Exterior wall of the Welikada Prison, Colombo. Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena said he would reinstate executions after more than 40 years and apply death sentences to those convicted of drug offences. Credit: Ranmali Bandarage/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 11 2019 (IPS)

While figures have dropped, the “inhuman” use of the death penalty still remains too common worldwide, a human rights group said.

In a new report, Amnesty International found that global executions fell by almost one-third last year, making it the lowest rate in at least a decade.

“The dramatic global fall in executions proves that even the most unlikely countries are starting to change their ways and realise the death penalty is not the answer,” said Amnesty International’s Secretary General Kumi Naidoo.

“This is a hopeful indication that it’s only a matter of time before this cruel punishment is consigned to history, where it belongs,” he added.

For instance, Burkina Faso abolished the death penalty in 2018, while both Malaysia and the Gambia declared an official moratorium on executions.

In Iran, where the death penalty is an all too common form of punishment, executions fell by a whopping 50 percent.

Despite the positive news, the use of the death penalty has continued, violating basic human rights including the right to a fair trial and the importance of ensuring dignity and respect.

According to Amnesty International, there were 2,531 death sentences globally in 2018, just a slight decrease from 2,591 reported in 2017.

Though there was some progress, Iran still continues to account for more than one third of all recorded executions.

In fact, approximately 78 percent of all known executions were carried out in just four countries: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, and Iraq.

Hồ Duy Hải is among 600 people under the death sentence in Vietnam, and still remains at risk of execution.

Convicted of theft and murder, Hồ Duy Hải said he was tortured and forced to sign a “confession” which he later retracted.

In 2015, the Committee on Judicial Affairs of the National Assembly found serious violations of criminal procedural law in the handling of Hồ Duy Hải’s case.

“It has been 11 years since he was arrested and our family was torn apart. I can no longer bear this pain. Just thinking about my son suffering behind bars hurts me so much,” his mother Nguyễn Thị Loan told Amnesty International.

“I would like the international community to help reunite my family. You are my only hope,” she added.
While exact figures are unknown, China is still the world’s top executioner with potentially thousands of people sentenced to death each year.

The death penalty is applied in a range of offences including non-violent offences which violates international law and standards as they do not classify as the “most serious crimes.”

In June 2018, authorities in Lufeng city in southeastern China conducted a “mass sentencing rally” where 10 people were charged for drug-related offences and executed.

Elsewhere, the use of the death penalty has been reintroduced which, in some cases, is happening in countries that have had a decades-long moratorium.

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena said he would reinstate executions after more than 40 years and apply death sentences to those convicted of drug offences, like the Philippines.

The government even posted a job advertisement seeking an executioner with “excellent moral character” and a “very good mind and mental strength.”

Sudan resumed the implementation of death sentences after a hiatus in 2017, including the sentencing of Noura Hussein.

Hussein, a young Sudanese woman, was married against her will to Abdulrahman Mohamed Hammad at the age of 16 and was raped when she refused to consummate the marriage.

When Hammad tried to rape her again, Hussein defended herself and in the struggle, he sustained a fatal knife injury and died.

Despite evidence of self-defence, Hussein was convicted and sentenced to death, prompting global outrage.

“I was in absolute shock when the judge told me I had been sentenced to death. I hadn’t done anything to deserve to die. I couldn’t believe the level of injustice – especially on women,” Hussein told Amnesty International.

“My case was especially hard as at the time of sentencing, my family had disowned me. I was alone dealing with the shock,” she added.

Though the death sentence was overturned, it has only been replaced with a five-year prison sentence and financial compensation of 8,400 dollars. Still, prosecutors are pushing to reinstate the death sentence in her case.

The global struggle is still far from over, Naidoo noted.

“Slowly but steadily, global consensus is building towards ending the use of the death penalty…from Burkina Faso to the U.S., concrete steps are being taken to abolish the death penalty. Now it’s up to other countries to follow suit,” he said.

“We all want to live in a safe society, but executions are never the solution. With the continued support of people worldwide, we can – and we will – put an end to the death penalty once and for all.”

Governments worldwide sentenced at least 2,466 people to death in 2014; judgements which have been condemned by rights group Amnesty International.

Amnesty’s annual Death Sentences and Executions report, released Wednesday, documented a 28 percent uptick in death sentence judgements compared to 2013.

“This increase was largely due to sharp spikes in death sentences in Egypt and Nigeria, where courts imposed mass sentences against scores of people in some cases,” the report outlined.

There were 509 death sentences recorded in Egypt and 659 in Nigeria, up from 109 and 141 respectively.

Many of these sentences came in response to terrorism threats. Pakistan, which had placed a six-year moratorium on the death penalty, reinstated capital punishment after the attack in December 2014 at a Peshawar school, where terrorists killed 145 people including 132 children.

People in at least 55 countries were sentenced to death in 2014.

Actual executions decreased in number, with 607 recorded executions in 2014 representing a 22 percent fall compared to the 778 recorded in 2013.

In launching the report at United Nations headquarters in New York, Amnesty International’s Renzo Pomi stressed the reported numbers were a bare minimum, due to difficulty in collecting accurate numbers.

“For sure, these are significantly underestimated from the real figures,” Pomi said.

“We have no data from China, because the numbers are considered a state secret.”

Amnesty stated that “thousands are executed and sentenced to death [in China] every year” but that secrecy makes the actual numbers “impossible to determine.”

“We call on China to be more transparent on its use of the death penalty,” Pomi said.

He said Amnesty condemned government use of death sentences in an attempt to solve crime problems, saying such attempts are “deceiving the public” and are often used “to cover inefficient systems.”

After China, Iran was said to be the world’s next most prolific executioner, with 289 executions; however, Amnesty stated at least 454 more were not acknowledged by authorities. Saudi Arabia carried out at least 90, Iraq at least 61, and the United States of America recorded 35 executions.

While executions dropped in 2014, Pomi expressed alarm that death sentences were widely being imposed for less serious crimes, such as drug crimes, adultery, blasphemy and robbery.

“The concern is the death penalty is being imposed not for the most serious of crimes, but for crimes that don’t fit in this category,” he said.

“The death penalty often discriminates against the poor and ethnic minorities. There have been grossly unfair trials and evidence extracted under torture, thereby increasing the risk of executing people innocent of the crime for which they have been condemned.”

Amnesty believes almost 20,000 people worldwide were under death sentences at the end of 2014.

Follow Josh Butler on Twitter @JoshButler

Edited by Roger Hamilton-Martin

Indonesian President Joko Widodo during a rally on Election Day on Jul. 9, 2014, at Proklamasi Monument Park in Jakarta. Human rights groups have condemned the country’s seventh president for his “backwards” stance on capital punishment. Credit: Sandra Siagian/IPS

By Sandra Siagian
JAKARTA, Mar 26 2015 (IPS)

When Indonesia’s law and human rights minister visited one of the country’s prisons in December last year, he met a Nigerian convict on death row for drug trafficking, who performed songs for him before leaving him with a parting gift.

“He sang […] beautifully,” Yasonna Laoly, the human rights minister, tells IPS. “He first quoted from the Bible before he gave me a souvenir when I left – it was a painting, a beautiful one.”

“There are no statistics of a deterrent effect with the death penalty. Jokowi is using the death penalty […] to prove to his critics that he is firm." -- Haris Azhar, coordinator of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras)
A month ago, at one of the weekly Christian services held at his ministry in the capital, Jakarta, a pastor came up to the minister to plea for some prisoners facing the death penalty.

She brought up the Nigerian man Laoly had met last year, stressing that he had reformed, converted to Christianity and become a good person.

“She asked me, ‘Why can’t you help?’,” explains the minister, who has also received an album of songs from the Nigerian death row inmate.

“I told her that, psychologically, it bothers me, but I have to face the case,” Laoly tells IPS, adding that he “does not believe in capital punishment”.

“I spoke to the Attorney General [H.M. Prasetyo], who was with me when I visited him and he just replied: ‘This is the law of the country and we have a policy’.”

The government of this archipelago nation of 250 million people has a no-tolerance policy when it comes to drug trafficking and smuggling, and has no qualms about using the death penalty for such offenses.

Just after midnight on Jan. 18, six drug convicts were executed by firing squad, the first imposition of capital punishment since President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo took office last October.

Another 10 drug convicts – citizens of Australia, France, Brazil, the Philippines, Ghana, Nigeria and Indonesia – are slated to be executed next, following their transfer to the island prison of Nusakambangan.

Prior to Widodo’s presidential election victory last year, capital punishment in the archipelago had declined. Four people were executed in 2013 after a five-year hiatus and no capital sentences were carried out by the state in 2014.

Still, there are currently 138 people – one-third of them foreigners – on death row, primarily for drug-related offenses. The government claims its hard-line stance has to do with the growing drug menace in Indonesia – at present, 45 percent of drugs in Southeast Asia flow through this country, making it the largest drug market in the region.

Citing statistics from the country’s National Narcotics Board (BNN), Troels Vester, country manager of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) put the number of drug users at 5.6 million this year.

Government statistics further indicate that drug abuse kills off some 40 Indonesians every day, a figure hotly disputed by local rights groups.

A street food vendor walks past a sign, warning residents against taking drugs, outside of the Russian consulate in South Jakarta. Indonesia imposes harsh penalties, including capital punishment, for drug-related crimes. Credit: Sandra Siagian/IPS

Officials say that rampant drug use also fuels a demand for medical and health services, putting undue pressure on the government to expend public resources on treatment and counseling, HIV testing, and anti-retroviral therapy for those people living with HIV/AIDS.

But the United Nations says that the use of the death penalty will not necessary reduce Indonesia’s drug woes, and has urged the country to stopper the practice of capital punishment in line with international law.

Earlier this month some 40 human rights groups from around the world dispatched a letter to the Indonesian president, reminding him, “Executions are against Article 28(a) of the Indonesian Constitution, which guarantees everyone’s right to life.”

The letter further stated, “They are also in breach of Indonesia’s international legal obligations under Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which recognises every human being’s inherent right to life.”

Such efforts have so far failed to sway the president, or stay the country’s harsh hand of justice.

Ignoring international pressure

Widodo has also rejected political bids for clemency, including entreaties from foreign governments to spare the lives of their citizens; five of the six drug convicts executed in January were foreigners.

In January, King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands personally requested Widodo to pardon Dutch national Ang Kiem Soe – convicted of being involved in a scheme to produce 15,000 ecstasy pills a day – but Widodo was unmoved.

