Death Penalty News

A Ugandan-American man was sentenced to death on Thursday over the murder of four young children he stabbed to death at a kindergarten in Uganda's capital. Christopher Okello Onyum was arrested on 2 April as he tried to flee the daycare centre in Kampala, where he killed the tiny children, aged between 15 months to two-and-a-half years. Prosecutors said Onyum, who holds Ugandan and US citizenship, confessed to the crime, believing the "human sacrifice" would help him become rich, although he eventually pleaded not guilty in court.

Iraqi court issued a death sentence Wednesday against one of the wives of the late brutal Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, alleging that she was complicit in crimes committed against Yazidi women.

NASIRIYAH (Iraq), May 31 — Iraq executed eight people convicted of “terrorism”, a security source and health official said today, the third such group put to death in the country in little over a month. Courts have handed down hundreds of death and life sentences in recent years to Iraqis convicted of “terrorism”, in trials that rights groups have denounced as hasty.

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Amnesty International on Wednesday criticized Iraqi authorities for carrying out the death sentences of 13 men on the same day, saying the prisoners were denied fair trial, and expressed concern that many others had been executed in secret. A total of 13 prisoners were executed in Dhi Qars Nasiriyah central prison on Monday, and scores more have been executed since April 10, said the Amnesty report citing activists and lawyers of the death row prisoners.

Non-governmental organisations in Morocco have called on their government to intervene and prevent the execution of six Moroccans in Somalia. In a joint statement, the six bodies explained that they learned about the verdict issued by a military court in northern Somalia on 2 March, which sentenced six Moroccans to death by firing squad on charges of belonging to Daesh.

A court in Tunisia has sentenced four people to death and two people to life in prison on charges of participating in the murder of the prominent political leader Chokri Belaid in 2013. He was found shot dead in his car in the capital, Tunis, prompting outrage. The leftist politician had been a fierce critic of the then-ruling Islamist Ennahda party. He claimed it turned a blind eye to violence perpetrated by extremists against secularists.

A military court in northern Somalia has sentenced six Moroccan nationals to death on terrorism charges, prosecutors and court officials tell VOA. A judge at the court in the town of Bossaso handed down sentences Thursday to nine suspects, including seven foreigners. “Six Moroccans, convicted of being members of Islamic State militants, will face the death penalty, Colonel Ali Ibrahim Osman, the deputy chairman of the court, told VOA Somali. He said an Ethiopian and a Somali each received 10-year jail terms, while the court found another Somali defendant not guilty.

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday called on the Iraqi government to declare a moratorium on all executions “with a view to abolish the death penalty,” after the emergence of reports of the mass execution of 13 inmates in a prison in Nasiriyah, southern Iraq. Thirteen men in Nasiriyah’s al-Hout prison were executed on December 25,  in what was the first mass execution since November 2020, when  21 men were executed for terrorism charges, according to HRW's report on the issue.  

The court sentenced two other accomplices to life imprisonment. The Court of First Instance in charge of terrorism cases at the Court of Appeals in Rabat sentenced a man to the death penalty for his involvement in the murder of a policeman. The court issued its verdict on Thursday.  Two other accomplices involved in the murder received life imprisonment sentences, while eight others received a five-year prison sentence. One of the defendants was also sentenced to four years in prison.

When leniency goes too far... BERLIN (AP) — A Munich court on Tuesday sentenced a German woman who was a member of the Islamic State group to 14 years in prison for allowing a 5-year-old Yazidi girl she and her husband kept as a slave in Iraq to die of thirst in the sun. [ Are we living on the same planet????? — DPN] The decision replaced an earlier prison sentence of 10 years.  A German appeals court had ordered a new sentencing hearing for the woman, who has been identified only as Jennifer W. in line with German privacy rules, after the country's Federal Court of Justice threw out an appeal by the defendant but partly approved an appeal by prosecutors. 

