Death Penalty News

13 countries have the death penalty for blasphemy or apostasy Humanists UK is dismayed by the news that the Danish parliament has banned the ‘inappropriate treatment’ of religious texts. Those falling foul of this regressive law will now face a fine or up to two years in prison. Humanists UK says that this is a de facto blasphemy law that fuels intolerance. Six years ago, Denmark became the fifth European country to abolish its blasphemy laws since Humanists UK co-founded the End Blasphemy Coalition . In February 2017, a man was charged for posting a video of himself burning a copy of the Quran. Up until this point, attempts to bring alleged blasphemy cases to court had been dismissed by prosecutors on the grounds of protecting free speech and the law had been considered dead letter for nearly 50 years. Its reactivation sparked a national debate, renewing calls for the law to be abolished, and that call was successful in June 2017.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Sweden raised its terror alert to the second-highest level on Thursday after a string of public desecrations of the Quran sparked angry demonstrations across Muslim countries and threats from militant groups. The Swedish Security Service, known as SÄPO, lifted the “terror threat level” one notch to “high,” the fourth of five levels, for the first time since 2016. The move reflects Swedish concerns that repeated Quran-burnings this year by a handful of anti-Islam activists have made the Scandinavian country a prime target for Islamic extremists.

RABAT, Morocco (AP) — A Moroccan convicted of belonging to an Islamic State-affiliated ring and sentenced to death for the beheadings of two Scandinavian tourists has killed himself in prison, Moroccan officials said. The facility where he was held in the eastern city of Oujda said in a statement that staff found his body early Tuesday. The prisoner was among convicted ring members jailed in 2019 over the gruesome killings of two young Scandinavian women, Louisa Vesterager Jespersen from Denmark and Maren Ueland from Norway.  They were killed in December 2018 while on a backpacking trip in the Atlas Mountains, near the city of Marrakech.

A Nigerian high court has sentenced a Danish national, Peter Nielsen, to death by hanging. Nielsen was convicted and sentenced Friday for the murder of his Nigerian wife and their young daughter in 2018. Rights activists, who have protested the murder, praised the court's ruling. Justice Bolanle Okikiolu-Ighile of the Lagos high court announced the verdict and the sentence for 54-year-old Peter Nielsen Friday at a hearing that lasted more than 5 hours. The justice said evidence from an autopsy revealed that Nielsen's wife, Zainab, and their three-year-old daughter died of head injuries and suffocation. He said analysis of Zainab’s fingertips showed she had struggled to free herself from her killer’s grip, and that traces of DNA found on her skin were consistent with Nielsen’s. Nielsen has been standing trial since June 2018 after he was arrested on charges of murdering his Nigerian wife, Zainab and their daughter in their home in Lagos.  Nielsen pleaded not guilty to the charge...

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...

A court in Marrakech exempted the family of the Danish victim from paying judicial tax for the compensation. The lawyer of the family described the move as the 1st and an unprecedented action in the country. The family of the murdered Danish victim in Imlil, a town near Marrakech, is demanding Morocco’s Judiciary to execute the death penalty against the main perpetrators of the heinous crime. In 2019, a court sentenced 3 defendants to the death penalty for brutally killing two Scandanavian tourists in December 2018.  The court imposed sentences ranging between 30-years and life imprisonment for other suspects involved with the murder. RELATED |  Moroccan court orders death penalty for jihadists who beheaded tourists The family of the Danish victim, Maren Ueland, repeatedly prompted the execution of the death penalty against the main perpetrators. The lawyer of the family, Khalid Fataoui, told Morocco World News that the mother of the victim “speaks up for death penalty against...

BRUSSELS/PARIS (Reuters) - The European Union is set to agree to sanction several Iranian individuals on Wednesday for human rights abuses, the first such measures since 2013, three EU diplomats said. EU envoys are expected to agree to impose travel bans and asset freezes on the individuals, the diplomats said, and their names would be published next week, when the sanctions take effect.  They gave no further details. The European Union declined to comment. Like the United States, the European Union has an array of sanctions over human rights since 2011 on more than 80 Iranian individuals which has been renewed annually every April. Those will also be renewed on Wednesday, the three diplomats said. Asked why the latest measures were being taken now, one of the diplomats said the EU was seeking to take a tougher stance to uphold human rights.  This month, the EU sanctioned 11 people from countries including China, North Korea, Libya and Russia. “Those responsible for serious ri...

