Death Penalty News

In a stunning move amid a continued purge of its military, China on Thursday gave 2 former defense ministers suspended death sentences for corruption. Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu were both convicted of bribery and given the death penalty with a 2-year reprieve by the country’s military court, according to state media. The court announced that the 2 former generals’ sentences will be commuted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole after 2 years.  Wei, 72, served as defense minister from 2018 to 2023. Li, 68, succeeded Wei and held the position for less than 8 months in 2023. Both men were placed under investigation by the military’s anti-graft arm in 2023. 

Repression continues to devour Saudi citizens, even government allies, as Crown Prince entrenches his authority (Washington D.C., February 27, 2023) – The Specialized Criminal Court (SCC) in Riyadh, used to prosecute "terrorism" cases in Saudi Arabia, has charged six former prominent SCC judges and four former judges of the High Court, the country's supreme court, with "high treason" – a crime punishable by death in Saudi Arabia – in its first secret hearing of the case on February 16, 2023, said Democracy for the Arab Now (DAWN). Sources told DAWN that the government has denied the defendants legal counsel and held them incommunicado since their detention on April 11, 2022.

Homophobic Chechen tyrant Ramzan Kadyrov made his first public appearance since rumours emerged that he had been hospitalised with coronavirus. The autocratic leader, who orchestrated the region’s brutal ‘gay purge’ , was reported to have earned the title of the first Russian official to fall seriously ill in the coronavirus pandemic . According two Russian state news agencies, RIA Novosti and Tass, Kadyrov was flown to a clinic in Moscow as his condition rapidly deteriorated. The digital news outlet Baza reported there had been damage to his lungs. Chechen officials refused to confirm the news or give any information as to his whereabouts, while the head of Chechnya’s state-run TV channel openly contested the reports of illness. RELATED |  Chechnya leader responsible for “gay purge” rushed to Moscow hospital for coronavirus After nearly a fortnight of rumours, Kadyrov finally reappeared in public on Tuesday. He was filmed at a government meeting in Grozny, Che...

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has executed its special envoy to the United States on spying charges, as its leader, Kim Jong-un, has engineered a sweeping purge of the country’s top nuclear negotiators after the breakdown of his second summit meeting with President Trump, a major South Korean daily reported on Friday. Kim Hyok-chol, the envoy, was executed by firing squad in March at the Mirim airfield in a suburb of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, Chosun Ilbo, South Korea’s largest daily, reported on Friday, citing an anonymous source. Mr. Kim faced the charge that he was “won over by the American imperialists to betray the supreme leader,” the newspaper said. Four officials of the North Korean Foreign Ministry were also executed, the South Korean daily reported, without providing any hint of who its source might be or how it obtained the information. South Korean officials could not confirm the Chosun Ilbo report. North Korea has not reported any execution or p...

On Sept. 6, 1958, Aaron “Bud” Jenkins was stabbed to death as he slept in the barracks at Esquimalt’s naval base. Leo Mantha confessed to the crime. The tugboat operator had been romantically involved with Jenkins and the fatal stabbing came after the two had gotten into a violent argument. Jenkins’ death was a textbook definition of a “crime of passion,” says Neil Boyd, criminology professor at Simon Fraser University. “By today’s standards, it probably would’ve been a manslaughter conviction,” he said. Instead, the 30-year-old Mantha received the death penalty and was hanged in 1959, making him the last person to be executed in British Columbia. Mantha’s death came at a time when the federal cabinet commuted most death sentences, but Boyd said Mantha was an exception due to “anti-gay sentiments.” Originally from Quebec, Mantha had been in the navy before working on a tugboat. In the summer of 1958, a bartender at Victoria’s Empress Hotel introduced him to J...

Following an initial report last week that Chechnya has launched a new crackdown on LGBTQ people in the region, activists have come forward to claim that there have already been fatalities. According to this new information two people have been killed and further 40 have been detained purely because of their sexual orientation. It has been reported that the two deaths were caused by the use of torture by police in the Russian republic. Both men and women have been detained in this new wave of persecution, The Russian LGBT Network have said, following the detention of an administrator for a group for LGBTQ people on the social network VKontakte. Much like the first wave of persecution back in 2017, police threatened the victims’ families with violence if they spoken out about the crackdown. Authorities have also reportedly taken documents from the prisoners so they cannot escape the region while being held at a jail in the town of Argun. “The persecution of me...

A Turkish court has sentenced 104 former military officers to life in prison for their involvement in a 2016 coup attempt, state media report. They were given “aggravated life sentences”, which come with tougher terms than a normal life sentence. The country’s president had previously said he backed reintroducing the death penalty for coup plotters. The failed coup to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan left at least 260 dead and 2,200 injured on 15 July 2016. The Turkish government has since led a crackdown on alleged coup supporters, with the dismissal of more than 150,000 state employees and the arrest of some 50,000 people. Of the 280 ex-military people on trial, the court in Izmir also served lesser sentences to a further 52 defendants. Sitting in Izmir in western Turkey, the court gave 21 people 20 years in prison for “assisting the assassination of the president”, while 31 others were sentenced to between seven and 11 years for “membership of a te...

More than 70 countries around the world today still criminalize same-sex relations, and in some of them the death penalty may be applied. The UN’s independent LGBT human rights expert has warned of a brewing global crisis amid reports of homophobic purges in several countries. This year there have been a number of crackdowns against the gay community in a string of separate countries across the world. Human rights monitors in Russia have warned about a homophobic purge in the autonomous Chechnya region, with dozens of gay men reportedly killed by authorities and vigilantes while many others were forced to flee. More recently authorities in Egypt launched a crackdown on the gay community, sparked by a ‘moral panic’ over the waving of a rainbow flag at a music concert. Since the concert, Egyptian authorities began a ‘purge’ targeted at the country’s gay community, raiding homes and arresting more than 60 people. The state has also banned local media from mentioning...

Chechnya’s leader President Ramzan Kadyrov Chechnya’s leader President Ramzan Kadyrov has defended honour killings of gay men. Speaking to HBO, the Chechen president said that he would defend the rights of families to murder their gay relatives. ‘Honour killings’, or the murder of relatives due to the belief that the victim has brought shame to the family, are illegal in Russia and Chechnya. Kadyrov has ruled the Muslim republic since 2007 after the assassination of his father. In the TV interview, he declared: “If we have such people here, then I’m telling you officially, their relatives won’t let them be, because of our faith, our mentality, customs and traditions. “Even if it’s punishable under the law, we would still condone it.” Kadyrov not only rules over Chechnya, but also runs the Akhmat Fight Club gym and the Akhmat MMA promotion in the Chechen capital of Grozny. The interview with HBO was to promote the country’s sports industry – with num...

President Ramzan Kadyrov The names of 27 people slaughtered in a single night by Chechen authorities have been published. The secret mass execution is thought to have seen up to 56 people killed – all without trial. Novaya Gazeta , a newspaper based in the region, has published the list of names it claims President Ramzan Kadyrov’s government killed. The executions were all carried out in Chechnya’s capital, Grozny, on the night of 25 January, the newspaper claims. According to the strongly anti-Putin publication, mass arrests and executions in the Muslim region were triggered by the killing of a policeman on 16 December 2016. It reports that the victims were shot without trial, then the bodies were “taken to various cemeteries, including Christian ones, where they were buried in hastily dug graves”. The outlet has spent months investigating illegal detentions in the area. The same newspaper broke the story that the region is rounding up and persecutin...