Netanyahu gives green signal to Death Penalty Bill for Palestinians

Bethlehem: Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has given a nod for Death Penalty Bill which would make it easier for courts to hand death sentences to Palestinians who have killed Israelis or soldiers.

Though Israel has a law permitting the death penalty, under the law death penalty may only be imposed by unanimous decision from a panel of three judges. However, no executions have been carried out since 1962.

The bill in question was proposed by Defence Minister Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party, which Netanyahu backed yesterday.

This bill would remove the requirement of approval by a panel of three judges, allowing both civilian and military courts to execute Palestinians with a majority decision.

To prepare the legislation for its first reading in the Knesset, the bill is expected to be brought up at the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee in the next few days.

As reported by Israeli news sites, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, approved passing a bill into law that allows execution of Palestinian prisoners on Sunday.

According to prisoners’ rights group Addameer, currently there are 5,640 Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli prisons, of whom 465 are in administrative detention, 53 are female prisoners, 270 are child prisoners, and 50 are under the age of 16.

Source: siasat.com, Rasia, November 7, 2018

Israeli Knesset Renews Debate on Passing Death Sentence on Palestinians

Israel’s Parliament will renew debate next week on a bill that would make it easier to sentence Palestinian attackers to death, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Tuesday, while vowing to have it passed.

“After over three years of a stubborn struggle, the death penalty for terrorists will finally be brought to the law committee next Wednesday [Nov. 14], and then for its first reading in the Knesset plenum,” Lieberman said on Twitter.

“We won’t relent or stop until completing the mission.”

The bill, which passed a preliminary vote by the full Parliament in January, would ease the requirements military courts in the occupied West Bank must meet to sentence Palestinians convicted of “terrorist” crimes to death.

As the law stands now, a panel of three military judges must unanimously approve any death penalty in military courts.

The new bill, planned by members of Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party at his behest, would change the requirement to a majority instead of unanimity.

Israel has not carried out any executions since 1962, when the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was hanged.

Israel abolished the use of capital punishment for murder in civil courts in 1954, though it can still in theory be applied for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, treason and crimes against the Jewish people.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed his support for the death penalty in certain cases.

A law to sentence Palestinian attackers to death was one of Lieberman’s election promises back in 2015.

Israeli elections are expected to be called in the coming months and politicians have been ramping up campaign rhetoric.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces shot and wounded a Palestinian woman Tuesday, after she allegedly attempted to stab an Israeli border police officer, in the second such incident in 48 hours in the occupied West Bank.

The woman was arrested after attempting to stab an officer with “a knife and scissors,” Israel police foreign press spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said in a statement.

She was shot and wounded in the leg, according to reports.

The alleged attempted attack is said to have taken place at a gas station in Mishor Adumim, an industrial park in an Israeli settlement around 20 kilometers east of occupied Jerusalem.

A separate police statement identified the woman as a 37-year-old Palestinian from Yatta, a town south of Hebron.

In a photo posted to Rosenfield’s Twitter page, a pair of scissors and a blade can be seen lying on the floor next to a pair of women’s shoes.

This is the second such incident to occur in two days in the West Bank, after Israeli soldiers Monday shot and wounded a Palestinian man in Hebron who they said was “attempting to stab civilians” as well as an army officer.

He was then taken for medical treatment. The incident took place near Kiryat Arba, an Israeli settlement east of Hebron.

On Oct. 22, a Palestinian man was shot dead in the West Bank by the Israeli army, which said he was attempting to stab soldiers.

This article has been adapted from its original source.

Source: albawaba.com, The Daily Star, November 7, 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

California | Becerra vows to extend moratorium despite past support for capital punishment

SACRAMENTO—Democrat Xavier Becerra defended the death penalty while serving as California’s attorney general, a punishment his office actively sought in the case of a gunman convicted of an Orange County mass shooting, but as the front-running candidate for governor, he has vowed to block executions if elected in November. Becerra said he will extend the blanket reprieve for all death row inmates that Gov. Gavin Newsom enacted by executive order in 2019, saying he supported “moving our state away from a costly, flawed system that disproportionately impacts Black and brown communities and too often gets it wrong.”

Iran | Afghan Citizen Executed in Wheelchair Due to Severe Mobility Disability

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Iranian authorities have reportedly executed an Afghan citizen, identified as Valijan Nourzay, at the central prison in Rafsanjan, according to the human rights organization Hengaw. Hengaw said in a statement on Sunday, September 6, that Nourzay was executed early Wednesday last week at Rafsanjan Central Prison. According to the organization, Nourzay had a severe mobility disability and was executed while in a wheelchair. Hengaw, citing informed sources, reported that Nourzay had been pursued by Iranian authorities three years ago over an alleged murder. He was reportedly seriously wounded after Iranian security forces opened fire on him in Rafsanjan before being arrested and later sentenced to death.