AFP — Iraq has hanged three people convicted for a 2016 bombing that killed more than 320 people in a Baghdad shopping district and was claimed by the Islamic State group, the prime minister's office said on late Monday. The bombing was one of the world's deadliest after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. At least 323 people were killed in the car bombing that sparked raging fires in Baghdad's Karrada shopping area early on July 3, 2016 as it teemed with people ahead of the Eid al-Fitr festival ending the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Kuwait City (AFP) – Kuwait put to death five people on Thursday, including a man convicted of involvement in a 2015 Islamic State group suicide bombing that killed 26 people, the Public Prosecution said. The multiple executions in the Gulf emirate -- relatively rare compared to neighbouring Saudi Arabia -- are the first since seven people were put to death in November last year ending a five-year moratorium. In a statement, the Public Prosecution said it oversaw the "implementation of the death sentence in Kuwait's Central Prison" against five people, most of them accused of murder.

CAIRO (AP) — A Libyan court Monday sentenced 23 suspected Islamic State group militants to death for launching deadly attacks that killed dozens of people, including Egyptian Coptic Christians. The appeals court in the western city of Misrata also sentenced 14 other militants to life in prison who were convicted on the same charges, which include destruction of police facilities and public property. The court sentenced nine defendants to between three and 12 years in prison. It acquitted five suspects. The court did not elaborate further details. The Islamic State and other extremist groups exploited the chaos that engulfed Libya after the 2011 uprising that toppled and later killed longtime ruler Moammar Gadhafi.  They seized the coastal city of Sirte, Gadhafi's birthplace, and other cities including Derna in eastern Libya.

A court in Tunisia in charge of terrorism cases handed Tuesday death penalty to two people indicted for participation in a terror attack that occurred in 2020 near the US embassy in capital Tunis. On March 6, 2020, two subsides blew themselves up near the US mission in the Tunisian capital.  Authorities believed the attackers targeted a security patrol. Five security forces and one civilian were wounded in the attack.  One security personnel however later died of his injured.  The court charged the defendants with “complicity in murder, injury, damage to public and private property, possession of an explosive device and voluntary membership in a terrorist organization on Tunisian soil,” reports say.

A split among jurors means there will be no death penalty for an Islamic extremist convicted of maniacally racing a truck along a popular New York City bike path, killing eight people and maiming others. NEW YORK (AP) — A split among jurors means there will be no death penalty for an Islamic extremist convicted of maniacally racing a truck along a popular New York City bike path, killing eight people and maiming others. The decision means Sayfullo Saipov, 35, an Uzbekistan citizen who lived in New Jersey, gets an automatic sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole in the October 2017 attack. Jurors told the judge Monday that they were unable to reach the unanimous verdict required for a death sentence.

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.

The federal jury deciding on the punishment for Sayfullo Saipov, convicted last month of killing 8 people with a truck, has heard from more than 20 witnesses. A little girl standing on her toes to place her palm on her deceased father’s image on a television screen. A mother who has left her son’s bedroom exactly as it was on Halloween 2017. A man married to a woman who lost her legs who clutches a pair of her socks in bed every night, yearning for the contact of her feet. The federal jury deciding on a death penalty for Sayfullo Saipov, the man convicted last month of killing 8 people and injuring many others in a truck attack inspired by the Islamic State, has heard from more than 20 witnesses, including victims, relatives and bystanders. On Wednesday, the prosecution rested its case and Mr. Saipov’s lawyers began trying to save his life.

New York (AFP) – President Joe Biden promised to abolish capital punishment for federal crimes, but the US government is due to argue, beginning Monday, that an Uzbek man should get the death penalty for killing eight people in New York half a decade ago. The same 12 jurors who last month convicted Sayfullo Saipov of several murder and terrorism charges will decide whether he should be jailed for life or sentenced to death. Although the Biden administration declared a moratorium on all federal executions, if Saipov receives the sentence he could be put to death, either under a future president or if the moratorium is lifted.

An Islamic extremist who killed eight people with a speeding truck in a 2017 rampage on a popular New York City bike path was convicted Thursday of federal crimes and could face the death penalty. NEW YORK (AP) — An Islamic extremist who killed eight people with a speeding truck in a 2017 rampage on a popular New York City bike path was convicted Thursday of federal crimes and could face the death penalty.

NEW YORK (AP) — Deliberations that began Wednesday in the trial of a man charged with killing eight people along a Manhattan bike path quickly hit a snag, as jurors sent the judge a note asking if he would face new criminal charges if they acquit him.