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lanka will ban the wearing of the burqa and shut more than a thousand Islamic schools, a government minister said on Saturday, the latest actions affecting the country’s minority Muslim population. Minister for public security Sarath Weerasekera told a news conference he had signed a paper on Friday for cabinet approval to ban the full face covering worn by some Muslim women on “national security” grounds. “In our early days Muslim women and girls never wore the burqa,” he said. “It is a sign of religious extremism that came about recently. We are definitely going to ban it.” The wearing of the burqa in the majority-Buddhist nation was temporarily banned in 2019 after the bombing of churches and hotels by Islamic militants that killed more than 250. Other countries have enacted burqa bans in recent years as well, including Switzerland, France, and Denmark. RELATED |  While Iranian Women Are Routinely Flogged for Not Wearing the Hijab, UN Rights Office Lamen...

Convicted of his involvement in the May 2003 terrorist attacks in Casablanca, Said Mansour was sentenced on Monday to death.  Living in Denmark since 1984, the 59-year-old man was stripped of his Danish nationality and then extradited to Morocco, where he was tried. Spanish news agency EFE recalls that the case of Mansour is unprecedented, especially since he is the first person in Denmark to be stripped of his nationality, in 2016.  Indeed, a Danish court found him guilty of spreading terrorist propaganda in the country where he had five children with his Danish wife. Mansour was extradited to Morocco in January 2019.  On May 16, 2003, the Casablanca bombings left 33 deaths. Denmark Deports Said Mansour, Stripped of Citizenship, to Morocco Jan 5, 2019, Rabat – Denmark has deported Said Mansour, convicted of incitement to terrorism and formerly a dual Moroccan-Danish citizen, to Morocco. According to Danish media, Mansour arrived in Casablanca yesterday night, aboard Roya...

WASHINGTON/PENTAGON - Efforts to deliver an enduring defeat to the Islamic State may be in danger because of difficulties with bringing the terror group’s female members and associates to justice. Describing the situation as dire, a new analysis from the United Nations’ Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate [CTED] warns too few of these IS women are being held to account, as many countries have been reluctant to repatriate them. “Women are the demographic group with the lowest overall rate of return from the conflict zone in Iraq and the Syrian Arab Republic,” according to the CTED report issued Wednesday, based on a study of 80 U.N. member states. “Within judicial systems, there is an urgent need for training and capacity-building on gender-sensitive approaches to investigations and prosecutions,” the report added. Exactly how many women members of IS have been prosecuted or could be charged with crimes is difficult to say. The CTED analysis said for...

The Association for Community and Dialogue is concerned about reports that a group of Malaysians has requested that a referendum be held on the abolition of the death penalty. A group representing the kin of murder victims, including the families of fireman Muhammad Adib Mohd Kassim and lawyer Kevin Anthony Morais, are pushing for a public referendum before the government abolishes the mandatory death sentence. Robert Phang of the Social Care Foundation Malaysia said the government should not make the country “a paradise for criminals”. He said the abolition of the mandatory death penalty for premeditated and heinous killings will encourage rogues from other countries to come to Malaysia and freely commit crimes here. While there is concern that criminals could escape if there is no mandatory death sentence, there seems to be a lack of concern that the innocent could be victims of circumstance. The desire for justice should not be allowed to turn into revenge, where subj...

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision to send back foreign citizens who supported the Islamic State is handing Western Europe a problem it had hoped to avoid. PARIS — As Turkey followed through on its threat to release more Islamic State detainees last week, Western European nations were confronted with a problem they had long sought to avoid: what to do about the potential return of radicalized, often battle-hardened Europeans to countries that absolutely do not want them back. Faced with fierce popular opposition to the repatriation of such detainees and fears over the long-term threat they could pose back home, European leaders have sought alternative ways to prosecute them — in an international tribunal, on Iraqi soil, anywhere but on the Continent. But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, made more powerful by a sudden shift in American policy, is determined to foist the problem of the captured European Islamic State fighters back on the countries they came...