Brazil and the Netherlands recalled their ambassadors from Jakarta after their nationals were executed in January, while Australia has been campaigning furiously to save two of its own citizens, with the country’s foreign minister, Julie Bishop, attempting an eleventh-hour prisoner swap, which was rejected.

Widodo has met all such efforts with a simple answer: there will be “no compromise” on the issue.

Human rights advocates like Amnesty International have slammed the Indonesian president’s “backwards” stance on capital punishment, accusing him of manipulating data to support his decisions.

“He says that 40 to 50 people are dying every day from drugs, but where is that figure coming from?” asks Haris Azhar, coordinator of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), adding that the president’s actions came as a surprise as he never shared his views on capital punishment during his campaign.

“The hospitals, doctors and the health ministry aren’t giving us data. These figures are from the anti-drugs body BNN, but they have never been proven,” Azhar adds.

Other activists like Hendardi, head of the Setara Institute, believe the president is using the death penalty to protect his image and regain public support following criticism over his government’s weak performance in law enforcement.

“There are no statistics of a deterrent effect with the death penalty,” the human rights defender tells IPS. “Jokowi [a popular nickname for the president] is using the death penalty […] to prove to his critics that he is firm. I think he is trying to gain back popularity as the death penalty is still favoured among Indonesians.”

While there has been no comprehensive nationwide poll to assess public opinion on, or popular support for, capital punishment, surveys conducted by the media suggest that some 75 percent of the population is in favour of death sentences, primarily for terrorism, corruption and narcotics charges.

Death sentences are typically carried out by a firing squad comprised of 12 people, who shoot from a range of five to 10 metres. Prisoners are given the choice of standing or sitting, as well as whether to have their eyes covered by a blindfold, or their face concealed by a hood.

Inmates are generally informed of their fate just 72 hours prior to execution, a practice that has been blasted by human rights groups.

While the human rights minister admits that the death penalty may not solve all the country’s drug problems, he believes that a firm policy is the first step to preventing millions from falling “into ruin” at the hands of narcotics.

UNODC estimates that there are 110,000 heroin addicts and 1.2 million users of crystalline methamphetamine in Indonesia. But experts like Azhar feel the problem cannot be ‘executed away’. Instead, the Kontras coordinator suggests the country adopt a humane approach to law enforcement.

According to Amnesty International, some “140 countries have now abolished the death penalty. Indonesia has the opportunity to become the 141st country.” However, if the president’s resolve remains unchanged, this is unlikely to happen in the near future.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

More than 40 human rights groups from around the world have penned an open letter to Indonesian President Joko Widodo, pleading for the halting of 10 imminent executions.

The letter, published by the International Federation for Human Rights on Tuesday, “condemn[s] in the strongest possible terms” the planned execution by firing squad of a group of prisoners in Nusakambangan prison, in central Java.

A total of 42 human rights and anti-death penalty groups from countries as far afield as Cameroon, France, Iran, Laos, India, Switzerland, Italy, Vietnam and Nigeria have signed the letter, criticising Indonesia’s execution policy and calling for urgent review of the group scheduled to be killed.

The group includes two Australians, Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, who have been in Indonesian custody since 2005 after leading the so-called “Bali Nine” drug gang who attempted to smuggle eight kilograms of heroin from Indonesia to Australia.

The pair, sentenced to death in February 2006, have languished on death row ever since, with an exhaustive series of appeals and reviews all ultimately unsuccessful.

Chan and Sukumaran had their clemency appeals recently rejected by Widodo, despite intense lobbying from the Australian government. The affair has strained ties between Indonesia and Australia.

The letter claims the rationale behind executions for drug-related crimes are based on “an outdated and criticized” Indonesian study, saying the impact of drugs on Indonesian society was vastly overstated and that there is no evidence that executing those involved with narcotics has any deterrent effect.

Widodo has stood behind the death sentence for Chan and Sukumaran against mounting international pressure, claiming the lives of 4.5 million Indonesians are “in ruin” because of drugs.

The condemned group – said to also include Brazilian, Filipino, Ghanaian, Nigerian and French citizens – was expected to be executed in coming days. However, in an interview with Al-Jazeera, Widodo said the executions would not take place this week. The execution date is tipped to be revealed on Friday.

“Your decision to authorize more executions in the coming weeks and months has tarnished Indonesia’s international image and risks damaging bilateral relations between Jakarta and capitals of abolitionist countries, which represent 70% of the international community,” the letter states.

“Executions are against Article 28(a) of the Indonesian Constitution, which guarantees everyone’s right to life. They are also in breach of Indonesia’s international legal obligations under Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which recognizes every human being’s inherent right to life.”

Protestors armed with bamboo sticks faced police in riot gear in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, on May 4, 2013. Credit: Kajul Hazra/IPS

By Kanya D'Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 25 2015 (IPS)

The cradle of some of the world’s most ancient civilizations, home to four out of the planet’s six billion people, and a battleground for the earth’s remaining resources, Asia and the Pacific are poised to play a defining role in international affairs in the coming decade.

But what does the future look like for those working behind the scenes in these rising economies, fighting to safeguard basic rights and ensure an equitable distribution of wealth and power in a region where 70 percent of the population lives on less than a dollar a day?

In its flagship annual report, the State of the World’s Human Rights, released Wednesday, Amnesty International (AI) slams the overall trend in the region as being “regressive”, pinpointing among other issues a poor track record on media freedom, rising violence against ethnic and religious minorities, and state repression of activists and civil society organisations.

The presence of armed groups and continuing conflict in countries like Pakistan, particularly in its northern tribal belt known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), as well as in Myanmar and Thailand, constitute a major obstacle to millions of people trying to live normal lives.

Much of the region’s sprawling population is constantly on the move, with the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) counting 3.5 million refugees, 1.9 million internally displaced people (IDPs), and 1.4 million stateless people, mostly hailing from Afghanistan and Myanmar.

UNHCR has documented a host of challenges facing these homeless, sometimes stateless, people in the Asia-Pacific region including sexual violence towards vulnerable women and girls and a lack of access to formal job markets pushing thousands into informal, bonded or other exploitative forms of labor.

Intolerance towards religious minorities remains a thorny issue in several countries in Asia; Pakistan’s blasphemy laws have allowed for the continued prosecution of Shi’a Muslims, Ahmadis and Christians, while hard-line Buddhist nationalist groups in both Myanmar and Sri Lanka have operated with impunity, leading to attacks – sometimes deadly – on Muslim communities.

Meanwhile, ethnic Tibetans in China have encountered an iron fist in their efforts to practice their rights to freedom of assembly, speech, and political association. Since 2009, about 130 people have set themselves aflame in protest of the Chinese government’s authoritarian rule in the plateau.

A dark forecast for women and girls

Despite all the conventions ratified and millions of demonstrators in the streets, violence against women and girls continues unchecked across Asia and the Pacific, says the AI report.

In the Pacific island of Papua New Guinea, home to seven million people, an estimated 75 percent of women and girls experience some form of gender-based or domestic violence, largely due to the age-old practice of persecuting women in the predominantly rural country for practicing ‘sorcery’.

In the first six months of 2014, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission had recorded 4,154 cases of violence against women, according to the AI report, while India’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reported an average of 24,923 rapes per year.

A 2013 U.N. Women study involving 10,000 men throughout Asia and the Pacific found that nearly half of all respondents admitted to using physical or sexual abuse against a partner.

According to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), two out of every five girls in South Asia could wind up as child brides, with the highest prevalence in Bangladesh (66 percent), tailed closely by India (47 percent), Nepal (41 percent) and Afghanistan (39 percent).

“In East Asia and the Pacific,” the organisation said, “the prevalence of child marriage is 18 percent, with 9.2 million women aged 20-24 married as children in 2010.”

Holding the State accountable

Amnesty’s report presents a cross-section of government responses to activism, including in China – where rights defender Cao Shunli passed away in a hospital early last year after being refused proper medical treatment – and in North Korea, where “there appeared to be no independent civil society organisations, newspapers or political parties [and] North Koreans were liable to be searched by the authorities and could be punished for reading, watching or listening to foreign media materials.”

Imposition of martial law in Thailand saw the detention of several activists and the banning of gatherings of more than five people, while the re-introduction of “colonial-era sedition legislation” in Malaysia allowed the government to crack down on dissidents, AI says.

Citizens of both Myanmar and Sri Lanka faced a virtually zero-tolerance policy when it came to organised protest, with rights defenders and activists of all stripes detained, threatened, attacked or jailed.

Throughout the region media outlets had a bad year in 2014, with over 200 journalists jailed and at least a dozen murdered according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

Amnesty’s report also found torture and other forms of ill treatment to be a continuing reality in the region, naming and shaming such countries as China, North Korea, the Philippines and Sri Lanka for their poor track record.

An earlier Amnesty International report, ‘Torture in 2014: 30 years of broken promises’, found that 23 Asia-Pacific states were still practicing torture, three decades after the U.N. adopted its 1984 Convention Against Torture.

The report found evidence of torture and ill treatment ranging “from North Korea’s brutal labour camps, to Australia’s offshore processing centres for asylum seekers or Japan’s death rows – where prisoners are kept in isolation, sometimes for decades.”

In Pakistan the army, state intelligence agencies and the police all stand accused of resorting to torture, while prisoners detained by both the policy and military in Thailand allege they have experienced torture and other forms of ill treatment while in custody.

In that same vein, governments’ continued reliance on the death penalty across Asia and the Pacific demonstrates a grave violation of rights at the most basic level.

Amnesty International reported that 500 people were at risk of execution in Pakistan, while China, Japan and Vietnam also carried on with the use of capital punishment.

Perhaps the only positive trend was a rise in youth activism across the region, which is home to 640 million people between the ages of 10 and 24, according to the United Nations. The future of the region now lies with these young people, who will have to carve out the spaces in which to build a more tolerant, less violent society.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Pakistan’s announcement that it has lifted the moratorium on the death penalty in response to the Dec. 16 attack on the Army Public School and College in Peshawar continues to draw severe criticism from human rights groups, which say that this contravenes international treaties signed by Pakistan.

“We are extremely concerned over the death penalty for Shafqat Hussain, who is likely to be among those facing execution by hanging,” Clive Stafford Smith, director of the UK-based rights group Reprieve, told IPS in an email interview.