Egypt TV presenter and 11 others sentenced to death in major drugs case

Egyptian television presenter Sarah Khalifa and 11 others have been sentenced to death by hanging after being convicted of drug trafficking and rape, while nine defendants received life sentences and seven were acquitted. Egyptian television presenter Sarah Khalifa, 39, has been sentenced to death by hanging along with 11 other defendants after being found guilty in a drugs case involving a criminal gang accused of importing ingredients used to manufacture narcotics for sale.

He Spent 27 Years on Death Row as a Wrongfully Convicted Man. What Comes Next?

23-hour solitary confinement. 115-degree heat. Jimmie Duncan is haunted by the decades he spent in Louisiana’s Angola Prison—and how, even after being released, he still isn’t truly free. Jimmie “Chris” Duncan wiped the sweat off his forehead as he assessed his temporary home from the parking lot of a rundown motel in central Louisiana. Sure, there’s drug dealing and prostitution, he said on a recent summer afternoon. And he suspected his neighbors were cooking meth on a floor below the room he paid $350 a week to rent.

California | He spent 19 years on death row. His conversion to Judaism helped him endure

Johnny Morales struggled to find sleep. He dozed off for a few moments, but officers came to his death row cell and woke him a little after midnight. They needed to inventory and box up his belongings. He was leaving San Quentin. Hands cuffed behind his back, he walked across the empty upper yard in the dim gray hours before daylight. An officer walked alongside him step for step, black latex-gloved fingers holding onto Morales’s arm. For almost 20 years, Morales could only experience the world outside his 4-by-11 foot cell in the condemned housing unit like this—chained and escorted by officers. Security protocols required all death row residents be handcuffed or shackled any time they were out in open space with staff.

Ex-corrections officials urge governor to commute Kansas death sentences

Former Kansas corrections officials are urging Governor Laura Kelly to grant clemency to the state's death row inmates. Former Kansas Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz has several reasons why he thinks the state should abolish the death penalty. Werholtz, who served as secretary from 2002 to 2010 and returned on an interim basis in 2019, uses his discussions with peers and family members of victims as well as experiences of seeing wrongly convicted people getting exonerated as his guiding points.

Florida executes Harold Gene Lucas

Florida state officials executed 74-year-old Harold Gene Lucas by lethal injection on Tuesday evening, concluding a 50-year legal saga stemming from the 1976 murder of a 16-year-old girl in Bonita Springs. STARKE, Fla. -- A man convicted of killing a teenage girl who rejected his romantic advances and wounding two of her friends was put to death Tuesday in the first of three executions planned this month in Florida. Harold Gene Lucas, 74, was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, authorities said. He was sentenced to death for the 1976 shooting attack on Jill Piper and the wounding of her friends, Richard Byrd Jr. and Terri Rice.

Florida executes Daniel Owen Conahan Jr.

In Florida’s 15th execution this year, man put to death for killing linked to ‘Hog Trail Murders’ A Florida man convicted in one of a series of suspected killings that became known as the “Hog Trail Murders” in the 1990s was put to death Thursday, becoming the state’s 15th person executed this year. Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., 72, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. after receiving a 3-drug lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He had been sentenced to die for the 1996 kidnapping and strangling of Richard Allen Montgomery, whose mutilated body was found in a wooded southwest Florida area where authorities found the remains of at least 6 people over a 3-year span.

Arizona AG seeks execution date for man convicted in 1995 trooper killing

Trooper Bob Martin was killed during a traffic stop on the Beeline highway; execution for his killer could be as soon as January PHOENIX (AZFamily)—The Arizona Attorney General is asking for an execution date to be set for a man convicted in the killing of an Arizona State Trooper over 30 years ago. On Aug. 15, 1995, Trooper Bob Martin was shot and killed while performing a traffic stop along the Beeline Highway.

Florida set to carry out 14th execution this year in the nation's busiest death chamber

MIAMI (AP) — A Florida man convicted of fatally shooting a 16-year-old girl who rejected his romantic advances and wounding two of her friends is set to be executed Tuesday in the first of three lethal injections scheduled this month in the state. Harold Gene Lucas, 74, is set to receive a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke starting at 6 p.m. He would be the 14th prisoner put to death this year in Florida, and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has already signed death warrants for two more executions set for later this September.

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