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Biden Fails a Death Penalty Abolitionist’s Most Important Test

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The mystery of Joe Biden’s views about capital punishment has finally been solved. His decision to grant clemency to 37 of the 40 people on federal death row shows the depth of his opposition to the death penalty. And his decision to leave three of America’s most notorious killers to be executed by a future administration shows the limits of his abolitionist commitment. The three men excluded from Biden’s mass clemency—Dylann Roof, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Robert Bowers—would no doubt pose a severe test of anyone’s resolve to end the death penalty. Biden failed that test.
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Iran's Supreme Court Uphold Death Sentence Against Prisoner After 29 Years of Limbo

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Iran’s Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence against a prisoner who suffered almost 29 years on death row.

The prisoner, Moein Salavarzi has languished in a cruel limbo after being arrested and charged with murdering his brother in 1991.

In a phone call to his family last week, the 55-year-old said that his death sentence has been upheld by the Supreme Court.

Judicial officials during the past years claimed that the prisoner’s case was missing and that they upheld the sentence due to the inquiries of the victim’s children.

Iran’s Islamic Penal Code allows the family of a murder victim to insist on execution or to pardon the killer and receive financial compensation. 

The Iranian authorities contend that qisas – the sentence for convicted murderers – is not execution, even though people sentenced to qisas are put to death by the state. 

This contention is not accepted in international law.

Moein Salavarzi has been denied a lawyer during this period because he could not to pay for legal costs.

Many prisoners in Iran spend years of agonizing condition of suspense or languish on death row before being hanged.

In another shocking case, a prisoner identified as Abdullah Banaei has sewn their lips together and started a hunger strike since September 22 in Urmia Prison to protest his continued detention after 15 years of limbo.

Abdullah Banai has asked prison officials to either release him on bail or carry out his death sentence.

Source: iran-hrm.com, Staff, September 26, 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: Iran
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