Shafqat Hussain, then 14, was working as a watchman in Karachi when seven-year-old Umair Shah went missing from the neighbourhood in April 2004. A few days later, Umair’s family received calls from Hussain’s mobile phone demanding a ransom of Rs500, 000 (7,800 dollars) for the boy’s release, according to Hussain’s lawyers.“We are extremely concerned over the death penalty for Shafqat Hussain [convicted while still only 15 ], who is likely to be among those facing execution by hanging” – Clive Stafford Smith, director of Reprieve

Police arrested Hussain, who admitted to kidnapping and killing Umair, whose body had been recovered from a nearby stream.

Stafford Smith said that Hussain later withdrew his confession because it had been made under duress, but an anti-terrorism court sentenced him to death although Hussain was only 15 at the time. He called for suspension of Hussain’s death penalty in view of the fact that Pakistan is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of Child, which prohibits the death penalty for children.

Amnesty International echoed similar concerns over Pakistan’s decision to resume the death penalty in response to the attack on the Army Public School and College which killed 148 – mostly children – and said that Hussain should have been tried in a juvenile court and not been given the death penalty, which cannot be imposed on minors in Pakistan.

Chiara Sangiorgio of Amnesty International said that Hussain’s case was not isolated because there were at least seven other death row prisoners who claimed to be under 18 when they committed their offences. Two had been convicted by anti-terrorism courts.

“The majority of people in Pakistan do not have a birth certificate, so it becomes very difficult for them to prove that they are juvenile … unless they have a good lawyer,” she said.

In a statement, Human Rights Watch pointed out that Hussain’s family had sent an appeal to the president to commute his sentence to life imprisonment, but to no avail. It deplored the fact that Hussain is now set to be executed after the lifting of moratorium.

On Dec. 24, the European Union (EU) also criticised the lifting of the moratorium on the death penalty and called for its immediate reinstatement.

“We believe that the death penalty is not an effective tool in the fight against terrorism,” said EU envoy to Pakistan Lars-Gunnar Wigemark in a statement. “The EU remains opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances and expresses hope that the moratorium will be re-established at the earliest.”

The government has already executed six convicted militants in Punjab province – on Dec. 19 and 21 – including those involved in attacks on former President General Pervez Musharraf in December 2003 and the Pakistan Army’s General Headquarters in October 2009, as part of its announced policy to speed up execution of death row inmates.

On Dec. 21, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Chaudry Nisar Ali Khan announced that the government plans to execute about 500 prisoners on death row in the coming weeks as revenge for the death of schoolchildren in the Peshawar attack.

“Terrorists deserve no mercy as they are killing our people, soldiers and schoolchildren,” Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told a meeting of all political parties in Islamabad on Dec. 24. Come what may, we will go ahead with our plans of hanging the condemned prisoners, Sharif told the meeting.

Reprieve, which spearheads the anti-death penalty campaign, notes that Pakistan has also signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which prohibits execution and therefore Pakistan must reinstate the moratorium in fulfilment of its international commitment.

“Killing a man who was arrested as a juvenile and tortured into a ‘confession’ will not bring justice and will merely add to the tragedy of the Peshawar school attack,” Clive said.

Meanwhile, Sarah Belal of Justice Project Pakistan quoted Hussain’s older brother Gul Zaman as telling reporters outside  Karachi prison: “The authorities applying the death penalty to terrorists, no problem for me, but they’re going down the wrong road executing ordinary criminals.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Funeral ceremony being held for victims of the Dec. 16 attack on the Army Public School and College in Peshawar. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Dec 21 2014 (IPS)

As Pakistan lifts its moratorium on executions in response to this week’s attack on a school in  Peshawar, human rights groups say that resuming the death penalty will not combat terrorism in Pakistan.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced that Pakistan had reinstated the death penalty the day after an attack on the Army Public School and College here that killed 150 people – mostly children – on Dec. 16.

A resolution unanimously adopted by an All Parties Conference in Peshawar on Dec. 17 said that with Pakistan facing increasing terrorism, it cannot afford to show any mercy to those involved in acts of militancy and killing of innocent people.“This [reinstatement of the death penalty] is a cynical reaction from the government. It masks a failure to deal with the core issue highlighted by the Peshawar attack, namely the lack of effective protection for civilians in north-west Pakistan“ – David Griffiths, Amnesty International

“I announce the lifting of the moratorium on the death penalty today … The nation is fully behind us,” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told the conference categorically.

Since then, four people have been hanged in Punjab province for their involvement in attacks on former President General Pervez Musharraf in December 2003 and the Pakistan Army’s General Headquarters in October 2009, but Amnesty International says that the resumption of executions after they were stopped in 2008 will not break the vicious cycle of terrorism.

“This is a cynical reaction from the government. It masks a failure to deal with the core issue highlighted by the Peshawar attack, namely the lack of effective protection for civilians in north-west Pakistan,“ Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Asia-Pacific David Griffiths said in a statement.

The death penalty violates the right to life and we are deeply concerned at the multiple violations of international law the authorities are about to commit by going ahead with their execution plan, he added.

Amnesty International also says that many death sentences are handed down in Pakistan after trials that do not meet international fair trial standards.

The government, which is under tremendous pressure to deal with terrorism, claims that it had no choice but to reinstate executions, and religious groups and political parties have welcomed the hanging of terrorists, saying that it is fulfilment of the country’s law.

Activists of the Pakistan People’s Party light candles to pay homage to the victims of the Dec. 16 Taliban attack on the Army Public School and College in Peshawar. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

Former president Gen. Pervez Musharraf said that the hanging of two terrorists on Dec. 19 was a victory for the law. “The government has finally done justice with the terrorists,” he told IPS, adding that all Taliban militants should be given same punishment because they deserve to be brought to justice. “The hanging of terrorists has fulfilled the requirement of the law of the land,” said Musharraf.

Sunni Chief Tehreek Sarwat Ijaz Qadri welcomed the hanging of terrorists and said that ultimately law had taken its course and this would go a long way towards establishing peace in the country. “It is a first step towards peace and the people have taken a sigh of relief,” he told IPS.

Jamaat-i-Islami Secretary-General Liaquat Baloch said murderers, terrorists and enemies of humanity do not deserve any concession and the law of the land calls for the execution of their death sentence after completion of trial and other legal formalities. Implementation of the death sentence will create a sense of respect and sanctity of law in society, he added.

Mian Iftikhar Husain, leader of the Awami National Party (ANP) also welcomed the hanging of terrorists and termed it a victory of the people. “The government should hang all terrorists without a distinction of bad and good Taliban,” he said, adding that the ANP believes in non-violence and is staunchly opposed to terrorism.

Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) leader Farooq Sattar said that terrorists deserve no mercy because they are killers of humanity. “The people welcome their hanging as these terrorists are responsible for creating lawlessness,” he said, pointing out that the MQM has always been at the forefront in condemning terrorists and will support any move aimed at eliminating terrorism.

Pakistan has 8000 condemned prisoners who have been awaiting the death penalty since 2008. Seventeen of them, mostly terrorists, will be executed in the next seven days.

Three convicted terrorists from the extremist group Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LeJ) were handed down death sentences in 2004 and the executions were scheduled for Aug. 20, 21 and 22, 2013, but were deferred at the last moment.

Attaullah Khan was given the death sentence in six cases by an anti-terrorism court in Karachi on Jul. 6, 2004, while Mohammad Azam received the death sentence in four cases from the same court on Aug. 21. Another militant, Jalal Shah, was given the death sentence for related offences.

However, the executions were not carried out due to fear of the Taliban who had warned the government that there would be severe repercussions if it went ahead with execution of its men.

Meanwhile, Griffiths of Amnesty International warned that “the sheer number of people whose lives are at risk and the current atmosphere in Pakistan makes the situation even more alarming. The government must immediately halt any plans to carry out further executions and reinstate a moratorium on the death penalty.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Innocent people will be executed in the United States if the country’s capital punishment system is not reformed, warns a new report.

These reforms include improving the use of forensic science, taping confessions, and providing better trained counsel to defendants. These suggestions were among 39 recommendations released Wednesday in a report by the Constitution Project, a nonpartisan group working to improve the U.S. criminal justice system."If this [Constitution Project report] had been in place before I went to trial, I probably would not have gone to death row.” -- Anthony Graves

The report’s authors, collectively known as the Death Penalty Committee, include both supporters and opponents of the death penalty. The publication comes as the United States, one of just 43 countries that haven’t outlawed capital punishment, is in the midst of one of its largest national discussions on the issue in years.

More than 30 states in the United States continue to allow the death penalty, despite findings that the capital punishment system appears to be biased against minorities – and despite dozens of known cases of innocent people being sentenced to death. Since 1973, over 140 people have been exonerated from “death row”, but critics say it is impossible to tell how many of the 1400 who have been executed may have been innocent.

“Most disturbingly, there is evidence that defendants have been put to death despite significant questions regarding their innocence, undermining confidence in the entire criminal justice system,” the report states.

“There can no longer be any doubt that innocent people do get convicted of horrific crimes, spend years in prison and even face execution. Wrongful convictions undermine society’s confidence in the ability of the criminal justice system to perform its most basic function – to convict the guilty and acquit the innocent.”

The report comes just a week after a botched execution in the Midwestern state of Oklahoma. A prisoner named Clayton Lockett was scheduled to die by lethal injection, but the deadly chemicals were erroneously injected into his flesh.

The procedure reportedly drug out for almost half an hour, during which the conscious Lockett writhed in pain, according to his lawyer.

The Death Penalty Committee is recommending a single-dose injection, rather than the three drugs that Oklahoma and most other states currently use. The committee would also require that the federal government approve the drug or drugs used – a potentially important new issue given that states across the country are currently experimenting with new drugs, after pharmaceutical companies have started refusing to supply their products for lethal injections.

The horrific story has re-ignited a broad public conversation here. Yet advocates that work with the issue say that, while it is good to have the public’s attention on this issue, the more important concerns involve judicial mistakes.

“Despite the Oklahoma execution, I think the more important recommendations [in the new report] have to do with mistakes of innocence,” Richard Dieter, the executive director of Death Penalty Information Center, a clearinghouse, told IPS.

“Recommendations about improving the quality of counsel, the forensics, the DNA testing, the testing of evidence, the videotaping of suspects who are sometimes pressured into confessing something they did not want to do … these are the kinds of things that could help prevent wrongful convictions on death row and possibly wrongful executions.”

