Death Penalty News

Death sentences imposed on corrupt Vietnamese officials will now be commuted to life in prison if they pay back at least 75 percent of the illegal money they made. The online newspaper VnExpress said the new regulation was part of the revised Penal Code that an overwhelmingly majority passed in the National Assembly on Friday. Under the revision, which takes effect July 1, 2016, the country also will abolish the death penalty for seven crimes: surrendering to the enemy, opposing order, destruction of projects of national security importance, robbery, drug possession, drug appropriation, and the production and trade of fake food. The revised law will also spare the lives of those who are 75 years old or older. The ruling Communist Party has made fighting corruption one of its top priorities. However, some lawmakers had voiced opposition to the changes when they were debated in the assembly in June, arguing that they would weaken the fight against corruption. ...

A young prisoner charged with rape was hanged in public in Meyami, Semnan. A young prisoner charged with rape was hanged to death in public in Meyami, Semnan.  Iranian state-run media Javan News has identified the prisoner by the initials A.M. and stated his age as "about 30 years old."  Iranian officials have not released any more information about the case, making it unclear whether the prisoner was over the age of 18 at the time of his arrest. Commenting on the execution, Abbas Ali Akbari, the head of Meyami's Judiciary, says: "The offender was arrested for committing several counts of rape and was sentenced to lashings and death." Source: Iran Human Rights , November 26, 2015 Call to save death row prisoner aged 15 at time of alleged crime The Iranian Resistance calls for measures to save the life of Mr. Salar Shadi Zadi, a young prisoner on death row who was merely 15 at the time of his alleged crime, and asks all internationa...

Damien Echols My name is Damien Echols , and in 1993 I was arrested for three counts of capital murder in the town of West Memphis, Arkansas. Nine months later I was sentenced to death, and spent almost 19 years on death row before being released in 2011 when new evidence came to light. Prison is a dark and stagnant place. It's filled with the most cold, horrendous energy you can imagine. It feels like a kind of psychic filth that penetrates into your very soul. In 1993, when three eight year old boys were found murdered in my small town, attention immediately turned to me. Why? Because I was the town weirdo. I dressed in all black, had long hair, and listened to heavy metal music. As if this wasn't enough to make me suspect in a small, hardcore fundamentalist town in the midst of the era of Satanic panic, I also practiced magick. Some of the most damning evidence brought against me during the trial was my love of knowledge of Crowley, and the fact that I owned Ste...

Ashraf Fayadh Saudi Arabia's justice ministry plans to sue a Twitter user who compared the death sentence handed down on Friday to a Palestinian poet to the punishments meted out by Islamic State, a major government-aligned newspaper reported on Wednesday. "The justice ministry will sue the person who described ... the sentencing of a man to death for apostasy as being `ISIS-like'," the newspaper Al-Riyadh quoted a source in the justice ministry as saying. The source did not identify the Twitter user or the possible penalty. On Friday, a Saudi Arabian court sentenced Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh to death for apostasy - abandoning his Muslim faith - according to trial documents seen by Human Rights Watch. Fayadh was detained by the country's religious police in 2013 in Abha, in southwest Saudi Arabia, and then rearrested and tried in early 2014. Saudi Arabia's justice system is based on Islamic Sharia law, and its judges are clerics ...

Reggie Clemons The Missouri Supreme Court yesterday threw out the 1st-degree murder conviction and death sentence of Reggie Clemons , who was sentenced to death in St. Louis as an accomplice to a 1991 murder of 2 young women.  Steven W. Hawkins, executive director of Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), issued the following statement in response: "Reggie Clemons' case has long highlighted many of the flaws in the U.S. death penalty system. The decision by the Missouri Supreme Court is an acknowledgement of the deeply flawed process that led to his death sentence. From the police investigation to the appeals process, his case was dogged by serious problems, allegedly including police brutality, racial bias, a stacked jury and prosecutorial misconduct. "Clemons says he confessed as the result of a violent police interrogation. The arraigning judge even sent him to the emergency room because of his injured appearance. Clemons later retracted his confession...

