Death Penalty News

An Iranian political prisoner sentenced to death on charges of “espionage and collaboration with a hostile state (Israel)” is at imminent risk of execution after being transferred to solitary confinement, the Norway-based rights group Hengaw said on Wednesday. Gholamreza Khani Shakarab, 34, a former MMA champion, coach and international referee, was moved from a high-security ward in Tehran’s Evin Prison to solitary confinement in Ghezel Hesar Prison in Karaj, Hengaw said. The case comes amid a widening wartime crackdown in Iran, where authorities have intensified arrests, executions and threats against dissent while repeatedly warning that criticism could aid the country’s enemies.

Three inmates convicted of drug offenses were executed in Adelabad Prison, Shiraz, on June 1, according to the Iran Human Rights Organization. The executed inmates have been identified as Mohammad-Saeed Zohrabi, Hassan Nematollahi, and 30-year-old Mahmoud Ghaedi.

The families of four Kurdish political prisoners who face death sentences have been summoned to Evin Prison for a meeting, a sign of imminent execution. The Hengaw Human Rights Organization reported that Pejman Fatehi, Mohsen Mazloum, Mohammad (Hazhir) Faramarzi, and Vafa Azarbar are scheduled to meet their families at Evin, where they face imminent execution after receiving death sentences from Branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court.

A sessions court in Lahore has sentenced a Christian man to death in a three-year-old blasphemy case. The verdict was announced by Additional District and Sessions Judge Ishrat Abbas on December 20, 2023. The police lodged an FIR (237/20) dated June 2, 2020, on the complaint of a police officer, Muhammad Nawaz, allegedly accusing Anwar Masih of making objectionable remarks against the Prophet Muhammad, which is a criminal offense punishable with the death penalty under Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code.

An Iranian court has sentenced the legal representative of Mahsa Amini's family to one year in prison for "propaganda activity" against the Islamic Republic, according to an activist group. The France-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network said that Branch 28 of the Islamic Revolution Court of Tehran also banned Saleh Nikbakht from online activities for a period of two years. Nikbakht, 72, was put on trial over interviews he gave to domestic and foreign media, in which he criticized the government's handling of Mahsa Amini’s death and its aftermath.

CNN  —  A new draft law that would enshrine harsh punishments for women and girls who fail to wear a hijab in Iran could amount to “gender apartheid,” UN experts said in a statement on Friday. “The draft law could be described as a form of gender apartheid, as authorities appear to be governing through systemic discrimination with the intention of suppressing women and girls into total submission,” the experts said. The proposed legislation, which is currently under review by the Iranian parliament, would establish harsh penalties for women who refuse to wear the veil – including long jail sentences.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); August 22, 2023: A Baluch man only identified as Mr Mir was executed for drug-related charges in Zahedan Central Prison. Four other Baluch men were executed at the prison that day and he is the seventh reported Baluch execution in Iran that day. According to Hal Vash, a Baluch man was executed in Zahedan Central Prison on 21 August. He has only been identified as Mr Mir who was sentenced to death for drug-related charges by the Revolutionary Court.

Brevard County death row inmate James Barnes — who confessed to killing his estranged wife in 1997, court records show — was executed today for the brutal 1988 murder of another woman, Patricia “Patsy” Miller, inside her Melbourne condominium. Barnes, 61, was pronounced dead by lethal injection at 6:13 p.m. at Florida State Prison in rural Bradford County, northwest of Starke. "The execution took place without incident," Kayla McLaughlin, spokesperson for the Department of Corrections, said during a press conference.

A Florida man sentenced to death for the 1988 attack on a woman who was sexually assaulted and killed with a hammer, then set on fire in her own bed, is set for execution Thursday after dropping all his appeals and saying he was ready to die. James Phillip Barnes, 61, was to be executed by lethal injection at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison in Starke. It would mark the fifth execution this year in Florida. Barnes was serving a life sentence for the 1997 strangulation of his wife, 44-year-old Linda Barnes, when he wrote letters in 2005 to a state prosecutor claiming responsibility for the killing years earlier of Patricia “Patsy” Miller, a nurse who lived in a condominium in Melbourne, along Florida’s east coast.

A week after Governor Ron DeSantis scheduled his execution, Florida death-sentenced prisoner James Barnes discharged his lawyers and waived his appeals.  His execution will now proceed on August 3, 2023.  Since February 23, 2023, Florida has executed four prisoners. Mr. Barnes will be the fifth prisoner executed by Florida this year and the tenth volunteer executed.  In 2007, Mr. Barnes was sentenced to death for the murder and rape of Patsy Miller. He was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole when he confessed to the murder after converting to Islam. At his trial, he waived his right to counsel, to a jury, represented himself, pled guilty, and waived all mitigation evidence at sentencing. 

Since the beginning of 2023, till the end of June Saudi Arabia has announced the execution of 61 individuals.  All 61 executions were carried out in a span of three months, at a rate of one execution every two days. With the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights monitoring in late 2022 of secret executions and the confirmation of the official Saudi Human Rights Commission to Amnesty the unannounced executions in 2022, it is possible that the actual number of executions carried out is even higher.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Florida is preparing for its fifth execution of 2023 as James Barnes is scheduled to be executed on August 3. Governor Ron DeSantis signed the death warrant on June 22, and Barnes, a convicted murderer, has chosen to waive all appeals and proceed with his execution. Barnes, now 61 years old, was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the murder of his wife, Linda, in 1997. He later confessed to the rape and murder of Patsy Miller, a nurse, in her Melbourne home in 1988. Barnes converted to Islam and confessed to Miller’s murder in an attempt to find closure for her family.

