Death Penalty News

A Libyan man accused of being involved in making the bomb that destroyed Pan Am flight 103 over the town of Lockerbie in December 1988 is now in US custody, authorities in the United States and Scotland said Sunday. The US charged Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi for his alleged involvement in the bombing two years ago, a spokesman for the UK Crown Office and Prosecutor Fiscal Service told CNN. The attack killed 270 people as the bomb detonated over the Scottish town as it flew from London to New York. The US Justice Department issued a statement Sunday morning confirming that the US had “taken custody of alleged Pan Am flight 103 bombmaker” Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, saying he is expected to make his “initial appearance in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia,” according to a spokesperson. The statement did not identify a specific date for his court appearance, but said more details would be forthcoming. Al-Marimi had been in custody in Libya ...

Tiny cells, lacking medical treatment and sweltering conditions cited by judge who blocked extradition. Late last year, a Scottish court quietly refused what seemed like a routine extradition. It wasn’t that of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose drawn-out efforts to avoid the American prison system have grabbed international headlines for years. Instead, it was that of a relatively unknown Scottish man, Daniel Magee, who’d allegedly shot a security guard in Austin, Texas, in 2016 before fleeing to his native country. The refusal to send a prisoner back is not unprecedented — but what has raised eyebrows in the legal community is the reason: An Edinburgh judge decided that poor conditions in Texas prisons might constitute an international human rights violation. “This is the first case I know of where this specific argument about prison conditions has succeeded — normally, the courts are very sympathetic to deporting people,” said University of Nottingham criminologist Dirk van Zyl...

What is the point of sending someone to prison - retribution or rehabilitation? Twenty years ago, Norway moved away from a punitive "lock-up" approach and sharply cut reoffending rates. The BBC's Emma Jane Kirby went to see the system in action, and to meet prison officers trained to serve as mentors and role models for prisoners.

Dozens of school friends joined two Christian teenager brothers to hand in an 85,000-signature petition to the Home Office to prevent their deportation to Pakistan. Somer Umeed Bakhsh, 15, and his brother Areeb, 13, have lived in Glasgow with their parents Maqsood and Parveen since their family fled Pakistan in 2012 when their father was subjected to death threats due to his Christian faith. The UK Government has repeatedly rejected the family's plea for asylum, largely because officials do not believe they would be at risk in Pakistan where blasphemy carries the death penalty.  Almost 85,000 people have signed a petition calling on the Home Office not to deport the family, who are being supported by the Church of Scotland. Somer, who wants to be an astrophysicist, recently got six As and a B in his National 5 exams at Springburn Academy in Glasgow. Dozens of pupils from the school joined the boys at the Home Office depot in Glasgow on Wednesday to show their...

The British government has turned down a request from Myanmar to extradite Harris Binotti, the prime suspect in the Nov. 2016 murder of fellow British national Gary Ferguson in Yangon. “In April 2017, the Burmese did submit an extradition request to the Home Office, asking that Harris Binotti be extradited from the UK to Burma to stand trial. After careful consideration, earlier this year, the decision was taken by the Home Office to refuse the extradition request,” an official from the UK Home Office told Martin Ferguson, the victim’s brother, via email on Friday. “The request was refused due to there being no extradition treaty in place between the UK and Burma. In addition, to extradite Mr. Binotti, the UK would violate several human rights obligations,” the email went on. Binotti fled Myanmar on the afternoon of Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016, hours after a fight broke out in his downtown Yangon apartment. Neighbors told Coconuts at the time that they heard people fighting, ...

The final day of Robert Smith's life in Dumfries "broke grey and dull". The 19-year-old had been convicted of murder, rape, robbery and attempted murder near the village of Cummertrees and sentenced to hang. The laws of the land were about to be changed but on 12 May 1868 the scaffold was set up for him next to the junction of St David Street - now Irish Street - and Buccleuch Street in Dumfries. He was about to become the last man to be publicly hanged in Scotland. The story of his crimes - dubbed the Annandale Murder - had gone around the world in the Victorian era. "Crimes of the magnitude of Smith's are fortunately rare in this district," reported the Dumfries and Galloway Standard at the time. However, Dumfries had seen another execution at the same spot 6 years before when Mary Timney became the last woman to be publicly hanged in Scotland. The cases, however, had few similarities. "Our readers must still have a ...

