Death Penalty News

Robert Badinter (1928-2024), avocat pénaliste, professeur de droit, homme politique, ministre, était également un farouche opposant à la peine de mort.  Nommé garde des Sceaux (ministre de la Justice) à la suite de l'élection de François Mitterrand à la présidence de la République en mai 1981, il déploya une énergie considérable pour obtenir l'abolition de la peine capitale, votée par le Parlement français dès le mois de septembre 1981. En 1965, Robert Badinter et Jean-Denis Bredin fondèrent un cabinet d'avocats, au sein duquel il exerça jusqu'en 1981. Son combat idéologique, moral et philosophique contre la peine de mort prit une ampleur plus aiguë et plus militante après l'exécution de son client, Roger Bontems, le 28 novembre 1972.

Mutiny Trials Rife With Procedural Flaws, Torture Allegations The Bangladesh government should agree to new trials meeting international standards for members of the former Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) accused of mutiny and murder, including 139 whose death sentences were upheld on November 27, 2017, by the High Court, Human Rights Watch said today. The court also upheld life sentences for another 146 people. On February 25 and 26, 2009, members of the BDR mutinied against their commanding officers at the central Dhaka headquarters, killing 74 people, including 57 army officers. A number of women relatives of the officers were sexually assaulted. Human Rights Watch research has found that many of the accused were tortured in custody and most were denied access to proper representation. "We have long said that the atrocities that took place during the mutiny need to be investigated and prosecuted, but this should not be done through unfair mass trials after the use of tor...

A Bangladesh court upheld the death penalty for 139 soldiers on Monday over their role in a "brutal and barbaric" mutiny in which dozens of top army officers were massacred. In delivering his verdict Justice Md Abu Zafor Siddique described the 2009 slaughter of 74 people -- including 57 top brass -- as an unprecedented atrocity in Bangladesh's relatively short history. "It was the most heinous, brutal and barbaric carnage of our history," he told the Dhaka courtroom of the two-day massacre in which victims were shot, hacked to death and burned alive by marauding troops. The sentences will be appealed again in the Supreme Court, which by law has the final say in all capital punishment cases. In 2013 a court sentenced 152 soldiers to death for the grisly killings in a mass trial criticised by the United Nations rights chief as failing to meet basic standards of due process. One of those handed the death penalty died in custody, eight others ...

Even though the Execution Dock in London is long gone, the gallows are still maintained to this very day on the Thames foreshore by the Prospect of Whitby public house. The Execution dock was used for 400 years up until 1830.  It was used to execute all seagoing criminals, including pirates, mutineers, and smugglers.  The dock was nothing more than scaffolding used for hangings and was located beside the shoreline of the River Thames at Wapping. The British Admiralty oversaw all crimes committed on the water, and also doled out the sentences to the criminals. The dock was used as a symbol for their jurisdiction; it was placed just beyond the low-tide mark in the river. You could not outrun the long arm of the law, they did not care if you committed the crimes in their waters or abroad; you would be brought back to London and tried by the High Court of the Admiralty. They doled out Capital Punishment to acts of mutiny that resulted in death, for murde...

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...

Among the 54 soldiers were two corporals, nine lance corporals and 49 private soldiers who were attached to the 7 Division of the Nigerian Army in Maiduguri. The 7 Division is the Army Division which was created in 2013 and charged with waging war against the deadly Boko Haram terrorists who have been wreaking havoc in the North East of the country. The convicted soldiers pleaded not guilty to the charges against them when the trial began in October. According to the charge sheet, they conspired to commit mutiny against the authorities of the 7 Division on August 4, at the Mulai Primary School camp, opposite AIT Maiduguri, Borno State. They were alleged to have disobeyed orders to join operations against Boko Haram. The soldiers are the second batch of Nigerian soldiers condemned to death by Nigerian Military courts for mutiny. In September, 12 soldiers were also sentenced to death for mutiny. The soldiers were represented at the court by a respected Nigerian human r...