Philippines | Government to keep silent on Veloso case for the meantime

MALACAÑANG yesterday said government will remain silent on its request for executive clemency for Filipino Mary Jane Veloso, who is on death row in Indonesia for drug charges, until Indonesia has made a decision.

Press Secretary Trixie Cruz-Angeles announced on Tuesday that the request has been made by the Department of Foreign Affairs through its counterpart.

In a briefing yesterday from Singapore where President Marcos Jr. was for a 2-day state visit, Angeles said the President will also “make no statement until we have some kind of further development on Miss Veloso’s case.”

“For the moment, things are still moving. Since it was on September 4 only that our Foreign Affairs had brought the matter up to their local counterpart in Indonesia then… there’s no decision yet that’s made… for now there’s nothing final but we continue to look for solutions.”

She said the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) is overseeing the matter.

DFA spokesperson Ambassador Maria Theresa Daza said the department has “no further updates or comments.”

Angeles said in the briefing, “Like we said… when it’s a matter of international relations, the President will make a pronouncement only when the policy is already set in place and after recommendations made by the DFA.”

“We’re always very careful about any statement because they have repercussions later on.

We also do not want to transgress the sovereignty of another state,” she added.

Angeles said it does not mean the President is not doing anything about the matter.

Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo met with his counterpart, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi, in Jakarta on September 4 to ask for clemency for Veloso, who has been in jail for drug related charges since 2010.

The Indonesian official promised to consult the Ministry of Justice about the matter.

Veloso was meted the death penalty in October 2010 and was granted a stay of execution on April 2015.

Veloso has consistently said her recruiters tricked her and gave her a suitcase containing illegal drugs, which she brought to Indonesia.

The OFW group Migrante International criticized Marcos for not personally talking to Indonesian President Jojo Widodo about Veloso’s case.

Marcos was in Indonesia on September 5 to 6 for a state visit.

“We are disappointed because President Marcos Jr. himself should have been the one to raise the appeal for clemency for Mary Jane to his counterpart as one of the priority issues.

This would have had a stronger impact,” said Migrante in a statement.

“Instead, the President seemed to downgrade the issue by leaving it up to the DFA to address on the sidelines,” it added.

But the group also said the appeal for clemency “is a significant development and brings renewed hope in our movement to bring Mary Jane home.”

Prior to Marcos’ visit to Indonesia, Veloso’s parents appealed to him to help bring Mary Jane home.

The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) called for prayers for Veloso.

“We don’t forget her as we continue to exhaust all means and make everything possible to bring her freely, safely home,” said Bishop Ruperto Santos, vice chairman of the CBCP’s Episcopal Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People.

“We support the kind and good deeds of our government officials. This is a very encouraging and inspiring move from the DFA,” he also said.

Source: malaya.com.ph, Staff, September 9, 2022

🚩 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

"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.

Hanging, confinement and the sentencing debate India won’t have

Ask anybody what a “death sentence” in India actually means, and the honest answer is that it can mean three quite different things. It can mean the noose—hanging by the neck until death; it can mean permanent confinement in jail—a term the courts now call imprisonment for the remainder of one’s natural life, and, far more often than either of the first two, it can simply mean delay in delivery of justice—a death sentence that is neither carried out nor commuted, waiting for completion of investigation, trial before the sessions court, hearing of a confirmation proceeding in a high court, appeal against conviction in the Supreme Court, or hearing of a mercy petition nobody has decided for years, sometimes for decades, until age or illness does what the state never got around to doing itself.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog