Death Penalty News

Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov (pictured with V. Putin) has demanded that the death penalty be reinstated in Russia for "traitors" and soldiers who retreat from battle in Ukraine. Solovyov, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, made the remarks during his radio show Full Contact (Polny Contakt) on Thursday, shortly after Russia announced its withdrawal from the key Ukrainian city of Kherson. He floated bringing back the death penalty for those suspected of wartime sabotage, and for Russian soldiers who retreat in Ukraine. "I believe that we should reject the moratorium on the death penalty and introduce articles allowing the execution of traitors and their accomplices, terrorists and their accomplices, sponsors, and financiers, including shooting deserters who abandoned the combat order and betrayed their comrades," he said. In 1996, Russia imposed a moratorium on the death penalty pending its membership into the Council of Europe. Russia was suspende...

On 28 April, the Belarusian National Assembly approved an amendment to the Criminal Code, introducing the death penalty for “attempted acts of terrorism”, a move that goes in the opposite direction to the global trend of abandoning the death penalty. Independent opinion polls reveal that ninety-one percent of Belarusians support the Ukrainians’ struggle against the Russian invasion. Sabotage is already taking place, mainly on the railways carrying weapons and Russian troops. Many Belarusian soldiers have deserted the army, while many are fighting on the side of the Ukrainians. In mid-March, railway workers carried out a series of sabotages of Russian trains, destroyed Russian equipment, and distributed leaflets to Russian soldiers urging them not to invade Ukraine. At the end of March, the regime arrested 33 workers at the Mozyr oil refinery on suspicion of sabotage. On March 31, special forces opened fire, unsuccessfully, on sabotage railway workers. “Apart from the death penalty for ...

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...

The Shot at Dawn Memorial, Staffordshire, UK A century ago today in the Great War, Second Lieutenant Eric Poole laid down his life at the city hall of a Belgian border town . As it was put by the sadly defunct Shot At Dawn site ( still preserved at the Wayback Machine ), “The cemetery register of Poperinghe New Military Cemetery states that Lt. Eric Skeffington Poole died of wounds on 10 December 1916. Tactfully, it omits to record also that his death was caused by a British Army firing squad.” A Canadian-born engineer, Poole had enlisted in the very first weeks of the war and been commissioned an officer by May 1915. In July of 1916, a falling artillery shell struck so close that its concussion knocked Poole down, spattering him with earth. He was hospitalized for shellshock but returned to duty in September — still complaining of rheumatism and feeling “damned bad.” One night in October as his unit moved up to a forward trench, Poole disappeared from it — nobody...

The Shot at Dawn Memorial, Staffordshire, UK On Saturday 29 October 2016, a bracing Autumnal morning, and with a light drizzle threatening, three additional stakes were added to the Shot at Dawn Memorial (created by Birmingham artist Andy deComyn) at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, England. The date had been suggested to Andy deComyn by Lee Dent and Richard Pursehouse of the Chase Project military research group and members of the Wolverhampton branch of the Western Front Association. They explained that two of the three ‘mutineers’ that were pardoned in 2006 (six years after the memorial was finished) had been executed on that date exactly a century ago (the third mutineer being executed in 1917). Andy checked the information provided by Lee and Richard and WFA NZ member Geoff McMillan, who on a visit in 2015 had first asked why the three men had seemingly been ‘omitted.’ Andy explained that originally the campaign for the soldiers to be pardoned di...

The Shot at Dawn Memorial in Alrewas, Staffordshire, UK A SERVICE has been held to remember soldiers who were executed for mutiny during the First World War. The names of three soldiers were added to the National Memorial Arboretum’s Shot at Dawn memorial, which commemorates 306 soldiers killed for desertion or cowardice during the conflict. One of the three to be remembered was Jesse Robert Short, from Newcastle, a corporal in the 24th Battalion (Tyneside Irish) Northumberland Fusiliers, who is thought to have been the inspiration behind the TV drama Monocled Mutineer . Cpl Short apparently incited his men to throw an officer in the river at Etaples in September 1917. New Zealander Private Jack Braithwaite and Gunner William Lewis, from Scotland, were also remembered at the service on Saturday, October 29. Jack Braithwaite , of Dunedin, volunteered for the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in May 1915. He served in Egypt and was later sent to France in April...

Source: New Zealand War Graves Project An Otago soldier executed for mutiny is to be remembered this year at the Shot at Dawn Memorial in England. Jack Braithwaite, of Dunedin, volunteered for the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in May 1915. He served in Egypt and was later sent to France in April 1916. While serving in France, he fell foul of the military authorities on a number of occasions, losing his rank as lance corporal in May 1916. He went absent without leave, served at the front for a short time, and was later imprisoned after again leaving his unit, receiving further terms in military prison after seeking to escape. His attempt to defuse an incident involving a group of Australian and New Zealand prisoners and a military policeman at a military prison resulted in his being charged with mutiny. British military leader General Sir Douglas Haig confirmed the court-martial sentence, and he was executed on October 29, 1916 at Rouen. He was one ...

The Shot at Dawn memorial at The National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire The soldier believed to be the inspiration behind the television drama The Monocled Mutineer is to be commemorated nearly 100 years after he was shot at dawn for mutiny. Jesse Robert Short was executed for his role in the mutiny against military police at Étaples army base camp in France in September 1917. He was pardoned in 2006 and will now have his name added to the Shot at Dawn memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, which was set up to honour British army and Commonwealth soldiers executed for desertion and other capital offences during the First World War. Corporal Short, a Northumberland Fusilier, who is remembered in the 2012 song Mutiny by the folk rock band the Levellers, is to be included after a campaign by relatives of other pardoned soldiers. The memorial features stakes marking 306 soldiers, arranged around a white statue of a blindfolded private, sai...

British court martial on the front. Screenshot from " For King and Country ", a film by Joseph Losey (1965) with Dirk Bogarde and Tom Courtenay. In the mist of an anaemic French dawn, the weak sunlight burning through leaden skies, they placed the blindfold over Jack Braithwaite's eyes. He stiffened against the whitewashed wall, the wisps of breath from his open mouth quickening. These were Jack Braithwaite's horrifying last moments. At 6.05am on October 29, 1916, Jack was executed by firing squad, joining the ranks of those slaughtered by his own side. His death on that barren patch of land in Rouen came minutes after one Gunner Lewis was shot. Jack, aged 31, heard the rifles' crackle and the sound turned his legs to jelly. His crime: mutiny. But that incendiary word paints a picture that does not fit the act that cost Jack his life. Jack, who openly admitted at his court martial, "I am not a born soldier, just a Bohemian jo...