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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.

Tunisian court sentences eight to death over bombing that killed 12 presidential guards

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Twenty other guards were injured in suicide bombing of their bus in Tunis in 2015 in attack claimed by Islamic State

A Tunisian court on Friday sentenced eight people to death over a suicide bombing that targeted a presidential security bus in the capital Tunis in November 2015.

The attack, claimed by Islamic State (IS), killed 12 presidential guards and injured another 20. 

Deputy public prosecutor Mohsen el Daly said the fifth chamber of the Tunis Court of First Instance - which specialises in terrorism crimes - handed down eight death sentences, one life imprisonment and one 10-year jail sentence.

The defendants were found guilty of "voluntary murder and belonging to terrorist groups," Daly said, adding that only four of the men were present during the trial. 

The rest were sentenced in absentia, he told the Tunisian news agency TAP. 

The court also issued a decision to compensate the families of those killed and injured in the attack.

Tunisia has not carried out capital punishment since the 1990s, but it retains the death penalty for terrorism-related crimes. 

In February, a Tunisian court sentenced seven individuals to life in prison over attacks at a museum and on a beach in 2015 that killed 60 people, many of them British tourists.

The two attacks were also claimed by IS.

Tunisia has maintained a state of emergency since the 2015 attacks, despite a relative improvement in the security situation. 

Source: middleeasteye.net, MEE and agencies, January 18, 2020


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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
Location: Tunis, Tunisia
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