietnam's secret death penalty conveyor belt: How country trails only China and Iran for 'astonishing' number of executions

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Prisoners are dragged from their cells at 4am without warning to be given a lethal injection Vietnam's use of the death penalty has been thrust into the spotlight after a real estate tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to be executed in one of the biggest corruption cases in the country's history. Truong My Lan, a businesswoman who chaired a sprawling company that developed luxury apartments, hotels, offices and shopping malls, was arrested in 2022.

Tunisia sentences 31 to death for attack on minister

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Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed the attack on the minister's family home, which left four police officers dead.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed the attack on the minister's
family home, which left four police officers dead.
A Tunisian court has handed 31 people death sentences over a 2014 attack on the home of then interior minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou, a judiciary spokesman said on Monday.

The 31, who included Algerians as well as Tunisians, were sentenced in absentia and some are reported to be already dead.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) claimed the attack on the minister's family home in the western border region of Kasserine, which left four police officers dead.

Ben Jeddou was not in the house at the time.

Those convicted were found guilty of "wilful homicide and membership of a terrorist group" and were also sentenced to 36 years in prison.

A total of 46 people were prosecuted over the attack, said the spokesman for Tunis district court, Sofiene Sliti.

Among the 15 remaining defendants, 8 were sentenced to between 3 and 10 years in jail for "membership of a terrorist group" and "involvement in terrorism-related matters".

The court, which issued the rulings on Friday, dismissed cases against the remaining 7, Sliti told AFP.

Among the 31 sentenced to death were Seifallah Ben Hassine, an associate of late Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and founder of the jihadist group Ansar al-Sharia.

The New York Times has reported that Ben Hassine, also known by the nom de guerre Abou Iyadh, was killed in an air strike in Libya in mid-June last year.

The list also included Lokmane Abu Sakhr, an Algerian jihadist killed by Tunisian security forces at the end of March last year, also in Kasserine.

Since its independence from France in 1956, Tunisia has carried out 135 executions, but has observed a moratorium on the practice since 1991.

A new anti-terror law adopted in July upheld the death penalty, despite condemnation by local and international rights groups.

Since Tunisia's 2011 revolution, jihadist attacks have cost dozens of lives among security forces as well as civilians.

Attacks claimed by the Islamic State group on the National Bardo Museum in Tunis and a beach resort also killed 59 foreign tourists in 2015.

Source: worldbulletin.net, October 4, 2016

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