Death Penalty News

Ammon News—A Syrian court on Tuesday handed a death sentence to Wassim al-Assad, who appeared in the dock, a cousin of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad, who was himself sentenced to death in absentia last week. The 46-year-old relative of al-Assad was convicted over atrocities committed under his cousin’s rule during the country’s nearly 14-year civil war. Judge Fakhr al-Din al-Aryan said Assad’s cousin was convicted of multiple murders and “murder accompanied by torture and brutality... classified as crimes against humanity and war crimes,” adding that “he is therefore sentenced to death.”

DAMASCUS, Syria (DPN)— A Syrian court on Tuesday sentenced former President Bashar Assad and his younger brother, Maher Assad, to death in absentia for premeditated murder of multiple people including children; torture; arbitrary detention, and crimes against humanity committed during Syria’s conflict. The Fourth Criminal Court in Damascus also sentenced Atef Najib, Assad’s maternal cousin and former head of Political Security in the southern province of Daraa, to death. Najib appeared in court wearing a prisoner’s uniform and standing inside a cage as the judge read the sentence. The court ordered that Bashar and Maher Assad be pursued internationally.

As public hearings gather pace in the trials of former officials from Syria’s ousted regime, families of victims and survivors of torture are anxiously awaiting the verdicts, with many calling for the defendants to receive the death penalty. Proceedings before the Fourth Criminal Court at Damascus’ Palace of Justice have accelerated since April 25, when the court opened the in-absentia trial of deposed President Bashar al-Assad, his brother Maher al-Assad, and several senior figures from the former regime. Former security chief Atef Najib also appeared before the court in handcuffs.

In addition to the many crimes inside Iran, Qassem Soleimani was responsible for many terrorist operations outside Iran. Including the killing of MEK members in Iraq and the murder of Iraqi citizens. On January 2, 2020, a U.S.-led airstrike targeted a convoy exiting the Baghdad International Airport, killing Qassem Soleimani, the notorious commander of Iran’s terrorist Quds Force.  Ali Khamenei, the Iranian regime’s supreme leader, declared three days of mourning for Soleimani’s death and personally attended an emergency meeting of the Supreme National Security Council. The overwhelming majority of Iranians despised Soleimani, an infamous symbol of the regime’s intimidation and murder, for his crimes against the Iranian people and throughout the region.  The Iranian people and Iraqi protesters who have been calling for Soleimani’s expulsion from Iraq for some time welcomed his death as a sign of the waning of the regime’s control over their country. Sole...

Syria's state-run news agency SANA says President Bashar Assad has granted amnesty for all crimes committed before Sept. 14. According to the pardon issued Sunday, life-long terms would replace death sentences, and a 20-year-long sentence at hard labor would replace life-long sentences at hard labor, and a 20-year sentence would replace long-life sentences. Prisoners with incurable diseases including cancer would be freed. The decree stipulates for granting a general amnesty for military deserters to turn themselves in within 3 months for those inside the country, and 6 months for those outside the country. Similar amnesties have been issued on several occasions - most recently last year - since Syria's conflict began in March 2011. Syrian opposition sources said that more than 500,000 prisoners remain inside the prisons of the Syrian regime. A report issued by the rights group on 30 April stated that 14,009 prisoners had been killed due to severe tor...

Proposed changes to Brunei’s penal code to incorporate punishments under a strict interpretation of Islamic law - including death by stoning - should be halted, the UN’s top human rights official, Michelle Bachelet, said on Monday. In an appeal to the Bruneian Government to stop what she described as “draconian” revisions, due to come into force on Wednesday, High Commissioner Bachelet maintained that they “would enshrine in legislation cruel and inhuman punishments that seriously breach international human rights law”. According to a statement from Ms. Bachelet issue by her office, OHCHR, the death penalty would in theory be applicable for offences such as rape, adultery, sodomy; extramarital sexual relations for Muslim citizens; robbery, and insult or defamation of the Prophet Mohammad. Public flogging as a punishment for abortion would also apply, as well as amputation for theft, once the proposed revisions become law.  Other changes include making it a crimin...