Fatal mistakes

Just this week, a federally funded study found that a minimum of four percent of prisoners on death row in the United States are innocent, according to research published Monday in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Although small, any number above zero represents an innocent person sentenced to death, like Anthony Graves. Graves was convicted in 1994 for murder and sentenced to death based on testimony supplied only by the other convicted murderer, Robert Carter.

Before his own execution, Carter repeatedly admitted that Graves was not involved, but the process of re-investigation took years. Finally, in 2010, Graves was exonerated and released.

“We’re never ever going to stop killing innocent people as long as we have the penalty,” Graves said Wednesday at a panel discussion here.

“But if this”, he continued, holding up a copy of the Constitution Project report, “had been in place before I went to trial, I probably would not have gone to death row.”

Potentially of help to Graves would have been a report recommendation on videotaping custodial interrogations. Following such a procedure, proponents say, would reduce the risk of false confessions – and provide juries with the context of confessions provided.

Another series of suggestions detail how to improve the use of forensic science in providing evidence.

Mark White, a former governor of Texas and co-chair of the Death Penalty Committee, described Wednesday the forensics police department in Houston, where “leaks in the ceiling contaminated samples and people were not qualified to do the sampling.”

According to a 2011 study, over 50 percent of the first 250 people exonerated by DNA testing were convicted based on forensic mistakes.

Another problem are inadequately trained attorneys.

Mark Earley, a former attorney general of Virginia, described how he was appointed fresh out of law school to represent a defendant on trial for his life. Earley said he also witnessed incompetent representation repeatedly during his time as attorney general, when he oversaw 36 executions in three and a half years.

“For someone who is a ‘small government’ conservative, why did I believe the government always gets it right?” he askedWednesday.

“It’s not about being for or against the death penalty. But it’s about saying that if there is a death penalty, the trial process should be fair.”

Slow reform

Some say the political climate in the U.S. is ripe for reform on the issue of capital punishment. Following the botched execution in Oklahoma, last week President Barack Obama requested that Attorney General Eric Holder review the application of the death penalty throughout the country.

“In the application of the death penalty in this country, we have seen significant problems – racial bias, uneven application of the death penalty … situations in which there were individuals on death row who later on were discovered to have been innocent because of exculpatory evidence,” Obama told reporters. “And all these, I think, do raise significant questions about how the death penalty is being applied.”

Experts in the field say that reform is likely, but only after a long and slow process.

“Unfortunately the death penalty is immersed in a political ballet,” the Death Penalty Information Center’s Dieter told IPS.

“I think the death penalty is actually declining by dramatic levels, and that will probably continue. It is not serving people well: it is expensive and it is picking out those who happen to be poor and minorities.”

Prisoners on Pakistan's death row have been singled out for abuse in the past, rights groups say. Credit: Fahim Siddiqi/IPS

By Samuel Oakford
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 27 2014 (IPS)

The number of recorded executions carried out worldwide rose 14 percent last year, as anti-terrorism measures in Iraq and hardline drug polices in Iran accounted for more than half of all reported government-sanctioned killings in 2013.

In a report released Thursday, the human rights group Amnesty International said at least 778 people were executed in 22 countries last year, though the total did not include several nations, most notably China, where official execution statistics are a state secret. The Chinese government is estimated to put thousands of prisoners to death by firing squad every year, dwarfing the rest of the world."Armed attacks amongst insurgents are on the rise and the Iraqi government wants to use the death penalty as a quick fix, to pretend to be tough." -- Jan Wetzel

“China is a case of its own – nothing comes close to them in terms of real executions,” said Jan Wetzel, advisor on the death penalty to Amnesty International. “However we do see some glimmers of hope, especially in regard to internal discussions – within the Chinese elite more doubt is being created over the death penalty.”

Outside of China, four in five executions took place in three adjoining Middle Eastern states: Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

An escalation in sectarian conflict in Iraq and increased government crackdowns saw a 30-percent upswing in death sentences in the country. Most of the at least 169 killings there fell under Iraq’s strict 2005 anti-terrorism law, passed in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion. In its report, Amnesty expressed concern over the law’s language, vaguely encompassing “acts such as provoking, planning, financing, committing or supporting others to commit terrorism.”

“In Iraq, we have to see this against the worsening security situation – armed attacks amongst insurgents are on the rise and the Iraqi government wants to use the death penalty as a quick fix, to pretend to be tough,” Wetzel told IPS.

But sectarian attacks in Iraq have risen along with increased use of the death penalty, says Wetzel, belying the intended effect of the death penalty.

“We know the death penalty does not have a deterrent effect vs. long term imprisonment.”

Amnesty was unable to determine if judicial executions were carried out in Egypt or Syria, though Syria’s brutal civil war would raise questions over the legality of any such confirmed killings. Egypt announced this week the mass death sentences of 528 alleged supporters of ousted president Mohammed Morsi.

At least 369 were put to death in Iran during 2013, though Amnesty cited hundreds more not officially reported.

Iran, one of four countries that practices public executions – along with North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Somalia – wields the morbid spectacle as a political tool, says Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, co-founder of the advocacy group Iran Human Rights.

“The Iranian government uses the death penalty to spread fear in society,” Amiry-Moghaddam told IPS. “The timing of executions over the past 10 years have been carefully coordinated – for instance when authorities fear protests or right after protests, the number of executions has increased, but when the international community is focused on Iran, the numbers are quite low.”

Most Iranian executions stem from drug cases and often target the poorest in Iranian society, including Afghan migrants allegedly involved in opium and heroin smuggling. Public hangings, of which Iran Human Rights estimates 59 took place in 2013, are not only death sentences but torture, says Amiry-Moghaddam.

“They are pulled up by a crane and it often takes more than 10 minutes until they die – it’s a slow death,” he said.

Footage emerged this year of one such hanging, showing the prisoner crying out for his mother who responds “My child, my child,” as he dangles from a noose, legs flailing.

Earlier this month, U.N. anti-drug chief Yuri Fedotov drew criticism when he applauded Iranian authorities for their effort to curb the flow of illicit narcotics within Iran’s borders, even as several European countries withdrew funding from U.N. anti-drug programmes in Iran due to its use of the death penalty.

“Iran takes a very active role to fight against illicit drugs,” said Fedetov. “It’s very impressive.”

Although capital punishment is not forbidden by international law, torture is, as several recent cases in the U.S. brought to light.

In January, an Ohio man took more than 15 minutes to die after being injected with an experimental new sedative and painkiller cocktail intended to replace traditional drugs European pharmaceutical companies no longer agree to provide if they may be used for killings. In Oklahoma, one prisoner’s last words upon being injected with another mixture were, “I feel my whole body burning.”

In the Americas, the United States was the only country to put inmates to death. Just nine, mostly southern, states accounted for 39 of 43 executions in the U.S. Though executions fell 10 percent nationwide, Texas put to death 16 prisoners, over a third more than in 2012.

Amnesty did report “progress towards abolition was recorded in all regions of the world.” The number of countries practicing the death penalty has nearly halved in the past two decades.

Though Indonesia, Kuwait, Nigeria and Vietnam all resumed executions in 2013, only nine countries – Bangladesh, China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan the United States and Yemen – have carried out killings in each of the past five years. In Europe and Central Asia, no executions took place.

But Saudi Arabia, in contravention of international law, put to death at least three prisoners for crimes allegedly committed when they were under 18.

The killing of Muslim Brotherhood supporters has only strengthened resolve within the party to resist the current regime. Credit: Khaled Moussa al-Omrani/IPS

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Mar 26 2014 (IPS)

International human rights groups have strongly denounced Monday’s sentencing by an Egyptian court of 529 Islamists to death for a riot in which one policeman was killed.

Egypt specialists here say the sentences, which are widely seen as the latest in a series of steps taken by the authorities to crush the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as other dissident forces opposed to the military-backed government, are certain to fuel increased radicalisation in the Arab world’s most populous nation.“What all this repression creates is a very deep well of anger.” -- Michelle Dunne

“What all this repression creates is a very deep well of anger,” said Michelle Dunne, an Egypt specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and co-chair of the Working Group on Egypt, a coalition of neo-conservative and liberal internationalist Middle East analysts who have informally advised the administration of President Barack Obama since the dawn of the Arab spring in late 2010.

“Where these kinds of actions are taking Egypt is very worrisome. …We now have an ally that might be headed toward serious and persistent instability,” according to Dunne, who noted that another court sentenced a group of 17 university students for rioting just a few days ago. Although no one was killed or seriously injured in that incident, each of the students received 14 years in prison.

Indeed, while the administration of President Barack Obama, which Monday described the mass death sentences as “defy(ing) logic,” had hoped to fully normalise military ties that were partially suspended after the July coup against President Mohamed Morsi, the latest court actions – along with the designation by the military-backed government of the Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation – would appear to make that much less likely.

The death sentences, which Amnesty International and the New York Times described as “grotesque” and “preposterous”, respectively, followed a one-day trial before three judges in Minya in which most of the defendants were absent or had no or very limited legal representation. As noted by Human Rights Watch (HRW), the prosecution failed to put forward evidence implicating any individual defendant.

“The Minya court’s sentencing more than 500 people to death for the killing of a police officer highlights the fact that no Egyptian court has even questioned a single police officer for the killing of well over 1,000 largely peaceful protesters since Jul. 3 [when the military ousted Morsi],” said Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW’s Middle East director.

“This trial is just one of dozens of mass trials taking place every day across Egypt, riddled with serious due process violations and resulting in outrageous sentences that represent serious miscarriages of justice,” she noted.

The defendants were all indicted for alleged participation in a riot in Minya, a Brotherhood stronghold in central Egypt, last August, some six weeks after a military coup against the country’s democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi. The riot, which followed two massacres of hundreds of peaceful Brotherhood protestors in Cairo, resulted in the destruction of several churches and police stations and the death of one police officer.

Analysts here said the mass sentencing, the largest in modern Egyptian history, may have been motivated by a desire on the specific court’s part to retaliate against Morsi’s efforts to gain greater control over the judiciary or by its acquiescence to instructions by the police or interior ministry to make an example of the case as part of a broader strategy to intimidate the opposition. Both the verdicts and the sentences are subject to appeal.

If, indeed, the intent of the verdicts and other repressive measures is to restore stability to Egypt, the strategy does not appear to be working, according to Dunne, who Monday released a new report documenting both the growing repression and the rise in violence directed against the government.

“Egyptians have suffered through the most intense human rights abuses and terrorism in their recent history in the eight months since the military ousted then president Mohamed Morsi,” according to the report, “Egypt’s Unprecedented Instability by the Numbers.”

