Death Penalty News

Burkina Faso's military rulers will bring back the death penalty, which was abolished in 2018, the country's Council of Ministers announced on Thursday. "This draft penal code reinstates the death penalty for a number of offences, including high treason, acts of terrorism, acts of espionage, among others," stated the information service of the Burkinabe government. Burkina Faso last carried out an execution in 1988.

Burkina Faso's military regime wants to reinstate the death penalty, which was abolished in the country in 2018, a government source told AFP news agency on Saturday.  The latest execution in Burkina Faso was in 1988, according to rights group Amnesty International. It concerned four leaders accused of an attempted coup d’état to depose president Blaise Compaoré – defence minister Jean-Baptiste Boukary Lingani, minister of economic promotion Henri Zongo, and two unidentified men.

Meant to terrorize people, the sentences are making the judicial system a joke, rights groups say. Lawyers and human rights experts in Myanmar have condemned the junta’s liberal use of the death penalty, including several recent cases where anti-junta activists received multiple death sentences. Such sentences are meant to terrorize opponents of the junta, which is losing ground to ethnic armies and resistance fighters in a civil war now in its third year, but the absurdity of doing so is turning the judicial system into a farce, rights groups say.

State prosecutors revealed that the group had allegedly planned to orchestrate protests, ostensibly aimed at toppling President Nana Akufo-Addo's government in the lead-up to the 2020 general elections In a landmark ruling, six Ghanaians, among them three soldiers, have been sentenced to death by hanging for their alleged involvement in a coup plot that unfolded three years ago. This marks the first treason trial in Ghana since 1966, when the nation’s post-independence leader, Kwame Nkrumah, was ousted.

Since the 2021 coup, over 2,500 people have been killed by the dictatorship and more than 13,000 people have been detained. On Thursday, the Myanmar press reported that a military court sentenced eleven dissidents to death, including seven university students. This sentence is the first of its kind since July, when the dictatorship executed four activists in what represented the first application of the death penalty in this Asian country since 1988. The Dagon University Student Union recalled that the seven students sentenced this week were arrested on April 21 on charges of murdering a bank manager, . Four other young men were also sentenced to death accused of having been involved in the murder of an official, as reported by the local media Khit Khit. In July, the United Nations harshly condemned the Burmese military junta for the executions of former National League for Democracy lawmaker Phyo Zeyar Thaw, writer Ko Jimmy, and activists Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw. Since the 202...

July 25 (Reuters) - Myanmar's military junta has executed four democracy activists accused of helping to carry out "terror acts", it said on Monday, sparking widespread condemnation of the Southeast Asian nation's first executions in decades. Sentenced to death in closed-door trials in January and April, the four men had been accused of helping insurgents to fight the army that seized power in a coup last year and unleashed a bloody crackdown on its opponents. Myanmar's National Unity Government (NUG), a shadow administration outlawed by the ruling junta, condemned the executions and called for international action against the ruling military. "Extremely saddened ... condemn the junta's cruelty," Kyaw Zaw, the spokesman of the NUG president’s office, told Reuters in a message. "The global community must punish their cruelty." Among those executed were democracy campaigner Kyaw Min Yu, better known as Jimmy, and former lawmaker and hip-hop a...

All defendants were denied legal representation in military tribunals or sentenced in absentia. Myanmar’s junta has condemned more than 100 people to death in the Yangon region alone since it seized power a year ago. None of the people sentenced were given the right to defend themselves. Of the 101 people documented by RFA’s Myanmar Service, 50 were convicted in secretive military tribunals where they were denied access to legal representation, while the rest were sentenced in absentia. Those convicted hailed mostly from the Yangon townships of North Okkalapa, South Dagon, North Dagon, Hlaingtharyar, Dagon Port and Shwepyithar, where martial law has been in place amid resistance to military rule. Two of the more well-known prisoners facing the death penalty are Phyo Zeyar Thaw, a lawmaker with the deposed National League for Democracy (NLD) party, and activist Ko Jimmy, a leader of the 88 Generation Student group. Both were sentenced for violating the country’s Anti-Terrorism Law, acco...