Convicted of killing two women ― including his wife ― and admitting to two more murders while on death row, Barnes destroyed numerous families. For his actions, the state of Florida will inject him with poison on Aug. 3 and his life will end. The pain and suffering he imposed on his victims' families will surely simmer on. But at least one family is hoping his execution brings them some sort of point to reset, or at least a chance to live the rest of their lives out from under his shadow of violence and blood.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis criticized laws that criminalize homosexuality as “unjust,” saying God loves all his children just as they are and called on Catholic bishops who support the laws to welcome LGBT people into the church. “Being homosexual isn’t a crime,” Francis said during an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); March 2, 2021: Morad Salehbeig received his 74 lashes sentence prior to being executed for murder charges in Zanjan Central Prison. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, a man was executed in Zanjan Central Prison on the morning of February 28.  His identity has been established as 45-year-old Morad Salehbeigi who was a father of two from Marand. He had been sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for murder and had also received a 74-lash sentence which was carried out prior to his execution. At the time of writing, Morad’s execution has not been announced by domestic media and officials in Iran. According to Iran Human Rights’ Annual Report on the Death Penalty, at least 211 of the 267 people executed in 2020 were sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for "premeditated murder." As there are no legal distinctions made between murder and manslaughter and no grading, whether voluntary or involuntary in Iran, those charged under...

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A Danish man who is in custody in Norway suspected of a bow-and-arrow attack on a small town that killed five people and wounded two others is a Muslim convert who had previously been flagged as having being radicalized, police said Thursday. The man is suspected of having shot at people in a number of locations in the town of Kongsberg on Wednesday evening. Several of the victims were in a supermarket, police said. “There earlier had been worries of the man having been radicalized,” Police chief Ole B. Saeverud told a news conference. The victims were four women and one man between the ages of 50 and 70, Saeverud said. Officials believe that the man didn’t start killing people until police arrived on the scene. “From what we know now, it is reasonably clear that some, probably everyone, was killed after the police were in contact with the perpetrator,” Saeverud said. Speaking calmly and clearly after his arrest, the suspect told police, “I did this,” said An...

Iran Human Rights (IHR); July 26, 2021: Cousins Amir and Sohrab Heydari have been executed on drug-related charges in Yazd Central Prison. At least 52 prisoners, including one woman, have been executed on drug-related charges in Iranian prisons in 2021. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, two men were executed on drug-related charges on the morning of July 25 in Yazd Central Prison.  Their identities have been established as Amir Heydari and Sohrab Heydari. Informed sources told IHR that Amir and Sohrab were cousins and had been behind bars for the last four years on charges of “carrying 200 kilograms of methamphetamines.” At the time of writing, their executions have not been reported by domestic media or officials in Iran. According to Iran Human Rights’ Annual Report on the Death Penalty in Iran, at least 25 people were executed on drug-related charges in 2020.  However, at least 45 people have so far been executed on the same charge in 2021. On May 3, I...

Mehak Kumari who had earlier admitted to willfully marrying Ali Raza and denied any external pressure behind her conversion to Islam has now retracted this statement of hers and alleged that she was forcefully converted to Islam. Radical Islamists and clerics in Pakistan have demanded the beheading of a Hindu minor girl named Mehak Kumari, who was abducted, converted to Islam and forcibly married to a Muslim man, for leaving Islam.  Mehak was abducted from the Jacobabad district of Sindh province in Pakistan on January 15.  These Pakistani clerics now want the minor girl dead after Mehak retracted her previous statement in the court, where she had said that she had accepted Islam of her own free will. In a video going viral on Twitter, few radical Islamists and clerics of Pakistan are heard blaming 14-year-old Mehak of murtad , or an act of Apostasy, and are demanding death punishment, accusing her of insulting Islam. One of the clerics added that they h...

"I don’t know if I deserve to live, but I do know that I don’t deserve to die, for everything and everyone around me, for the future, and for others that might be in the same predicament as I am in now.” So wrote Pannir Selvam Pranthaman on his 32nd birthday, in a letter published by news website Malaysiakini on July 31, as he languished in a cell in Singapore's Changi prison. Convicted of smuggling 50 grams of cocaine, Pannir Selvam is one of at least 10 people the Singapore government is preparing to execute, with the inmates’ advocates fearing an imminent “bloodbath” . Meanwhile, the United States government is gearing up to resume executions at a federal level for the first time in 16 years, with Attorney-General William Barr directing five inmates be put to death by lethal injection. News of the planned killings, slated for December and January, has deepened the rift between US President Donald Trump, a staunch death penalty supporter, and Democratic p...

Un quatrième Français a été condamné à mort lundi pour appartenance à Daesh.  Un quatrième Français a été condamné à mort lundi pour appartenance à Daesh, après trois premières condamnations dimanche. Il s’agit d’un verdict inédit pour des ressortissants français. RELATED |  Baghdad court sentences fourth French IS member to death Il s’agit de Mustapha Merzoughi, 37 ans, condamné à mort par pendaison au terme de sa comparution à Bagdad. Le procès d’un autre Francais, Fodhil Tahar Aouidate, a lui été renvoyé au 2 juin. Les trois premiers condamnés dimanche sont Kévin Gonot, Léonard Lopez et Salim Machou, arrêtés en Syrie par une alliance arabo-kurde anti Daesh avant d’être transférés avec neuf autres Français en Irak en février. Selon la loi irakienne, ils ont 30 jours pour faire appel. RELATED | Iraq sentences French citizens to death La France a annoncé lundi avoir entrepris les "démarches nécessaires" auprès des autorités irakiennes pour leur rap...