Citing statistics by Egyptian rights groups and other sources, the report found that a total of 3,143 people have been killed as a result of political violence between Jul. 3 last year and the end of January. Of the total, at least 2,528 civilians and 60 police were killed in political protests and clashes, and another 281 others are estimated to have been killed in terrorist attacks.

Some 16,400 people have been arrested during political events, while another 2,590 political leaders – the vast majority associated with the Brotherhood – have been rounded up and remain in detention, the report said.

All of these tallies, according to the report, show that current level of repression actually exceeds the scale reached under former President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who tried to crush the Brotherhood in the 1950s and 1960s by rounding up hundreds of members and executing a dozen of their leaders, and in the aftermath of the assassination of former President Anwar Sadat in 1981.

The report also found, the rate of terrorist incidents – and the deaths they’ve inflicted — in the seven months that followed the Jul. 3 coup have also surpassed the rates reached between 1993 and 1995, when more than 300 people, including police, extremists, civilians and tourists fell victim annually to the war between the security forces and Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya (The Islamic Group) of which the current Al Qaeda chief, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, was a top leader.

“(M)ilitants have shown that they are capable of inflicting far more damage should they choose to do so,” according to the Carnegie report, which noted that insurgents have “shown increasing sophistication” in carrying out attacks against police officers, soldiers, and high-level government officials but have not yet shown interest in inflicting mass casualties.

The latest developments appear to have put the Obama administration, which suspended joint exercises with Egypt immediately after the coup and subsequently suspended delivery of some weapons systems, including attack helicopters and tanks, to coax the military into pursuing a less repressive policy toward the Brotherhood, in particular.

Saudi Arabia, with which Obama hopes to patch up relations badly strained by his failure both to support former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at the outset of the Arab Spring and to intervene more aggressively on the side of rebels in Syria when he visits Riyadh later this week, has strongly backed the military’s crackdown against the Brotherhood and are expected to press their guest to do likewise.

The Saudis have not only provided billions of dollars in budgetary support for the regime; they have also offered to make up for any weapons withheld by Washington by buying comparable systems from other arms suppliers, including Russia, on Egypt’s behalf.

“The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have a basic disagreement about what’s going on in Egypt,” according to Dunne. “The Saudis would say whatever heavy-handed measures the authorities are taking is necessary to defeat terrorism. Most U.S. officials says these tactics are causing terrorism and potentially driving Egypt toward persistent instability.”

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com.

As many as 700 people were sentenced to death in Iran last year, according to United Nations estimates. Most were charged with drug-related crimes and belonged to ethnic minorities, new studies show.

“Despite signs of openness with the election of President (Hassan) Rohani almost a year ago, the human rights situation in Iran has dramatically deteriorated,” Taimoor Aliassi, U.N. representative of the Association of Human Rights in Kurdistan of Iran – Geneva, told IPS.“Iran is the second executioner country in the world behind China, but the first one per capita." -- Raphaël Chenuil-Hazan, executive director of French NGO Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort

At least 687 prisoners have been executed in 2013, 68 percent of them after the presidential election in June 2013, Aliassi said. This is the highest figure in 15 years.

The vast majority, he said, were from ethnic minorities such as Kurds, Baloch and Baha’is. “The repression of these minorities has accentuated.”

Aliassi’s comments followed a report by Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Iran, detailing the executions. The Iranian government labelled the findings “not objective” and “mostly a compilation of unfounded allegations.” It is opposing the renewal of Shaheed’s mandate.

“Last year, there were two executions a day,” Shaheed said at a meeting in Geneva earlier this week on rights in Iran. “Sixty percent of them were related to drug crimes. Many did not have access to lawyers, and confessions were got under torture. Three juveniles were among those hanged.”

Shaheed contested the Iranian government allegation that his report is based on opposition sources, or even terrorists. “Even though I could not get into the country, I talked to 700 people. I do my interviews by Skype. If I was able to go to Iran, there would be government views in my report. It would be in its advantage.”

“Iran is the second executioner country in the world behind China, but the first one per capita,” Raphaël Chenuil-Hazan, executive director of the French NGO Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort, told IPS. The NGO was created in 2000 to investigate death penalties. It launched the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty that holds a congress every three years.

“The death penalty is a benchmark for human rights,” Hazan said. “It opens the door to the scrutiny of other human rights violations like juvenile justice, ethnic minorities, public executions, torture and unfair trials. We manage to work with grassroots NGOs in all countries, including China and Iraq, but not in Iran.”

The Iranian government, Hazan said, like North Korea “does not allow local NGOs to come to our congress. Our sources are individuals we identify in the prisons. Last year we counted 687 executions. We know it is more, but this is the figure we are able to prove in our report.” The U.N. report is in line with findings by NGOs.

Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, spokesperson of Iran Human Rights, an NGO based in Oslo with members both inside and outside Iran told IPS that “56 percent of the figures included in this report are official, and 44 percent have been confirmed by us independently.”

Last year, he said, the group “documented 59 public executions, all of them announced officially. Children are also watching executions since there is no age limit. But there are so many secret executions in prisons that we need independent investigations.”

According to the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by Iran, countries that have not abolished the death penalty can impose it only for the most serious crimes.

“Since 2010, more than 1,800 people have been executed on drug-related charges. But is the possession of 30 grams of heroin, morphine, opium or methadone a ‘most serious crime?’” said Hazan.

Other reasons for capital punishment are “corruption on earth”, rebellion, sexual offences including same-sex relations, organised crime, robbery and smuggling, murder and other religious offences. At least 28 women were hanged publicly in 2013, according to the Special Rapporteur.

Some NGOs accuse the government itself of fostering drug addiction for political reasons, particularly in the Kurdish area. “It is practising an anti-Kurdish policy of pushing youth into drugs and then arresting them,” Karen Parker, a human rights attorney based in San Francisco, told IPS.

Gianfranco Fattorini, of the Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l’amitié entre les peuples (MRAP), a French NGO that supports against racism and discrimination, told the meeting in Geneva that 20 Kurdish activists are known to be on death row and 25 Kurdish political activists have been sentenced to death for propaganda against national security and similar charges.

Diane Ala’i, of the Baha’i International Community, an international NGO representing members of the Baha’i faith, says the persecution of Baha’is is engrained in the constitution that recognises only three religious minorities – Christians, Jews and Zoroastrian. Members of the Baha’i religious minority are persecuted from the time they are born till they die, said Ala’i at the meeting in Geneva.

“Children are ostracised at school; youngsters are denied access to university and to jobs in the public sector. Today 136 Baha’is are in prison only because they are Baha’is. The accusation goes from enmity against god, to being spies or belonging to an illegal organisation. Some of these people are elderly; others are young mothers who have to take their children into prison.”

She added that their cemeteries are bulldozed and “it is clear that these horrible acts are condoned by the authorities.” Violent crimes and incitement to hatred are rising against Baha’is and other minorities, but none of these cases have been investigated by judicial authorities. “This is government orchestrated,” she said.

But more and more Iranians are showing solidarity with the Baha’is, she said. Last week, 75 prominent activists asked the head of the judiciary to give the benefit of Islamic law even to “unrecognised religious minorities” like the Baha’is.

Influential personalities like renowned film-maker Asghar Farhadi have signed an open charter to ask for abolition of the death penalty, following a campaign called Legam (step by step abolition of the death penalty) initiated last November.

“Since they are well known, they encounter fewer risks to go to prison. This shows that civil society is advancing. Now it is up to the government to show that it is opening up too,” said Hazan.

By Emma Bonino
ROME, Mar 3 2014 (IPS)

Until the late 1970s, only 16 countries had abolished the capital punishment for all crimes. Today, abolitionist nations are the overwhelming majority. More than two-thirds of nations, over 150 of the 193 members of the United Nations, have now rejected the death penalty or do not carry out executions.

This evolution was led by the recognition that in any judicial procedure there is always the risk of a miscarriage of justice. If a person is jailed and later found to be innocent she or he can be released and provided compensation for the time unduly spent in prison. This is not possible if an innocent sentenced to death has already been executed. The punishment is final and irreversible and there is no possible appeal from the grave.

The death penalty is a toxic and destructive punishment that causes untold injustice and suffering. It represents the ultimate denial of human rights. In the words of Albert Camus, the French Nobel prize winner for literature, “capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders.”

Unfortunately the cross-party in favour of the death penalty is still operating on a global scale. It goes beyond ideologies, religions, political trends, historical periods and international law. Gallows are still erected in capitalist democracies as well as in authoritarian or fundamentalist regimes, in poor countries as well as in rich and developed nations.

The list of crimes punishable by death is extensive and changes with time. Only the reason to justify the death penalty remains unchanged: it is considered as a deterrent against criminals; the supreme prerogative of the State to punish in “an appropriate way” the most heinous crimes.

These are both specious and simply irrational reasons. No one has ever been able to demonstrate the deterrent effect of the death penalty on crimes. Executions do not deliver public safety or deter violent crime – instead they endorse violence, sometimes fuelling cycles of violence and retribution. It is no surprise the States that have abolished the death penalty often have lower murder rates than those that have yet to do so.

It is therefore of paramount importance that countries that still envisage the death penalty ensure that information and statistics regarding its use are made publicly available. Only an objectively informed public opinion can accept and support reforms of the penal system aimed at abolishing the capital punishment as cruel and ineffective.

Nowadays there is a growing awareness on the issue and it is a fact that the trend towards abolition finds echoes in every region of the world. Even retentionist countries which head today the sad tally of executions are rethinking their approach.

Having said so, we must recognise that much progress still remains to be done. The situation in many countries is still a cause of grave concern. In some cases, we have witnessed the worrying phenomenon of some countries, which had previously agreed on endorsing the moratorium, to take the decision of re-establishing the death penalty. This is an involution which has distinguished mostly Asia but also Africa, with the reactivation of executions in Nigeria and Gambia.

Italy is proud to be part of the cross-regional coalition of States supporting the international campaign against the capital punishment. We took a strong and principled position against the death penalty. This campaign represents a priority for Italy’s foreign policy and has the full support of our Parliament and civil society.

Italy has been a major sponsor of the United Nations’ General Assembly Resolution on a universal moratorium of the death penalty since its inception in 1994. We are an active part of the interregional task force entrusted with its drafting. We also are one of the most active promoters of the campaign to convince countries previously abstaining or voting against the text to switch their votes in favour of the resolution.

