Death Penalty News

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — The state of Alabama asked a judge Friday to deny defense lawyers’ request to film the next execution by nitrogen gas in an attempt to help courts evaluate whether the new method is humane. The request to record the scheduled Sept. 26 execution of Alan Miller was filed by attorneys for another man facing the death penalty, Carey Dale Grayson. They are challenging the constitutionality of the method after Alabama carried out the nation’s first execution by nitrogen gas in January, when Kenneth Smith was put to death.

In April, a jury found El Shafee Elsheikh guilty on four counts of hostage-taking and four counts of conspiracy after a two-week trial. ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A federal judge on Friday sentenced a key member of an Islamic State cell known as the Beatles to eight concurrent life terms without parole in the abduction, abuse and deaths of four Americans in Syria, ending a wrenching effort by their families to bring the militants to justice. In April, a jury found El Shafee Elsheikh, 33, guilty on four counts of hostage-taking and four counts of conspiracy after a two-week trial. Former captives detailed relentless beatings, sexual abuse, waterboarding and killings by three young Britons, who were nicknamed the Beatles for their accents and their incessant banter. The relatives of the four Americans — the journalists James Foley and Steven J. Sotloff as well as the aid workers Kayla Mueller and Peter Kassig — watched intently, linking arms and grasping hands, as Judge Thomas S. Ellis III of Fed...

When authorities executed McVeigh 20 years ago, it was federal government’s first use of death penalty since 1963 The authorities had been preparing for thousands of protesters, both for and against the death penalty. As it was, just a couple of hundred showed up. Those that did, were far outnumbered by the media. Up to 1,400 reporters had gathered on the thick grass outside of Terre Haute Federal Penitentiary to cover the execution of Timothy McVeigh, both America’s deadliest domestic terrorist with white supremacist sympathies, and also an ordinary-looking veteran of the Gulf War, and a Roman Catholic born in upstate New York. In April 1995, with help of accomplice of Terry Nichols, a friend from army training, the disillusioned McVeigh had driven a truck bomb beneath the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and lit a two-minute fuse before fleeing the scene in a second vehicle he had parked nearby. The truck, a 1993 Ford F-700 rental vehicle, contained 4,800lbs of explosi...

An Algerian court on Thursday sentenced to death a jihadist for the kidnapping and beheading of French mountaineer Herve Gourdel six years ago after a high profile one-day trial. The 2014 killing in Algeria of Gourdel was claimed by a jihadist faction affiliated to the Islamic State group. Gourdel, 55, was abducted while exploring the rugged massif in the North African nation's Djurdjura National Park, a draw for hikers, but also long a sanctuary for jihadists. 3 days after he disappeared, gunmen from militant group Jund al-Khilafa -- Arabic for Soldiers of the Caliphate -- published a gruesome video of his murder. The trial opened on Thursday with 14 defendants, 8 of whom were accused of being jihadists and were charged with Gourdel's kidnapping and murder. However, only 1 of the 8, Abdelmalek Hamzaoui, is in custody. The other 7 were tried and sentenced to death in absentia. On Thursday, Hamzaoui was brought to court by ambulance in a wheelchair accompanied by a medical team ...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan. — A local court in Pakistan on Thursday overturned the death sentence and murder convictions of four men believed to be involved in the killing of US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002. The men had all been in prison for 18 years. Three were handed life sentences.  A fourth, British national Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, was awaiting the death penalty. The high court in Pakistan’s southern province of Sindh vacated Sheikh’s murder conviction and reduced his death sentence to a seven-year prison term for kidnapping. His seven-year sentence will now be counted from the time served. It’s unclear if all four will be immediately released. Pearl, who was working as the South Asia bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal, was in Karachi reporting on Pakistani extremists and “shoe bomber” Richard Reid when he was kidnapped by militants. The high profile abduction drew international attention, amid growing concern over the threat posed by radical Islamic t...

