Death Penalty News

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — A Sri Lankan court on Friday sentenced a former police chief and a former top Defense Ministry official to death after finding them guilty of criminal negligence that allowed Islamic State-inspired bomb attacks on Easter Sunday in 2019, which killed more than 260 people. A death penalty in Sri Lanka typically means life in prison because the country has had a moratorium on executions since 1976. Current President Anura Kumara Dissanayake supports maintaining the moratorium.

On July 26, 2008, 56 people died, and more than 200 people were injured after 21 explosions rocked Ahmedabad within a span of 70 minutes. The Gujarat High Court on Tuesday upheld the death sentences of 38 convicts and life imprisonment awarded to 11 others in the 2008 Ahmedabad serial blasts case, affirming the verdict of a special court that had convicted members of the terror outfit Indian Mujahideen (IM). A division bench of Justices A.Y. Kogje and Samir Dave dismissed all appeals filed by the convicts against the 2022 special court judgment, thereby confirming the sentences.

Naveed Akram, the surviving suspect in Sunday's mass shooting at Bondi Beach in Sydney, has been charged with 59 offences, including 15 counts of murder and one of committing a terrorist act, the New South Wales Police say. His father Sajid Akram, 50, was killed in an exchange of fire with police at the scene. Fifteen people were killed and dozens of others were injured in the attack, which targeted Australia's Jewish community at an event celebrating the first night of Hanukkah. It was the country's deadliest shooting since 1996.

Hadi Matar, the man who severely injured novelist Salman Rushdie in a 2022 stabbing attack, was sentenced Friday to 25 years in prison — the maximum for attempted murder. Matar, 27, was found guilty of second-degree attempted murder in February for his attack on the author at the nonprofit Chautauqua Institution in New York state in August 2022. A knife-wielding Matar leapt onto the stage where Rushdie was about to give a lecture, stabbing the author multiple times in the face, neck, arm, abdomen and eye.

Muslims in Bangladesh are known to evade prosecution under blasphemy laws, just like Pakistan, while the draconian legislation unilaterally targets Hindus and other religious minorities. In a major development, the High Court of Bangladesh recommended strengthening the Cyber Security Act to make ‘blasphemy’ punishable by life imprisonment and death penalty in the country. “There should be a provision of punishment like death penalty or life imprisonment for such unnecessary, unconscionable, obstinate and provocative speech and conduct against the Quran and Muhammad, which the parliament may consider,” a 2-Judge Bench of Justices MR Hassan and Fahmida Quader stated.

US prosecutors have reached a deal with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Pentagon said Wednesday, reportedly involving a guilty plea in exchange for avoiding a death penalty trial. The agreements with Mohammed and two other accused moves their long-running cases toward resolution. These have been bogged down in pre-trial maneuverings for years while the defendants remained held at the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba.

Russia could allow a trial of the Crocus City Hall terrorist suspects to take place in neighbouring Belarus so they can face the death penalty. Talks are already underway between the ‘competent authorities’ of the two countries, according to Putin-loyalist MP Maria Butina. Belarus is the only European country where execution remains in active use – and two of the victims in the Crocus City Hall terror attack were Belarusian.

The Hamas terrorists who perpetrated the Oct. 7 atrocities could be charged with mass terrorism, murder with exceptional cruelty, assisting an enemy in war, but likely not genocide In the immediate wake of the savage October 7 massacres committed by Hamas and amid the IDF’s operations to liberate Israeli towns and communities overrun by the terror group, Israeli security forces captured several dozen of the 3,000 terrorists involved in the atrocities. These terrorists participated in the massacre of 1,200 Israelis — mostly civilians including babies, children, and the elderly — and also committed acts of torture, rape, and other severe crimes.

A military judge at Guantanamo Bay has ruled one of the five defendants charged over the 9/11 attacks is not fit to stand trial in a death-penalty case. The defendant Ramzi bin al-Shibh has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, associated psychotic features and a delusional disorder. His lawyer has long claimed his client was "tortured by the CIA". Al-Shibh was scheduled to face pretrial proceedings on Friday. Colonel Matthew McCall in the US base on the eastern tip of Cuba accepted the findings of the doctors which said in August that al-Shibh was too psychologically damaged to defend himself.