While not legally binding, the United Nations resolutions have been a political breakthrough, sending a strong message to the minority of countries still adhering to capital punishment that it is time to reject what is increasingly seen as a cruel and counter-productive practice.

It is hard to overstate progress on this issue. A watershed moment came six years ago when, in December 2007, the United Nations General Assembly first adopted a resolution calling for a universal moratorium on the death penalty, with a view to a complete abolition.

This achievement was reinforced by three further UN General Assembly resolutions, in Decembers 2008, 2010 and 2012. On each occasion, the vote supporting the call for a moratorium gathered strength: rising from 104 votes to 111, while those States voting negatively fell from 54 to 41.

Next fall, first the United Nations General Assembly Third Commission and then its plenary shall negotiate and vote the fifth resolution on the universal moratorium. We will try to reinforce also the content of the text, calling for the imposition of death penalty only for the most serious crimes and to establish a Special Rapporteur or Special Adviser of the Secretary General on the issue of the death penalty.

Excerpt:

Covenants Watch Convenor Kao Yung-cheng speaks to reporters in Taipei City on Dec. 27, 2012. Protestors’ posters read “Illegal Murders Are Not Justice”. Credit: Dennis Engbarth/IPS

By Dennis Engbarth
TAIPEI, Jan 8 2013 (IPS)

Taiwanese activists and human rights advocates ushered in the New Year with a push to prevent a return to authoritarianism and defend procedural justice for death row prisoners in the wake of six executions just before Christmas.

Rights lawyers say they “do not exclude” filing criminal charges against Justice Minister Tseng Yung-fu in addition to filing a petition calling for his impeachment for “illegally” ordering the execution of six death row convicts who had been handed death sentences, confirmed by the Taiwan Supreme Court, for a total of eight murders.

The men were executed on Dec. 21 by pistol shots to the head and heart in three prisons across Taiwan, without prior notification to families or lawyers.

The incident brought the total number of persons executed by the current government to 19. President Ma Ying-jeou of the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) broke a five-year moratorium on death penalty executions, begun by the previous Democratic Progressive Party administration, with four executions on Apr. 30, 2010.

A total of 55 convicts remain on death row.

The executions were the third set carried out since the Taiwan government ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) in March 2009 and incorporated the content of the two treaties into domestic law through an implementation act effective December 10, 2009 .

The European Union and international and domestic human rights groups denounced the executions.

European Commission Vice President Catherine Ashton deplored the executions and called on Taipei to take concrete steps toward reducing the use of capital punishment to allow the resumption of a de facto moratorium.

Amnesty International East Asia Director Roseann Rife termed the action cold-blooded killing by the Taiwan authorities.

The KMT government’s decision to carry out the executions overrode an appeal by a panel of prominent international human rights professionals slated to review Taiwan’s compliance with the two covenants in late February 2013.

Manfred Nowak, former United Nations special rapporteur on torture, and Eibe Riedel, joint expert committee member of the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, issued a joint letter on Nov. 21 last year calling on Ma to refrain from carrying out any more executions before the February review.

According to Tseng, the ministry of justice (MOJ) had no choice but to carry out the executions after the prime suspect in a child murder sparked public outrage by claiming he knew he would not be executed and could enjoy a life in prison.

Tseng also declared that the MOJ has never promised to terminate the death penalty.

Shortly after the incident, a coalition of Taiwan human rights organisations submitted an impeachment motion against Tseng to the Control Yuan, the branch of government responsible for monitoring malfeasance by government officials.

The petition, filed in person with Control Yuan Commissioner Yeh Yao-peng by Covenants Watch convenor Kao Yung-cheng, charged that Tseng’s signature on the execution orders on Dec. 20 violated Article 6-4 of the ICCPR, which has been ratified by this country and given effect in domestic law by the Implementation Act.

The petition added that the ICCPR article mandates that “anyone sentenced to death shall have the right to seek pardon or commutation of the sentence”.

Kao related that the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty (TAEDP) had helped 44 death row convicts, including the six executed December 21, to submit formal petitions for amnesty, pardon or commutation of sentence to President Ma on Mar. 29, 2010.

The president gave no indication that he approved or rejected the petitions, Kao told IPS.

In its Dec. 21 statement, the MOJ said the executions had been carried out in accordance with existing law, including the Amnesty Act, which does not specify a procedure for petitions.

However, Kao told IPS that the Implementation Act grants the covenants “priority application” over other laws, a principle reaffirmed by Ma himself in a Dec. 18 news conference.

Therefore, Tseng was legally required to respect the right of petition for amnesty by “first certifying that the president had already rejected appeals for amnesty before carrying out” the executions, Kao said.

The petition concluded that the justice minister committed a grave violation of law and abuse of authority and asked the Control Yuan to impeach Tseng.

Kao told IPS that the impeachment petition is distinct from the question of abolition but instead concerns procedural justice.

If people can be executed, regardless of the reasons, without authorities fulfilling the required legal process, Taiwan will be put back on the road to authoritarianism, Kao warned.

He also told IPS that human rights groups are discussing filing criminal charges against Tseng, who could be liable for punishment under Article 127 of the Criminal Code with up to five years’ imprisonment.

Ironically, while the MOJ claims that public polls showed an overwhelming majority in favour of the death penalty, most citizens lack confidence in the judicial process itself.

A poll of 1,073 adults conducted by the Taiwan Thinktank in mid December showed that 64.4 percent believed the judiciary had been “unfair” in its judgements during 2012, compared with just 21.4 percent who believed the justice system was “fair”.

Activists also warned that the executions could further undermine the quality of the judicial process.

Academica Institution for Jurispurdence Deputy Research Fellow Liao Fu-teh told IPS that “the death penalty may be being used as a tool of intimidation”.

Liao cited media reports on Dec. 23, 2012, which related that a suspect being detained for questioning in Hualien in eastern Taiwan in connection with the murder of her mother had been “frightened” by the executions and, after months of denials, confessed to committing the killing with her boyfriend, to avoid being executed.

Criticism of the apparent lack of official respect for the two covenants intensified during 2012.

On Dec. 10 last year, a coalition of civil society, labour, environmental and social movement organisations awarded Ma a paper plaque for “stomping on human rights” just as Ma was presenting an “Asian Democracy and Human Rights Award” to the Thailand-based ECPAT International in Taipei’s Far East Plaza Hotel.

(END)

On Dec. 18, 2007, the approval of a resolution for a moratorium on executions by the United Nations General Assembly was hailed as a milestone in the struggle to abolish the death penalty worldwide. It is true that the United Nations may not impose the abolition of the death penalty, but the moral and political value of the resolution is undeniable.

Since the founding of the abolitionist organisation Hands Off Cain in 1993, 56 of the 97 retentionist States that were members of the U.N. at that time have abandoned the practice of the death penalty. Fifteen of them have done so since 2006, the year following the re-launching of the initiative at the U.N. General Assembly. Three more countries (Palau, East-Timor and Tuvalu) that became members of the U.N. after 1993 are also abolitionist.

On the eve of the fourth U.N. General Assembly vote on the death penalty resolution, expected later this year, it is important to review the current situation.

There are 154 countries and territories that, to varying degrees, have decided to renounce the death penalty. Of these: 100 are totally abolitionist, seven are abolitionist for ordinary crimes, five have a moratorium on executions in place and 42 are de facto abolitionist (i.e. countries that have not carried out any executions for at least 10 years or countries that have binding obligations not to use the death penalty). On the other hand, there are 44 retentionist countries.

There were 19 countries that carried out executions in 2011, compared to 27 countries in 2006.

In 2011 there were at least 5,000 executions, compared to at least 5,946 in 2010, at least 5,741 in 2009, at least 5,735 in 2008 and at least 5,851 in 2007. A major turnabout came after the introduction in China of a legal reform on Jan. 1, 2007, which requires every capital sentence handed down to be reviewed by the Supreme Court. According to the U.S.-based Dui Hua Foundation’s estimates, executions in China have dropped 50 percent since 2007 (to around 4,000 per year).

However, the most significant facts concerning abolition came from Africa, home to the largest number of de facto abolitionist countries and where abolition had the same rhythm as the U.S. Since 2007, Connecticut, Illinois, New Mexico and New Jersey abolished the death penalty, while the governor of Oregon declared a moratorium on all executions last year.

In Africa, Rwanda, Burundi, Gabon, Togo and Benin completely eliminated the death penalty. In the first two countries in particular – being lands where the endless cycle of vengeance and the eternal drama of Cain and Abel has been played out most truly and tragically – abolition took on an extraordinary symbolic, as well as legal and political, value.

Africa remains the primary target-continent of the lobbying for additional support to the new Resolution on a moratorium on executions at the U.N. General Assembly 2012 because we continue to register the most significant political and legislative steps towards abolition.

During the last mission carried out by Hands Off Cain in the Central African Republic from Oct. 24-27, our arrival was greeted with news of the approval, by the Council of Ministers, of a bill for the abolition of the death penalty from the penal code. When minister of Justice Jacques M’Bosso met the delegation, he expressed the will of his country to become one of the protagonists of the abolitionist process.

Prime Minister Faustin-Archange Touadera himself assured us that the Central African Republic would vote in favor of the resolution on the Universal Moratorium that will be presented next month at the U.N. He expressed the political will to implement all legal means available to remove the death penalty, which has not been applied in the country for over 30 years, thus confirming the commitments undertaken by his government before the U.N. Human Rights Council for the ratification of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

These openings must, however, correspond to a commitment by the international community to improve prison conditions. While in the capital Bangui, the delegation visited the female prison of Bangui-Bimbo and the male prison of Ngaragba.

The former was a small institution that housed 31 women and three girls in three separate dormitories. Two-thirds of these women are awaiting trial and many have been accused of witchcraft.

The male prison houses 328 men, two-thirds of whom are awaiting trial. The structure is divided into blocks depending on the prisoner’s security risk and type of crime. Each block has a different name: the White Room, reserved for political prisoners today, is a maximum security facility; Couloir is reserved for those caught practicing sorcery; Iraq for violent crimes; Golo-Waka for theft and consumption of cannabis, and DDP’for crimes against the public administration.

The institute is in very poor condition: the vast majority of detainees sleep directly on the floor in conditions that barely meet the minimum hygiene standards and where the food is prepared and distributed in unsanitary conditions. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Elisabetta Zamparutti is deputy in Italian parliament and treasurer of Hands Off Cain.