YANGON (AFP) - Myanmar's junta sentenced a member of Ms Aung San Suu Kyi's ousted party to death for terror offences on Friday (Jan 21), a statement said. Phyo Zeyar Thaw, a member of the National League for Democracy arrested in November, was "sentenced to the death penalty today under anti-terrorism act", the junta said. Prominent democracy activist Kyaw Min Yu - better known as "Jimmy" - received the same sentence from the military tribunal, the junta statement said. The junta has sentenced dozens of anti-coup activists to death as part of its crackdown on dissent, but Myanmar has not carried out an execution for decades. Phyo Zeyar Thaw - whose real name is Maung Kyaw - was arrested at an apartment in the commercial hub Yangon following a "tip-off and cooperation from dutiful citizens", the junta's information team said. He had been accused of orchestrating several attacks on regime forces, including the brazen shooting on a commuter train ...

The Myanmar junta’s military tribunals have sentenced 65 people to death following unjust trials since the military coup on February 1, 2021, Human Rights Watch said today. State media and local groups have reported that 26 of those sentenced are currently detained, while 39 were convicted in absentia. Military tribunals handed down the death sentences in areas of Yangon where the junta declared martial law in March. In imposing martial law, the junta transferred all executive and judicial power to the head of the relevant regional military command and instituted the death penalty as a possible sentence for 23 crimes. “The Myanmar junta has added to its mass shootings of protesters on the streets by having military tribunals hand down several dozen death sentences after egregiously unfair trials,” said Shayna Bauchner, Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Apparently aimed to chill the anti-coup protest movement, these death sentences should serve as a stark warning to foreign govern...

In the latest aggression by Myanmar's military authorities, 64 people including minors have been sentenced to death. The opposition National Unity government said on Sunday that those convicted had no attorney during the trials held in military courts. The majority were known to have been arrested in townships in Yangon where martial law was declared following the army's coup. Although capital punishment is in Myanmar's constitution, the country has not executed anyone since 1998. According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, more than 800 people have been killed so far as the result of the brutal crackdown by security forces. Source: arirang.co.kr , Staff, June 28, 2021 🚩 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com . Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this...

Reprieve has released a new report on the death penalty which reveals that Egypt remains the 5th largest executioner worldwide. Since Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi rose to power in a military coup he headed in 2013, a record number of death sentences have been imposed and carried out. At least 26 people are currently at risk of imminent execution and at least 17 children have received the death sentence since 2011. This is despite the fact that Egypt's child law stipulates that no child who has committed a crime under the age of 18 can be sentenced to death, life imprisonment or forced labour. In Egypt there are 60,000 political prisoners who are systematically tortured and denied medical care as a punitive measure against their activism. This systematic torture is often used to obtain a confession which raises huge concerns amid the escalating use of the death penalty. Since their last report was released in 2019, Egypt's "mass trial complex" shows no signs of slowing, despi...

CAIRO (AP) — A Sudanese court sentenced to death on Monday a paramilitary officer charged with killing a demonstrator during a deadly breakup of a protest camp in the capital, Khartoum, two years ago. The court ruled that the officer, Youssef Mohieldin al-Fiky, a major with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, rammed a protester with his car as security forces were dispersing a sit-in outside the military headquarters in June 2019. The protester, Hanafy Abdel-Shakour, was one of over 120 people killed during the brutal crackdown on demonstrators in Khartoum and elsewhere in Sudan that June. It followed two months after the military ousted then-President Omar al-Bashir amid a public uprising against his nearly three-decade autocratic rule. Al-Fiky rammed his car into 22-year-old Abdel-Shakour, in Omdurman, a city adjacent to Khartoum, according to the state-run SUNA news agency. The report said the trial had started more than a year later, in July 2020, in Khartoum’s Judicial and Lega...

Myanmar's state-run television reported Tuesday night that 7 people had been sentenced to death by court-martial for their roles in the killing of a woman who purportedly cooperated with the military. The military has intensified its crackdown on protesters and others opposed to its rule following a February coup.  Nineteen people were sentenced to death by court-martial last week for the killing of an associate of an army officer in the largest city Yangon. The 7 either committed or aided in the killing of the woman on March 15 in an area of Yangon where martial law has been declared, according to the report. She had purportedly leaked information about protesters and others. 19 others were sentenced to 3 to 7 years in prison for their roles in the case. The sentences were dated Monday. In areas where martial law has been declared, serious crimes are tried by court-martial, with the maximum penalty being death. No appeals are permitted. Security forces had killed 714 people in Mya...