Philippe Marcel Guy Graffart The Belgian man accused of killing his 5-year-old son in their D'Leedon condominium home will be remanded for another week at the Central Police Division to assist in investigations. Philippe Marcel Guy Graffart, who appeared in court looking calm and relaxed on Wednesday (Nov 25), is being represented by defence lawyer Ramesh Tiwary. District Judge Eddy Tham granted the prosecution's application for Graffart to be taken out of remand to assist in investigations. The 41-year-old was charged on Oct 7 with the murder of Keryan Gabriel Cedric Graffart.  He allegedly committed the act at his 32nd-storey home at 3, Leedon Heights. He was then remanded for 4 weeks at the medical centre in Changi Prison for psychiatric assessment. Graffart works for the Singapore investment management arm of Nordea, a company that describes itself as the largest financial group in northern Europe. General manager of Nordea Private Banking i...

Public execution in Iran (file photo) The cycle of suppression, in particular group hangings, continues in Iran after the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly adopted of a resolution condemning rights violation on 19 November. At least 11 prisoners have been executed in Iran since the resolution has been adopted. On Tuesday, November 24, the Iranian regime hanged Alireza Shahi, a 25 year old prisoner, along with four other prisoners in Gohardasht (Rajai Shahr) Prison despite calls by international organizations. He had been in prison for seven years since age 18. 2 prisoners were executed in Tabriz central prison on November 23. Four other prisoners, including a female prisoner by the name of Hajar Safari, were also executed on November 12 in this prison. On Saturday, November 21, regime's henchmen hanged 3 Baluchi compatriot prisoners in Zahedan central prison. On that day, a 25-year-old prisoner by the name of Mehdi Boudineh was executed in ...

International human rights NGO Reprieve has raised concerns over Saudi media reports, which suggest that juveniles Ali al Nimr and Dawoud al Marhoon could be executed in days. Saudi news outlet Okaz has today reported that 55 people convicted of ‘anti-Government offences’, are to be executed in the coming days. A number of those are apparently from the same region as juveniles Ali al Nimr and Dawoud al Marhoon, and Ali’s Uncle, the high profile pro-democracy activist Sheik al Nimr. The fears were compounded after the young men were taken for an announced medical examination in the prison, which suggests their execution has been scheduled. The reports have raised concerns at human rights NGO Reprieve, which is assisting the two juveniles, that their executions could be imminent, as well as that of Abdallah al-Zaher, who was only 15 when he participated in protests. Both Ali and Dawoud were convicted in part on trumped-up anti-Government charges, despite their being youth acti...

NCRI - The Iranian regime’s henchmen in city of Karaj hanged at least five prisoners in Gohardasht Prison on Tuesday. The victims included Alireza Shahi whose death sentence was condemned by Amnesty International on Monday. Five men were part of a group of at least ten prisoners that their execution had been for 24 November. The five victims, Said Najafi, Farshad Haqi, Mohammad Baygi, Mohammad Polombeh and Alireza Shahi had been transferred to isolation on Saturday. There has been no public announcement of these executions by prison officials. Amnesty International said on Monday that Alireza Shahi did not have a fair trial and “after his arrest he was placed in detention for two weeks where he says he was tortured and otherwise ill-treated to confess. He was also denied access to both a lawyer and his family.” “It is always cruel and inhumane to take away an individual’s life by hanging but the cruelty is compounded when the execution follows an unfair trial whi...

Reginald Clemons The Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out the 1st-degree murder convictions for Reginald Clemons, who had been sentenced to death for a 1991 double-murder on the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge. Clemons had been fighting his conviction and death sentence in the 1991 rape and killing of sisters Julie and Robin Kerry. In a 4-3 decision written by Chief Justice Patricia Breckenridge, the Court threw out the convictions and sentences for 1st-degree murder and sent the case back to circuit court. The state has 60 days to retry Clemons. If it does not, the case will be dismissed, and Clemons will remain in prison on a 15-year sentence in different case. Reached on the phone, Richard Kerry, father of the victims, said, "I'm not going to express any opinion at this point in time." Michael Manners, a retired judge appointed as by the state's highest court as "special master" to review Clemons' case, concluded that St. Lou...