Wednesday, Nov. 21, dawned like any other in the sleepy town of Faridkot, located some 150 kilometres from the Punjab capital of Lahore in Pakistan. But as the town’s 3000 residents went about their daily routines the air grew thick with apprehension, for a reason none wanted to mention.

At seventy-thirty that morning, one of the town’s former residents, a man named Ajmal Kasab, was executed in Pune’s Yerawada Central Jail, in western India’s Maharashtra state.

Kasab was the sole survivor of a group of ten men who carried out the three-day terror rampage in November 2008 that left 166 people dead in Mumbai.

Kasab was charged with 86 offences, including murder and waging war against the Indian state. After a long trial and the denial of his clemency appeal on Nov. 5, he was hanged just a few days before the fourth anniversary of the senseless but well-orchestrated attack that brought the nuclear neighbours to the brink of war.

Shafique Butt, a correspondent for the English daily newspaper ‘Dawn’, who visited the village on the morning of the execution, told IPS over the phone from Punjab, “While everyone knew he had been hanged, people were just not willing to talk about it; let alone express their feelings – either in favour or against (the execution).”

Kasab’s immediate family had long since left the village. “No one is sure if they have been relocated by the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), or Pakistan’s intelligence agencies,” said Butt. The LeT is also blamed for an attack on the Indian parliament in 2001.

“I was told there are five or six Lashkar men in the village,” Butt added, including, possibly, Kasab’s younger brother who was just a teenager in 2008.

On the streets, ordinary Pakistanis have shown little or no interest in Kasab’s hanging. They are far too concerned about their own safety: bomb blasts have become a daily occurrence in all the big cities, despite high security since the holy month of Muharram began a week ago.

“The government of Pakistan will not take a critical position on this issue; it will stay quiet,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a Lahore-based political analyst.

Islamic parties and hard-line anti-India groups have expressed some resentment or spoken about the denial of justice, Askari told IPS, but sustained protest was not expected.

Only a handful of people, like Saba Khan, a housemaid in Faridkot, lamented the act. “Couldn’t they have given him life imprisonment? They didn’t even grant him his last wish of meeting his mother,” she told IPS.

Re-examining ‘terrorism’ in Pakistan

On the other side of the border, the hanging has been hailed as “a victory for India” and a “tribute to all the innocent people and police officers who lost their lives” in the tragedy of November 2008.

Megha Prasad, deputy bureau chief for the Indian news channel ‘Times Now’, who reported live from outside the Oberoi and Trident hotels where 33 people were killed, expressed surprise at the clandestine execution of “foot soldier Kasab”, but told IPS that the execution may bring “temporary closure to the victims of 26/11”.

Still, she echoed the sentiments of many when she added that justice will only be delivered when the “perpetrators and those who masterminded 26/11 are brought to book.”

Other experts have been even less taken aback by the incident, which came just one day after India, along with 39 other U.N. member states, voted against a General Assembly draft resolution calling for a non-binding moratorium on executions.

“Kasab’s hanging was a foregone conclusion and surprised no one,” Pervez Hoodbhoy, a peace activist and academic, told IPS. “It had to be done, else mass murder would have gone unpunished.”

“That the Mumbai attacks were carried out by a Pakistan-based militant group can surprise no one because, literally for decades, groups such as LeT and Jaish-e-Muhammad, have publically declared that they exist only to attack India, anywhere and at any time,” he added.

Indeed, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, founder of the banned LeT, is a prominent public figure in Pakistan, often seen at political rallies delivering vitriolic sermons, directed primarily at the United States government.

Hoodbhoy’s analysis, shared by many others, highlights the sticky situation the government is now in.

For years, according to Askari, the most popular narrative within official political circles has been that Pakistan is a victim of terrorism. “(Most) officials attribute terrorist activities and violence in Pakistan to Pakistan’s foreign adversaries. That means that they do not give much credence to domestic sources of Pakistan’s problems.”

Zohra Yusuf, chairperson of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, told IPS that this makes a strong case “for Pakistan to adopt a credible, meaningful policy. Pakistan has to go after terrorists – and not back off only because India is asking it to act. Almost all terrorist attacks anywhere in the world seem to have some Pakistani ‘connection’, from the U.S. embassy bombing in Kenya” to the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. twin towers, she said.

“The world understands how difficult it is to tackle militants,” added Ashaar Rehman, resident editor for ‘Dawn’ in Lahore, “but is in no mood to play the understanding elder when its own existence is on line.”

But for now, he said, Pakistan seems either unable or unwilling to tackle rising militancy.

Hoodbhoy pointed out that most militant groups had, at some point in their existence, received the support of Pakistani intelligence agencies. “While some still do (accept the support), others have pointed their guns against their former benefactors,” he said.

Many experts believe Pakistan should make public some of the answers they must already have gathered through their investigations such as: who masterminded the the 2008 attacks and why, where and how the gunmen were trained, and most importantly, how these activities went ‘unnoticed’ in Pakistan.

But the government has proven it will be slow to act. It took a long time for Pakistan to even admit that the Mumbai attacks were planned on its soil, and it continues to deny any official involvement.

While seven of the alleged masterminds were charged in 2009, more evidence is needed to convict them, the government insists.

(END)

One day after voting against a United Nations General Assembly draft resolution seeking to abolish the death penalty, India executed Pakistani national Mohammad Ajmal Kasab for the November 2008 terror rampage in Mumbai that left 166 people dead.

Kasab was executed Wednesday morning by hanging – the approved method for carrying out the death penalty in India. He was the sole survivor of a ten-man squad of armed militants who landed in Mumbai harbour on a terror mission after sailing out from the Pakistani port city of Karachi.

While the other nine were killed in firefights with Indian security forces, Kasab was pinned down and disarmed by policemen.

After pictures of him – snapped as he attacked Mumbai’s main railway station – were circulated around the world, he emerged as the face of the massacre, and a test of India’s capital punishment policy.

The country’s Supreme Court had, in 1983, ruled that the death penalty should be imposed only in “the rarest of rare cases.” Kasab was the first person to be executed since 2004.

Speaking to members of the press on Wednesday India’s foreign minister Salman Khurshid said Kasab’s was “certainly a rarest of the rare case”. He described the execution as a “sober, sombre duty that had to be carried out”.

In India, capital crimes, or crimes that merit the death sentence, include murder, gang robbery involving murder, and terrorist activities. Hanging sentences are carried out only after appeals are duly heard in higher courts and clemency denied by the government.

After Kasab’s 2010 death sentence was upheld by India’s Supreme Court, the case went before President Pranab Mukherjee who, following advice from the cabinet as is customary, denied clemency on Nov. 5, clearing the way for Wednesday’s execution.

On Tuesday, India had joined 39 other countries in voting against the General Assembly draft calling for a non-binding moratorium on executions, after insisting that every country had the sovereign right to frame its own legal system.

The draft resolution was adopted by the U.N. Third Committee on social and humanitarian issues with an overwhelming 110 countries voting in favour and 36 abstaining.

“It is unfortunate that India has voted against the moratorium, since this is a country that is capable of promoting progressive and liberal ideas in global forums,” Maja Daruwala, a leading campaigner against the death penalty, told IPS.

Daruwala, executive director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, a New Delhi-based international non-governmental organisation, said, “India should be leading the movement for the realisation of a compassionate global society.”

Considering that several older death row cases are still under consideration for grant of clemency, Kasab’s case appears to have been disposed of quickly.

There are, according to the home ministry, 14 mercy petition cases now pending before the government, including that of Mohammed Afzal Guru, condemned for his role in the December 2001 terror attack on India’s parliament building.

Guru’s lawyer, Colin Gonsalves, says Kasab’s relatively quick hanging may have an effect on other pending death row cases in India.

“There should not be any death sentence at all, but Kasab’s was an extreme case,” Gonsalves, founder of the New Delhi-based Human Rights Law Network (HRLN) told IPS.

“Kasab’s case is a significant setback for the move towards complete abolition of the death penalty in India,” Prof. Anup Surendranath at the National Law University of New Delhi wrote in an opinion piece in The Hindu newspaper on Sep. 17.

“A profoundly hurt and grieving society, the guilt of the accused established through damning photographs and videos, wounded nationalism and the possible involvement of state actors across the border all contributed towards making Kasab’s case a strong validation of the need for the death penalty,” he wrote.

Gonsalves said he does not see India agreeing to any U.N. moratorium on the death penalty.

Human rights activists like Gonsalves and Daruwala are also concerned at the arbitrary application of the death penalty in the country – as borne out by an analysis of cases between 1950 and 2006 carried out by Amnesty International (AI) – and also by too many erroneous judgements.

In August, a group of 14 former judges sought the intervention of President Mukherjee to commute death sentences passed on 13 convicts, currently incarcerated in different jails across the country, on the grounds of erroneous judgements.

In their appeal the judges pointed out that the Supreme Court had itself admitted that at least seven of the sentences were awarded ‘per incuriam’ (out of error or ignorance) and did not fall in the “rarest of rare” category.

“Executions of persons wrongly sentenced to death will severely undermine the credibility of the criminal justice system and the authority of the state to carry out such punishments in future,” the appeal to the president said.

Ahmed Shaheed, UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, reviews his findings at a meeting of the General Assembly’s Third Committee on the promotion and protection of human rights. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

By Omid Memarian
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 25 2012 (IPS)

More than a year into his mandate, Ahmed Shaheed, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran, told the Third Committee of the U.N. General Assembly this week that the rights situation in Iran remains critical, especially as it pertains to human rights defenders, journalists, and religious and ethnic minorities.

According to Shaheed, more than 40 Iranian journalists are in prison, along with human rights defenders like Abdolfattah Soltani, Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, and Mohammad Seifzadeh. These individuals, along with prominent activist Narges Mohammadi, were members of a human rights organisation under the direction of Nobel Peace Laureate and attorney Shirin Ebadi.

Due to government harassment, Ebadi is now forced to live outside Iran to continue her human rights advocacy.

Altogether, Shaheed’s report estimates that some 32 lawyers have been prosecuted since 2009, and that at least nine defence attorneys are currently imprisoned.

Since his appointment in June 2011, the Iranian government has refused to respond to Shaheed’s multiple requests to travel to Iran and visit prisons there, although he conducted nearly 100 interviews with sources both within and outside the country to prepare his reports.

He told IPS on Tuesday that the Iranian government’s response to his mandate and his reports has been “evolving”, even though Tehran has repeatedly denied him a visa to visit the country.