Three men detained after complaints from Syrian regime prisoners who fled to Germany Police in Germany and France have detained three former members of Syria’s intelligence service in the first arrests by western authorities of suspected torturers from Bashar Al Assad’s regime. Germany, which has taken in more than 600,000 Syrian refugees since the outbreak of the conflict in the spring of 2011, has led efforts to collate evidence and launch investigations that could one day trigger war crimes prosecutions against the Syrian leadership for the systematic torture and killing of civilian opponents. The German Federal Prosecutor’s Office issued a statement on Tuesday saying the arrests took place on Monday in Berlin, in the western German town of Zweibrucken, and in France. It said Anwar R, 56, was accused of crimes against humanity for taking part in the torture and mistreatment of prisoners in his capacity as a high-ranking member of Syria’s General Intelligence Direc...

Iranian journalist Pouyan Khoshhal has been arrested in Tehran and charged with a crime that could carry the death penalty for using the word "demise" instead of "martyrdom" while referring to a revered figure of Shia Islam. He was also fired from the reformist Ebtekar newspaper, which issued an apology instead of defending the journalist. Khoshhal was taken into custody on October 25, 2018, while waiting to board an international flight at Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport and charged with "insulting the divinity of Imam Hossein and other members of the prophet's blessed household," the Iranian judiciary's official news agency Mizan reported. According to Iran's Islamic Penal Code, those convicted of insulting Imam Hossein, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammad, could be issued the death penalty. Article 262 states, "Anyone who swears at or commits qazf against the Great Prophet [of Islam] (...) or any of th...

As Pakistan celebrates its 70th anniversary as an independent state, 24 British politicians, led by Labour MP Siobhan McDonagh, have written to the Pakistani government urging it to repeal its blasphemy laws, which have been used to persecute humanists and religious minorities. Humanists UK , which is part of the End Blasphemy Laws coalition, has welcomed the letter. Siobhan McDonagh, also chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Ahmadiyya Muslims, stated that the Pakistani government has consistently committed discriminatory acts against minority religious groups, including ‘denying religious freedom, harassing, violently persecuting’, and sometimes, carrying out death sentences. The letter also states that the current use of these laws stands in ‘painful contrast’ to the vision of Pakistan’s founders. Blasphemy laws were first introduced into what is now modern-day Pakistan in 1860 by the British, during the period of colonial rule in India. They continued to form p...

The suspected crematory at the Sednaya Prison complex outside Damascus. Washington (CNN) -- The US said Monday it believes the Syrian government has built a large crematorium near the notorious Saydnaya Military Prison in an effort to hide mass atrocities carried out there, and placed the onus on Russia to rein in the regime. Stuart Jones, acting assistant secretary for the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department, laid out newly unveiled declassified intelligence in a series of photographs and said Russia, a supporter of President Bashar al-Assad, must use its influence to stop Assad's continued atrocities. "Although the regime's many atrocities are well-documented, we believe the building of a crematorium is an effort to cover up the extent of mass atrocities taking place in Saydnaya prison," Jones said. "We are appalled by the atrocities taking place in Syria" with the "seemingly unconditional support of Russia." J...

Saydnaya prison near Damascus, Syria Damning report suggests Saydnaya prison near Damascus being run as 'human slaughterhouse' Beirut: As many as 13,000 people were hanged in five years at a notorious Syrian government prison near Damascus, Amnesty International said Tuesday, accusing the regime of a “policy of extermination.” Titled “Human Slaughterhouse: Mass hanging and extermination at Saydnaya prison,” Amnesty’s damning report is based on interviews with 84 witnesses, including guards, detainees, and judges. It found that at least once a week between 2011 and 2015, groups of up to 50 people were taken out of their prison cells for arbitrary trials, beaten, then hanged “in the middle of the night and in total secrecy.” “Throughout this process, they remain blindfolded. They do not know when or how they will die until the noose was placed around their necks,” the rights group wrote. Most of the victims were civilians believed to be opposed to the gov...

Street Execution of Civilians in Aleppo, Syria, December 2106 NCRI - Human rights activists and informed sources have reported that Bashar Assad’s forces and their allies (Iranian regime’s affiliated militants) have executed at least 200 people in four districts of East Aleppo. According to Al-Hadath TV Network, based on these reports, medical staff of Al-Hayat Hospital in Classeh neighborhood in Aleppo are among those executed. These people were executed by firing bullets. In addition, the Assad regime’s allied militants have brutally burned 9 children and 4 women alive in Al- Ferdows neighborhood in Aleppo. This is despite the fact that the manager of Aleppo’s emergency (department) says there is no hospital left in the East of the city to help the wounded. The activists say that most executions were carried out by Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants in street and summary like executions. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), Hezbollah of Lebanon as well as Iraqi, P...