Iraqi forces on Monday night announced the capture of an Islamic State (ISIS) commander and 6 other militants in southwest Kirkuk province who are alleged to have committed "heinous crimes" against civilians. The 7 unnamed ISIS suspects were arrested by Iraqi troops, the defense ministry announced via social media, without describing the circumstances of their capture. Among the prisoners is an alleged ISIS commander who managed the Hawija Grain Mill when the group controlled the area from mid-2014 to October 2017. In a video published on Facebook by the Iraqi defense ministry, the unnamed ISIS commander, whose face is blurred, is showed confessing to the murder of 3 Kurds and 2 other individuals from Diyala province. "Members of our group kidnapped 3 Kurdish nationals and brought them to Hawija. Our leader ordered me to behead them. Together with 2 other persons who were from Diyala, we executed the order," he said, without identifying their lead...

A report released on Tuesday claims to reveal hundreds of locations of execution sites across the state Hundreds and even thousands of North Koreans are required to attend open-air executions in locations that include market places, schools and sports grounds, but state agents take considerable pains to prevent these macabre events being recorded by the public with smartphones. These were among the findings of a report published on Tuesday by a Seoul-based NGO, “Mapping the Fate of the Dead: Killings and Burials in North Korea,” which documents and maps locations associated with state-sanctioned killings inside the secretive and isolated state. In the report, the Transitional Justice Working Group claims to have identified three types of sites: state-sanctioned killing sites, sites where the dead are disposed of and locations which may contain documents or other evidence related to the killings. The report took four years to compile and is based on both satellite i...

Iran Human Rights; November 21, 2018: Three prisoners were hanged in public at Iranian city of Shiraz this morning. Several children were observed among the crowd watching the executions. Iranian authorities have executed at least 15 people during the last 8 days. Iran Human Rights (IHR) warns against a new wave of executions in Iran and urges the UN, EU and countries with diplomatic relations with Iran to react immediately to stop these executions. The IHR spokesperson and director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, said: “We demand the halt of all executions, especially public executions which are inhumane and humiliating, and promote violence in society, ”. IHR spokesperson emphasised, “At the first anniversary of the nationwide protests in Iran, we are concerned that the Iranian authorities will use more executions and terror to avoid new protests. Adequate and prompt international reactions can stop these executions”. According to Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA),...

The Iranian regime is known for its suppression of the people of Iran and its blatant disregard of human rights. International human rights organisations have called on the regime to stop its inhumane treatment of prisoners, its medieval forms of punishment, its repression, its censorship, and so on. Human rights activists in the country have shared the reality of life under the regime by sharing a video of a man being hanged from a crane in front of the public . The harrowing video has been shared a number of times. A social media user pointed out that the footage is not of ISIS activity in Mosul or Syria, rather it is in Iran where people are forced to watch a young man be executed in public. This is not a one-off or an extreme situation. The incident is said to have taken place last week in Marvdasht, a city in the south of the country. The man in the video is said to be a 26-year-old man who has been imprisoned since the age of only 13. People in the backgrou...

Iran Human Rights (Sep 13, 2018): A man who was sentenced to death on the charge of harassing and murdering a 13-year-old teenager was hanged in public in Marvdasht. According to the state-run news agency, Mizan, on the morning of Thursday, September 13, a prisoner was hanged in public in Marvdasht.  The prisoner was arrested and sentenced to death on the charge of kidnapping, injuring, harassing, and murdering a 13-year-old teenager. The report states, “The murderer kidnaps and takes the 13-year-old teenager to the mountains and harasses him mentally and physically for 15 days. Afterwards, he throws him down the mountain.” It should be noted that public executions have repeatedly been criticized by the United Nations. Both the UN Secretary-General and the Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran have expressed concern about the continued practice of public executions in Iran. Warning: Graphic Content! Video of the execution (Source: Ira...

The execution sentence was carried out on Monday in the city of Abha A Saudi national was executed in the kingdom for shooting and killing a man in the region of Asir, the kingdom’s interior ministry announced on Monday. Gibran bin Salem bin Joueid al-Qahtani shot and killed Omar bin Mohammed bin Muraya al-Qahtani due to a dispute between them, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported. Security authorities arrested the offender and following an investigation, he was charged with the crime referred him to the criminal court. The court found him guilty and sentenced him to death and the ruling was upheld by the appeals court and the Supreme Court. The execution sentence was carried out on Monday in the city of Abha in the Asir region. The interior ministry asserted the keenness of the government “to maintain security and achieve justice” and punish violators of such heinous crimes. Saudi Arabia uses the death penalty for several offences including mur...