Death Penalty News

Saudi Arabia on Tuesday executed 6 Yemeni men convicted of murder and robbery and a Saudi man for smuggling drugs, the interior ministry said. The Yemenis were convicted of forming a gang that killed 2 men and a woman in 3 separate attacks on homes in the southern province of Assir, it said in a statement cited by the SPA news agency. In each attack, they also stole cash and other items, the statement added. They were executed at Abha in the southwest of the Gulf kingdom. The 7th convict, a Saudi, was executed in the northern city of Tabuk after being convicted of smuggling pills, the ministry said. Saudi Arabia, where executions are carried out in public by the sword, has one of the world's highest execution rates. The kingdom is governed under a strict form of Islamic law, with suspects convicted of "terrorism", murder, rape, armed robbery, homosexuality and drug trafficking facing the death penalty. Tuesday's executions take the total...

Francis Mathew, a former Gulf News staffer, is accused of killing his wife. He denies it was intentional. The incident happened in July at the couple's villa in Dubai.Prosecutors are reportedly seeking the death penalty. Dubai: Three police officers testified in court on Sunday that a British journalist had claimed that he didn’t intend to kill his wife in July but the crime scene implied otherwise. The 61-year-old British suspect, Francis Mathew, entered a not guilty plea to intentionally killing his wife by hitting her forehead twice with a hammer when he appeared before the Dubai Court of First Instance in September. Records said Mathew, a former Gulf News staff member, struck his wife’s forehead with a hammer two times and killed her following a heated argument over financial issues. The incident allegedly happened around 7am on July 4 at the British couple’s villa in Umm Suqeim. Giving their testimonies before presiding judge Fahd Al Shamsi on Sunday, three ...

Blood money of Dh200,000 is also to be paid to the family who have undergone a severe trauma Abu Dhabi: The Abu Dhabi Criminal Court of First Instance awarded death sentence to the man who raped and murdered an 11-year-old Pakistani boy on his building’s rooftop in May. The court has also ordered an exemplary blood money payment of Dh200,000 to the family which has undergone an extreme trauma. The accused, who was termed by the Public Prosecution as “a wild beast”, is identified as Mohsen Bilal, 34, from Pakistan. He also happens to be the uncle of the boy. The Presiding Judge of the Criminal Court, Aktham Abdul Mounem in his final judgement pronounced, “Mohsen Bilal was found guilty on accounts of his crimes of raping and killing and the court awards him the death penalty and a blood money [payment] of Dh200,000.” “The accused was found guilty on all accounts — of wearing an abaya [to disguise his identity], driving a car without a number plate and raping and strang...

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 ...

Egypt’s authorities are deliberately fuelling a homophobic ‘moral panic’ in order to build support for a homophobic crackdown, a report has alleged. There has recently been a dramatic surge in arrests of gay people in Egypt , fuelled in part by the country’s media. Sources on the ground have repeatedly raised the alarm about Egypt’s so-called ‘Public Morality Investigation Unit’, which actively targets the gay community with raids and entrapment. The situation worsened in September this year, when the waving of a rainbow flag at a music concert was extensively derided in the press – leading to a dramatic crackdown. A report released this week by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights charts the horrific extent of the crisis. It says: “The EIPR has observed an exponential increase in the number of individuals arrested because of their private sexual practices and/or sexual orientation. “In what is now known as the as the Public Morality Investigation U...

Putrajaya tabled today an amendment to the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 (DDA) to return discretionary powers to the court instead of imposing the mandatory death sentence on drug traffickers. The amendment, tabled for 1st reading today by Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said, seeks to revert Section 39B as law. The provision, introduced in an amendment to the DDA or Act 234 in 1975, had allowed a person convicted of drug trafficking to be punished with jail and whipping or death. It was removed in 1983 so that drug traffickers could only be punished with death. Under the new amendment to Section 39B(2) of the DDA, any person who is found guilty of trafficking dangerous drugs can be be punished with either the death penalty or life in prison and whipping with a minimum of 15 strokes. The Bill also states several circumstances for the courts to consider when deciding whether to mete jail for life or the death penalty. Among...

Criminalizes Criticisms of King and Crown Prince as Terrorism Offense Saudi Arabia's new counterterrorism law includes vague and overly broad definitions of acts of terrorism, in some cases punishable by death, Human Rights Watch said today. The law replaces a widely criticized counterterrorism law promulgated in 2014, adding definitions of specific acts of terrorism and their corresponding sentencing guidelines. It includes criminal penalties of 5 to 10 years in prison for portraying the king or crown prince, directly or indirectly, "in a manner that brings religion or justice into disrepute," and criminalizes a wide range of peaceful acts that bear no relation to terrorism. "Saudi authorities are already methodically silencing and locking away peaceful critics on spurious charges," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "Instead of improving abusive legislation, Saudi authorities are doubling down with the ludi...

Yisrael Beytenu's MK Robert Ilatov says legislation has been languishing in ministerial panel for nearly a month A Yisrael Beytenu lawmaker on Thursday urged coalition chairman David Bitan to advance legislation to apply the death penalty to convicted terrorists. In a letter, MK Robert Ilatov said the legislation - the advancement of which is detailed as a condition in the party's coalition agreements - has languished in the Ministerial Committee for Legislation since late October, when he revived the bill. "As you know, this is an important and essential item for Yisrael Beytenu and was one of the cornerstones for its entry into the government and coalition," Ilatov wrote. "Despite this, we see there are those in the coalition who are trying to dissolve this important issue." The party, headed by Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, has long advocated introducing the death penalty for terrorists. The issue was one of its key campaign promis...

More than 50 Zimbabweans, mostly women, have been arrested in various countries since 2012 for drug trafficking. Drug cartels have been increasingly using Zimbabweans as mules to transport hard drugs to Asian countries, where such crimes attract a death sentence or life imprisonment. In June this year, 3 Zimbabwean students were arrested in Cyprus on allegations of drug trafficking amid revelations that a number of Zimbabwean students studying in that country were being forced into crime and prostitution after being offered fake university scholarships. Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs chairperson Cde Kindness Paradza revealed this while addressing the Bulawayo Press Club. In March last year, a Zimbabwean woman was arrested at Delhi Airport in India after she was found with 2 kilogrammes of cocaine worth $1,5 million. In May 2016, Secretary for Foreign Affairs Mr Joey Bimha said they had received reports of 10 Zimbabweans arrested in China over drug t...

Iran has responded to a draft UN resolution condemning the country’s human rights record by attempting to deflect responsibility and verbally criticizing the sponsors of the draft. After UN member states adopted the draft resolution by the UN’s Third Committee on Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Affair on November 14, 2017, the country’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Ghasemi accused the resolution’s sponsors of being “the biggest violators of human rights.” However, Iran continues to renege on its domestic and international obligations on human rights. In presenting her semi-annual 2017 report to the UN General Assembly in October 2017, UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in Iran Asma Jahangir noted concerns over civil and political rights , including restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression , opinion , and information . Jahangir called for progress to protect the rights of women “in practice, and in legislation”, to ensure the indepen...