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Indonesia | 14 years on death row: Timeline of Mary Jane Veloso’s ordeal and fight for justice

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MANILA, Philippines — The case of Mary Jane Veloso, a Filipina on death row in Indonesia for drug trafficking, has spanned over a decade and remains one of the most high-profile legal battles involving an overseas Filipino worker. RELATED |  Philippines | Mary Jane Veloso returns to joyous welcome from family after narrowly escaping Indonesian firing squad Veloso was arrested on April 25, 2010, at Adisucipto International Airport in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, after she was found in possession of more than 2.6 kilograms of heroin. She was sentenced to death in October – just six months after her arrest. Indonesia’s Supreme Court upheld the penalty in May 2011.

Afghanistan | Taliban carry out another public execution

The man was shot five times in front of the family of his victim at a sports stadium today.

KABUL: Taliban authorities publicly executed a convicted murderer by gunfire in a sports stadium today, officials said, the third death penalty carried out in Afghanistan in a matter of days.

The man – found guilty of a January 2022 knife murder – was executed in northern Sheberghan city on a death warrant signed by Taliban chief Hibatullah Akhundzada, a Supreme Court statement said.

The statement identified the condemned man as Nazar Muhammad and said his case “was examined very thoroughly and repeatedly”.

He was shot five times in front of the family of his victim – including women and children – as well as thousands of onlookers in the stadium, a local provincial official told AFP.

Since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, a handful of executions have been conducted in accordance with their government’s austere vision of Islam.

Akhundzada ordered judges in 2022 to fully implement all aspects of Islamic law – including “eye for an eye” punishments known as “qisas”.

Under the Taliban government’s interpretation of Islamic law, the provisions allow for the death penalty in retribution for the crime of murder.

Last week two other men were executed by multiple gunshots to the back in eastern Ghazni city on death warrants also signed by Akhundzada.

According to an AFP tally, there have now been five death penalties carried out since the Taliban returned.

Corporal punishments – mainly flogging – have been common, however, and employed for crimes including theft, adultery and alcohol consumption.

Amnesty International last week called the Taliban government’s death penalty policy “a gross affront to human dignity”.

“Carrying out executions in public adds to the inherent cruelty of the death penalty,” it said in a statement.

China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the US were respectively ranked the world’s most prolific practitioners of the death penalty in 2022, according to Amnesty International.

Law and order is central to the severe ideology of the Taliban, who emerged from the chaos of a civil war following the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989.

In their first rule of 1996 to 2001 public executions were common.

One of the most infamous images from that era depicted the 1999 execution of a woman wearing an all-covering burqa in a Kabul stadium.

She had been accused of killing her husband.

Source: Agence France-Presse, Staff, February 26, 2024

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