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As clock ticks toward another Trump presidency, federal death row prisoners appeal for clemency

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President-elect Donald Trump’s return to office is putting a spotlight on the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, which houses federal death row. In Bloomington, a small community of death row spiritual advisors is struggling to support the prisoners to whom they minister.  Ross Martinie Eiler is a Mennonite, Episcopal lay minister and member of the Catholic Worker movement, which assists the homeless. And for the past three years, he’s served as a spiritual advisor for a man on federal death row.
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Sweden protests to Iraq over death sentence given to Swedish citizen

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STOCKHOLM, June 13 (Reuters) - Sweden said on Thursday it had called in Iraq's charge d'affaires in Stockholm to protest against a death sentence handed down to a Swedish citizen in Iraq.

The foreign ministry said Iraqi authorities had confirmed that one Swedish citizen had been sentenced to death and that it had also received information that one or two other Swedish citizens had been handed the same sentence.

"Iraq's chargé d'affaires was urgently summoned to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs today," Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said in a statement.

"At the meeting, Sweden's protests against death sentences issued to Swedes in Iraq, and demands that the sentences not be enforced, were conveyed."

Billstrom said Sweden opposes the death penalty "always, everywhere and regardless of the circumstances".

The foreign ministry did not give any further information.

Daily Aftonbladet reported that the men had been accused of being involved in the shooting of another Swedish citizen in Iraq in January.

Source: Reuters, Staff, June 14, 2024

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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: Iraq
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