Kenny Richey, who was reprieved after 21 years on death row in the USA, claims he's found redemption - by building shelters for homeless veterans. Richey, born and raised in Edinburgh until he was 18, lived through 13 execution dates for the 1987 house fire death of 2-year-old Cynthia Collins. He was freed in a plea deal 10 years ago, and was homeless when the American charity Sanctuary Quarters threw him a lifeline. Now the man who was asked to choose the method of his own execution says he has finally found peace and a reason to turn his life around, brick by brick. Richey, 53, said: "I believe I survived everything I've been through because helping people less fortunate than myself was what I'm meant to do. "I've been to hell and back and done stupid things, but I was never a bad person. "When you are treated like an animal, and forced to choose how you are going to die, humanity goes out the window. I was lost for a long time." ...

The persecution of witches came down to a battle for the 'market share' of post-Reformation Christians, according to a paper by 2 economists It was a terrifying phenomenon that continues to cast a shadow over certain parts of Europe even today. The great age of witch trials, which ran between 1550 and 1700, fascinates and repels in equal measure. Over the course of a century and a half, 80,000 people were tried for witchcraft and 1/2 of them were executed, often burned alive. And then trials disappeared almost completely. Their appearance was all the more strange because between 900 and 1400 the Christian authorities had refused to acknowledge that witches existed, let alone try someone for the crime of being one. This was despite the fact that belief in witches was common in medieval Europe, and in 1258 Pope Alexander IV had to issue a canon to prevent prosecutions. But by 1550 Christian authorities had reversed their position, leading to a witch-hunt across...

THERE has been a lot of celebration in the media of late to mark the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of male homosexuality with the passing of the Sexual Offences Act on July 27, 1967. However that act only had effect in England and Wales. The original 1967 act wasn’t extended to Scotland due to the opposition of Scottish MPs, both Labour and Conservative. Scotland, they claimed, needed to be protected from the evils of homosexuality. Gay men in Scotland had to wait another 13 years for the Criminal Justice Scotland Act of 1980 to extend the same provisions to Scotland. Sodomy, legally defined as anal intercourse, had been illegal in England and Scotland since at least the 16th century, and for much of that time it was a capital offence. The law was harsh, sentences were exercises in sadistic cruelty. One of the earliest attested Scottish cases was in 1570 when John Swan and John Litster were convicted by the High Court of the Justiciary in Edinburgh of “the wilde, fil...

THE family of a Scots grandfather held on death row in Pakistan for six years have called for Government action after a courtroom bid to free him collapsed last week. Mohammad Asghar, 71, who is frail, blind and mentally ill, was convicted under the country’s controversial blasphemy laws. His family in Edinburgh have been fighting for his death sentence to be lifted, which might allow him to be returned to Scotland. However, at a hearing in Pakistan last week, prosecutors failed to appear. His daughter Jasmine Rana yesterday told of her crushing disappointment and said she is terrified for both her father’s safety and health. She said: “It’s so upsetting that it has come to nothing again. We’re back to waiting just because someone doesn’t turn up at court. “All this time is getting wasted and in the meantime my dad is still in the same place. “He has needed cataract surgery for over a year, he doesn’t get any exercise and he’s got no one to talk to. ...

Prison chiefs are in talks with the family of the last man to be hanged in Scotland as they prepare to move his remains. Henry John Burnett was executed at HMP Aberdeen, formerly known as Craiginches, on August 15, 1963 after being found guilty of murdering his lover's husband. The 21-year-old was the only man to be subjected to death by hanging at Craiginches, but with the site set to close in January, the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) are hoping to remove Henry's remains. Earlier this year prison bosses revealed they wanted to ask permission to move Henry's body and after tracing his relatives they are now in discussion before inmates are transferred from Aberdeen to the new "superjail" in Peterhead, HMP Grampian. An SPS spokeswoman said: "We're currently preparing plans for the decommissioning of HMP Aberdeen following its closure in January 2014. "We are aware there is a grave located within the grounds of the prison and th...