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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.

Iraq | Man who murdered Kurdish family in Baghdad sentenced to death

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A man who killed a Kurdish family of 3 in Baghdad was sentenced to death on Tuesday, a lawyer told Rudaw.

In accordance with Article 406 of the Iraqi penal code, he received 3 death sentences by hanging, Diyar Bahjat, an attorney who attended the trial at Karkh Court told Rudaw on Tuesday. Bahjat said the suspect confessed to the charges in court.

Article 406 of the Iraqi penal code says anyone “who willfully kills another is punishable by death” in a number of circumstances, including if the murder “is in exchange for money.”

Dara Rauf and his wife Aliya Rashid, originally from the Kurdistan Region’s Sulaimani, were stabbed to death on September 14 last year and their daughter Sheelan Dara was smothered to death, in the Mansour neighborhood of west Baghdad.

2 days later, a branch of the Kurdistan Region Security Council (KRSC) announced they had arrested Hussein Nasir, who was an acquaintance of Rauf and a guard at the Russian Embassy in Iraq.

The KRSC released a video purportedly showing Nasir confessing to the triple murder, shortly before they handed him over to Baghdad.

The victims’ bodies were returned to Sulaimani city to be buried at Saywan 1 Cemetery.

Nasir said in a video confession he had known the family for 4 years. He stated he visited Rauf asking for a loan, saying he was in debt. When Rauf said he did not have the money to lend, they started to fight.

“There was a knife near me, I grabbed it and stabbed him,” Nasir said. “He fell to the ground and as I was trying to get rid of the evidence, his wife came.”

Afterwards, Nasir stabbed the wife and then smothered the couple’s daughter with a pillow.

Source: rudaw.net, Staff, June 9, 2021


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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: Baghdad, Iraq
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