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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.

Libya | Christian convert from Islam sentenced to death for apostasy

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A Christian convert from Islam has been sentenced to death by the Court of Appeal in Misrata, north-west Libya.

The man became a Christian around four years ago, and has been arrested several times since then by Libyan militias who act as law enforcement in the disordered country.

The death sentence for apostasy was applied as a result of his refusal to return to Islam.

Libya’s General National Congress (the GNC, which sat from 2012 to 2014) passed a law stating that apostates from Islam who refuse to recant will be sentenced to death.

All laws passed by the GNC were subsequently abolished by its replacement, the Libyan House of Representatives.

However, the Libyan Supreme Court in Tripoli has ruled that the House of Representatives is illegal, allowing courts to continue to apply laws passed by the GNC, including the death penalty for apostasy.

The death penalty for sane adult males who renounce Islam is compulsory in all schools of sharia (Islamic law). 

The Maliki school – which is dominant in Libya – also makes mandatory the death penalty for sane female apostates from Islam.

Like other Sunni schools, the Maliki school allows the apostate three days in which to repent before applying the death penalty. 

The Maliki interpretation of sharia requires that the apostate must previously have been a practising Muslim to deserve the death penalty.

Only a handful of countries have this aspect of Islamic law in their national laws. Even those who have it rarely sentence anyone to death and of those who are sentenced very few have actually been executed.

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Source: barnabasfund.org, Staff, September 15, 2022





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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: Misrata, Libya
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