BEIJING — A top Chinese health official has denied that the country’s new organ transplant system allows organs to be harvested from executed prisoners, saying that earlier comments he made suggesting that a loophole allowed the practice to continue had been misconstrued. The official, Dr. Huang Jiefu, said his statements that prisoners were also citizens and therefore should be allowed to donate organs under the new rules had been meant “philosophically,” and he denied that the government was allowing it in practice. “I never said that,” Dr. Huang said in an interview here last week. “It is a lie. It distorts my words. The context, the words are from a philosophical level.” “As a doctor, we cannot reject the kindness and the conscience of the prisoners,” he added. “However, on a practical level, we cannot do that, to put them into the civilian donation.” Dr. Huang’s earlier comments , reported in the official Chinese news media and cited in The New York Times , drew...

Ivan Kulesh A 28-year-old man, Ivan Kulesh, was sentenced to death in Belarus on 20 November. He is at least the second person to receive the death sentence in 2015. On 20 November the Hrodna Regional Court, in western Belarus, sentenced Ivan Kulesh to death for “committing murder with particular cruelty”, theft and robbery under articles 139, 205, 207 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus.  Ivan Kulesh was found guilty of murdering three female sales assistants, two in September 2013 and one in November 2014, and of stealing goods and money from the shops where these women worked.  He was also found guilty of the attempted murder of the son of a saleswoman, who caught him in the shop in November 2014. Ivan Kulesh had been under the influence of alcohol when committing these crimes. According to the forensic medical examination Ivan Kulesh was diagnosed with an antisocial personality disorder, but was found “sane” (“vmenyaemyi”). Ivan Kulesh was ...

A killing spree: Erecting gallows in Pakistan A disabled Pakistani murder convict was given a fourth stay of execution late Tuesday just hours before he was due to be hanged, as rights activists slammed Islamabad for a executions spree on track to see 300 deaths in under a year. Abdul Basit, a paraplegic who was convicted of murder in 2009, was scheduled to be hung early Wednesday. His execution has already been harrowingly postponed several times after rights groups raised concerns about how a wheelchair-bound man would mount the scaffold. The presidency issued a statement late Tuesday saying the execution had been delayed for two months while President Mamnoon Hussain ordered an inquiry into Basit's medical condition. The statement said the president had vowed that "human rights will be upheld". "We are very happy to hear the TV news that (the) president of Pakistan has stayed the execution," Basit's mother Nusrat Parveen told AFP in r...

Fallujah, Iraq: ISIS militants execute 2 gay men accused of being gay. Islamic State (ISIS) militants have executed another two gay men accused of being gay in Iraq. Photos posted on social media Monday (23 November) show two blindfolded men being thrown off a building in Fallujah on charges of ‘sodomy.’ In one of the images, a Sharia judge reads out their sentences to a large crowd of spectators. One of the men is then thrown head first from the roof of the building by masked jihadis. The last image shows the crumpled bodies of the two men on the ground below. ISIS has branded LGBTI people ‘the worst of all creatures.’ The jihadist group executed four other gay men in Iraq last month. Two young men were thrown off the roof of a building in Mosul under the pretext they were a gay couple. In a separate execution, two ‘gay’ men, who were thrown from a building in Nineveh into a pile of cement blocks. ISIS also executed nine men and a boy accused of b...

A gay man is about to be thrown off a building rooftop by ISIS fighters in Iraq in August 2015. A Dutch-born Islamic State fighter has hosted an online Q&A – in which he joked about executing gay people. The New York Times picked up that Israfil Yilmaz – who quit the Royal Netherlands Army in 2013 in order to fight for IS – took a number of questions on Tumblr. Fielding questions on his blog, which has since been suspended, he said of gay people: “Do the whole world a favor and throw them off the highest building you can find :-)”. He also revealed that the group had banned the use of iPhones and Apple-owned products – and explained that using Tumblr is only ‘haram’ (forbidden) if you use it for “the wrong reasons”. The fighter also bragged about the group’s atrocities in Paris, citing France’s complicities in wars. He wrote: “The blood of a Muslim is not cheap, and whoever takes from the blood of a Muslim for no reason should know that one day a Muslim w...