In dismissing a confession in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr. has shaken a foundation of U.S. government cases at the post-9/11 court. In late 2006, in an effort to turn the page on a legacy of state-sponsored torture, prosecutors for the George W. Bush administration began an experiment at Guantánamo Bay. They set up teams of law enforcement officers to try to obtain voluntary confessions from men who had spent years in brutal conditions in isolated C.I.A. prisons.

Plea agreements under consideration may mean that the suspected architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and his fellow defendants never face the death penalty WASHINGTON (AP) — The suspected architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and his fellow defendants may never face the death penalty under plea agreements now under consideration to bring an end to their more than decadelong prosecution, the Pentagon has advised families of some of the thousands killed.  The notice, made in a letter that was sent to several of the families and obtained by The Associated Press, comes 1 1/2 years after military prosecutors and defense lawyers began exploring a negotiated resolution to the case. 

The Saudi defendant, accused of orchestrating the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, was waterboarded and subjected to other forms of torture by the C.I.A. in 2002 in a secret prison network. The military judge in the U.S.S. Cole bombing case on Friday threw out confessions the Saudi defendant had made to federal agents at Guantánamo Bay after years of secret imprisonment by the C.I.A., declaring the statements the product of torture. The decision deprives prosecutors of a key piece of evidence against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, 58, in the longest-running death-penalty case at Guantánamo Bay.

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.

Five men could face execution after being charged in connection with the killing of Irish UN peacekeeper Private Sean Rooney in Lebanon. According to a judicial source in Lebanon, the military court which has charged the men claims they were part of a Hezbollah-led militia. The Acting First Military Investigating Judge Fadi Sawan is understood to have accused the men of "forming a group of malefactors to commit a crime" in his 30-page indictment in the case. His document also claims that CCTV footage from the scene of PTE Rooney’s death "clearly shows the patrol being attacked by armed men from all sides”.

Saipov will  serve his sentence at the maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado NEW YORK (AP) — An unrepentant and defiant Islamic extremist received 10 life sentences and another 260 years in prison on Wednesday for killing eight people with a truck on a bike path in Manhattan on Halloween in 2017, as a judge decried his “callous and cowardly” crimes. “The conduct in this case is among the worst, if not the worst I’ve ever seen,” said U.S. District Judge Vernon S. Broderick, as he announced a sentence designed to underscore the severity of the terrorist attack Sayfullo Saipov claimed he carried out on behalf of the Islamic State group. A life sentence was mandatory after a jury rejected the death penalty in March, but prosecutors had asked Broderick to impose eight consecutive life sentences and two concurrent life sentences. They also wanted an extra 260 years to send a stern message to other like-minded terrorists. And that's what the judge did. Broderick cited the defiance...

Prime minister’s aide tells The Media Line that Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are not being misused against minority groups Minorities in Pakistan enjoy equal human rights to other citizens and “there is no misuse of the blasphemy laws against them,” Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, a religious cleric and the Pakistani prime minister’s special representative on interfaith harmony and the Middle East, told The Media Line. Ashrafi was responding to a report released this week by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which recommended that 12 nations remain on the list of countries of concern for religious freedom, among them Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. Speaking of Pakistan, the report stated that the coalition government led by Prime Minister Mian Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif, which took office in mid-April 2022, had “weaponized the country’s blasphemy laws against former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his cabinet members.”

11 death sentences issued in Gaza since September 2022 JERUSALEM, Monday, March 13, 2023 (WAFA) - The EU Missions in Jerusalem and Ramallah condemned the death sentences issued by the Hamas authority in Gaza against three Gazans on 9 March.  This brings the number of death sentences issued in Gaza to 11, since September 2022. “We call on the de facto authorities in Gaza to comply with the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) ratified by Palestine in 2019, which aims at the abolition of the death penalty,” said an EU statement. The EU Missions in Jerusalem and Ramallah recalled their firm opposition to the death penalty in all circumstances and in all countries.

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.

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.

President Joe Biden campaigned on a pledge to work toward abolishing the death penalty, but advocates say he is far from making good on that promise. While running for president, Biden's campaign website said he would "work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivize states to follow the federal government's example." Those convicted of the most egregious crimes "should instead serve life sentences without probation or parole," it added.