Death Penalty News

JAKARTA, Aug 1 — A Malaysian pilot could face the death penalty after being charged with smuggling more than 70,000 ecstasy pills into Indonesia. The 39-year-old man, identified only by the initials MSO, was detained on Wednesday at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport shortly after arriving from Kuala Lumpur. Customs officers found 14 packages containing more than 70,000 ecstasy pills in his luggage, as well as four grammes of methamphetamine (meth), believed to be for personal use, in his wallet.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — A Sri Lankan court on Friday sentenced a former police chief and a former top Defense Ministry official to death after finding them guilty of criminal negligence that allowed Islamic State-inspired bomb attacks on Easter Sunday in 2019, which killed more than 260 people. A death penalty in Sri Lanka typically means life in prison because the country has had a moratorium on executions since 1976. Current President Anura Kumara Dissanayake supports maintaining the moratorium.