There are 2 Australian families facing what's meant to be a happy time of year with heavy hearts. There are 2 Australian families that lost their sons to the firing squad in Indonesia after 10 years in prison. And there are 2 Australia families who will be sickened by the latest news from Indonesia: they have halted executions. According to the country's top security minister, the current death row inmates will not be facing the firing squad in the near future . Luhut Binsar Panjaitan told a news conference the government's priority was to address the economic slowdown, during bilateral meetings aimed at boosting trade with the Australian government. It's a step to patch up the damaged relationship fractured by the killing of 2 Australian citizens: Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan in April. "We haven't thought about executing a death penalty with the economic conditions like this," Mr Panjaitan told reporters in Jakarta. BBC repo...

Paris, November 2015 The founder of France's far-right National Front (FN) Jean-Marie Le Pen has urged France to reinstate the death penalty and commit convicted terrorists to the guillotine, French weekly news magazine Marianne reports. Speaking at a press conference held at his palatial home in the west Parisian suburb of Saint Cloud, the controversial politician outlined his proposals to stop Islamist attacks, such as the ones that claimed 130 lives last week in the French capital. "We must restore the death penalty for terrorists," Le Pen said, before adding "with decapitation." Some of his other proposals included deporting illegal immigrants and creating 100,000 more places in prison to deter further extremist attacks. According to French weekly news magazine Le Point, Le Pen also called for the removal of dual citizenship and instead "force dual citizens to make a choice," while also making military service of up to six months c...

Belarusian court has sentenced a man to death for 2 fatal robberies, the 2nd death sentence this year to be handed down in the only country in Europe that still uses it. Judges in the court in the western city of Hrodno found Ivan Kulish guilty on November 20 of killing 3 saleswomen during 2 robberies in 2013 and 2014. Kulish, 28, refused to testify during the trial and didn't make any remarks after the verdict. In March, a court in the southeastern city of Homel sentenced a man to death for the murder of a young woman. According to rights groups, more than 400 people have been sentenced to death in the ex-Soviet republic since the early 1990s. The European Union on November 20 urged Belarus to join a global moratorium on the death penalty as "a 1st step towards its abolition." "The death penalty is a cruel and inhuman punishment, which fails to act as a deterrent and represents an unacceptable denial of human dignity and integrity," t...

Kho Jabing The Court of Appeal in Singapore today reserved judgment on whether it should review the death sentence meted out on Sarawakian Kho Jabing for murder 8 years ago. Lawyer Chandra Mohan K. Nair, in his 2-hour submission this evening, told the court that Jabing should be given a lighter sentence given that a lower court had earlier sentenced him to life imprisonment and 24 strokes of the cane. Jabing was found guilty of killing a man in a botched robbery in 2007. "The lawyer today urged the judges to reconsider the death sentence," Kirsten Han, co-founder of Singapore's anti-death penalty group, We Believe in Second Chances, told The Malaysian Insider. In 2010, the Sarawakian was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Chinese national Cao Ruyin. His case, however, was remitted to the Singapore High Court in 2013 for re-sentencing after the island-state reviewed their mandatory death penalty laws in 2012. He was then sentenced to li...

A number of news outlets reported last week that Indonesia had placed a moratorium on the death penalty. Indonesian's co-ordinating security minister, Luhut Panjaitan, was said to announce this by saying: We haven't thought about executing a death penalty with the economic conditions like this. However, Panjaitan later denied this meant an end to capital punishment in Indonesia: No, I told them we will not carry out executions for the time being because we are now focusing on the economy. What is a moratorium? A moratorium means the suspension of executions. It may be official and announced, or simply practised. Therefore, on the face of it, Indonesia has entered a moratorium of an indeterminate period. The dozens on death row in Indonesia may eventually see their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. The last - unofficial - moratorium in Indonesia ran from 2008 to 2013 under the presidency of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY). SBY is reported to ...