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As clock ticks toward another Trump presidency, federal death row prisoners appeal for clemency

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President-elect Donald Trump’s return to office is putting a spotlight on the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, which houses federal death row. In Bloomington, a small community of death row spiritual advisors is struggling to support the prisoners to whom they minister.  Ross Martinie Eiler is a Mennonite, Episcopal lay minister and member of the Catholic Worker movement, which assists the homeless. And for the past three years, he’s served as a spiritual advisor for a man on federal death row.

Iran executes 5 Kurds, among them a young woman sentenced as a teenager

Public hanging of a female prisoner, Iran (file photo)
5 Iranian Kurds (Rojhilatis) were executed on Tuesday, among them a young woman who was handed the sentence as a teenager 2 years after her marriage, a rights group reported.

"The Iranian authorities must urgently halt their plans to execute Zeinab Sekaanvand," Philip Luther, Amnesty International's Research and Advocacy Director for the Middle East and North Africa, pleaded on Monday after the announcement of the regime’s plan was made.

Luther highlighted "she was arrested when she was just 17 years old and sentenced to death for the murder of her husband, whom she married at the age of 15."

"Not only was she a child at the time of the crime, she was subjected to a grossly unfair legal process."

Along with Sekaanvand, 4 other Kurds were executed in Urmia Prison according to Hengaw, a group writing on human rights issues involving Kurds in Iran.

Hengaw did not go into the details on the cases of the other detainees, only releasing the names of three: Changeez Irani, Mousa Jajilou, and Salman Alilou.

According to Amnesty International, among the 23 countries that carried out death sentences in 2017, "Iran executed at least 507 people." At least 31 of those executions were public, and 5 of those executed were under 18 years old. These numbers account for more than 1/2 of all recorded executions in 2017.

From March through September, Iran has hanged over 40 Iranian Kurds and sentenced just under a dozen other activists to death, Hengaw added.

Other recent cases that garnered international attention were that of Ramin Hussein Panahi and 2 cousins Loghman and Zaniar Moradi who were executed on Sep. 08.

Source: kurdistan24.net, October 2, 2018


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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

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