“Their initial response was that they would not deal with me at all,” Shaheed told IPS. “Now you see that they have actually responded to reports that are out there. In fact, I have written about 20 different communications to the Iranian authorities and I have received some responses to these inquiries, so they haven’t entirely ignored me.”

Shaheed is not the only official barred from visiting Iranian prisons. Last week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was denied a request by the judiciary to allow him to visit Evin Prison, where most political detainees are held.

Though Shaheed’s and Ahmadinejad’s reasons for visiting Evin Prison may be quite different, the Iranian security apparatus’ lack of transparency and lawlessness appear to have closed the doors of the notorious prison even to high-ranking Iranian officials.

Last week, Shaheed’s report was distributed among U.N. diplomats. Immediately after its release, the head of Iran’s judiciary denounced the report as “baseless”.

“The U.N. Special Rapporteur’s third report, like his previous reports, is full of baseless and untrue statements,” Sadegh Larijani said on Iran’s state television. “Most of what they say takes issue with a fundamental discussion which pertains to all Islamic countries, and it is one which objects to Islamic laws, and unfortunately, Islamic countries are asleep, because presently we are the target of such talk.

“Nonetheless, all of this is an attack on them. Most of the issues are objections to Islamic laws. They object to our Islamic values,” Larijani told reporters.

Shaheed denies the accusations. “We can discuss the Sharia law itself and also the case of Iran’s commitments to international law,” he told IPS. “But that dialogue must happen, and my point to Iran is: observe your own laws, they are written by the people of Iran, some of them recently, and they will improve a vast majority of issues that are there. I think international alertness about what is happening in the country will help address issues of concern.”

One of the major issues raised by Third Committee members as well as Shaheed’s report was the glaring increase in the number of executions in Iran.

In June 2012, two men were sentenced to death for consuming alcohol for the third time, the report states. “At least 141 officially-announced executions are known to have been carried out between January and early June 2012. Several sources have reported that another 82 secret executions would have been carried out during the same time period, and that there were 53 executions across the country during one week in May 2012; 43, the majority of executions were reportedly related to drug offences.”

Larijani says that the death penalty is implemented in the interest of public safety. “The executions are mostly carried out for drug traffickers and sex offenders. How can we sell out the country’s peace to your rhetoric?” he said.

In response to a question by IPS regarding how his reports might impact rights victims’ lives inside Iran, Shaheed said, “If you are a victim of rights violations, documenting your case helps you. Being the voice of the voiceless is an important role that the mandate holder can play. Of course I was very disappointed when this past Monday, 13 people were executed. But as more people talk about Iran, I think we will begin to make a difference.

“I’m not the only one talking about Iran,” Shaheed emphasised. “The Human Rights Committee this past year raised some very serious concerns about Iran, and Iran is again up for review in Geneva next year. I am sure there are issues of concern, and I think all this focus on violations and the prescription of what should be done and the desire on the part of other people to engage with Iran to define ways to address these issues is important.”

The United States, Britain, Canada, Norway, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Brazil welcomed Shaheed’s report and asked Iran to cooperate with his mandate.

Ten years of campaigning by the World Coalition against the Death Penalty have brought fruit: the number of countries that have abolished capital punishment in law or practice has gone up to 140. But some countries have resumed executions this year.

“Today, 140 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. They are either completely abolitionist or have not carried out any execution for at least ten years as an official policy, not a random phenomenon. This makes up 70 percent of the world states,” Jan Erik Wetzel, Amnesty International advocate for the death penalty, told IPS in an interview.

“In 2003, only 80 countries were completely abolitionist. Ten years later, their number has risen to 97. We have abolition or a dramatic decrease of the executions in all regions and legal systems of the world. Asia and the Arab region are more difficult than others, but the death penalty is surmountable everywhere.”

According to Amnesty International, 14 countries still retain the death penalty in Asia. But 17, including Cambodia, Nepal, Bhutan, the Philippines and East Timor, have abolished it for all crimes. China, that executes most people by far in the world, has abolished the death penalty for 13 mostly economic crimes.

In the Middle East and North Africa, four out of 19 countries – Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Yemen – accounted for 99 percent of all executions last year, with a dramatic increase in Iraq (mainly for “terrorist” crimes) and Saudi Arabia (particularly for drug offenders). An increase was noted also in the Hamas controlled part of the Gaza strip. But Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Albania, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Djibouti have either abolished or reduced executions dramatically. In Lebanon and Jordan the number of the death sentences has gone down, even though to a lesser extent.

“In Tunisia and Egypt, after the Arab spring, we have made sure that the death penalty becomes a part of the discussion,” Wetzel said. “In Tunisia, we suggested to abolish it and discussions are still ongoing, but the signs are not good. For these countries, we had high hopes after the uprisings, but they have not materialised.”

However, he finds it encouraging that Tunisia has not executed for more than a decade, and that President Moncef Marzouki commuted 122 death sentences in January this year. And that in Egypt former president Hosni Mubarak was sentenced to life imprisonment. “The death penalty has become part of the political conversation, when nobody talked about it before. There are very committed activists in both countries. Since the uprisings, they do a lot of grassroots work that may not bring success immediately.”

“In Egypt, for the first time people can shape the agenda,” Amr Issam of the Mission of Egypt to the UN told IPS. It would be difficult for the new government to go against the majority of the population, he said. “The key challenge is to have a constructive dialogue to encourage states to revisit the list of crimes that are punishable by death. And to bring in more safeguards and a more independent judicial process.”

States that retain the death penalty must limit it to the most serious crimes, which has been interpreted to mean the crime of murder, Kyung-Wha Kang, deputy UN high commissioner for human rights, reminded a conference to celebrate ten years of a campaign against the death penalty at the United Nations office in Geneva this week. Use of the death penalty for drug smuggling should be abolished, he said.

“In the early 1990s, we started cooperation between civil society and the Italian government for a moratorium,” said Emma Bonino, vice-president of the Italian Senate and a pioneer in the fight against capital punishment. “Many human rights groups were against the moratorium, they wanted to go for abolition. It has been a tough discussion. But today people recognise that having gone for a moratorium was a success. All the countries that have arrived to abolition have first gone through it.”

According to Amnesty International, each year, in addition to an unknown number of people executed in China, many countries including Iran, the U.S., Yemen and North Korea each carry out scores of executions. And there are backlashes: this year, Botswana, the Gambia and Japan resumed executions. Gambia had not carried out executions for the past 30 years.

A collateral and completely neglected effect of capital punishment is its impact on the orphans left behind. “There is very little research on this issue,” Helen Kearney, from the Quakers UN Office in Geneva, told IPS. “But evidence highlights serious emotional implications for these children, such as post-traumatic stress diseases and a huge social stigma.”

She deplores the lack of data collection, even in the United States, where no special programme exists to take care of the children. In some countries, especially the ones where the death penalty is routinely applied in cases of domestic violence and the children may lose both parents, they end up on the street. “We want a reframing of this question. It is a child rights and a public health issue, it is intergenerational and it reaches out to the wider community. States must take their responsibility.”

The end of Taiwan’s most controversial death penalty case this week has “punctured the myth that the judicial system never makes mistakes in death penalty cases,” Judicial Reform Foundation (JRF) executive director Lin Feng-cheng told IPS.

A panel of three High Court judges overturned murder convictions and capital sentences Aug. 31 against the so-called ‘Hsichih Trio’ after 21 years of legal battles. Supporters of human rights and opponents of the death penalty gathered at the Taiwan High Court Criminal Appeals building cheered after Su You-chen, chairman of the Chinese Association for Human Rights, announced the  “not guilty” verdicts for Su Chien-ho, Chuang Lin-hsun and Liu Bin-lang.

The case began on Mar. 23, 1991 when a couple, Wu Ming-han and his wife Yeh Ying-lan, living in Hsichih township near Taipei City were found robbed and murdered, having been stabbed 79 times.

On Aug. 13 1991, Wang Wen-hsiao, a neighbour then serving in Taiwan’s Marines, was detained and then formally arrested two days later, based on a fingerprint found at the murder scene.

Wang initially confessed to have conducted the killings alone, but police doubted that Wang could have killed the couple by himself.

During interrogations by Hsichih precinct police, Wang named three other 19-year-old associates, Su Chien-ho, Chuang Lin-hsun and Liu Bin-lang for helping him murder the couple after robbing their home and raping Yeh.

The three suspects confessed to the crimes to the police and were charged with murder under the Act for the Control and Punishment of Banditry at the time, which provided for mandatory death sentences.

Wang was convicted in military court and executed on Jan. 11, 1992 and never directly faced Su and the other two suspects.

After judges refused to accept their claims to have made false confessions under torture, Su, Liu and Chuang were convicted in the Shihlin district court on Feb. 18, 1992 and lost two appeals to the High Court before the Supreme Court finalised their guilty verdicts and imposed death sentences on Feb. 9, 1995.

Although they would normally have been executed within three days, then justice minister (and now president and ruling Chinese Nationalist Party chairman) Ma Ying-jeou refused to sign the execution orders, returning the case to the Supreme Court due to the lack of direct evidence.

The Control Yuan, Taiwan’s watchdog branch of government, launched a probe into the Su Chien-ho case in March 1995 that found numerous errors in the investigation and trial proceedings by the Hsichih police bureau, the Shihlin district court and the High Court.

The “Hsichih Trio” or “Su Chien-ho” case became the focus of a major global human rights campaign, and spurred the drive by Taiwan civil society groups to push for the abolition of the death penalty.

A turning point came in June 2008 when renowned criminologist Henry Lee Chang-yi undertook a detailed investigation of the crime scene and forensic data on behalf of the defendants and concluded that “it is extremely likely that this case was committed by Wang Wen-hsiao alone.”

“This critical forensic research came about because of civil society efforts and not the court,” Judicial Reform Foundation executive director Lin Feng-cheng told IPS. “It was only because this case attracted too much attention and even became the subject of an international campaign were we able to persuade Henry Lee to come here.”

Speaking for the trio, Su Chien-ho said “21 years of trials and retrials has turned us into middle-aged men and our youth is long gone, but we now only have feelings of gratitude and hope to return to normal lives.”

“Senior judicial officials continue to attempt to persuade society that the judicial system never makes mistakes and this myth has blinded many people, but the Su Chien-ho case is an example of a finalized death penalty verdict that was overturned and shown to be wrong,” the JRF spokesman told IPS.

“If their death penalty verdicts had been implemented, they would have been executed just like Chiang Kuo-ching” – an Air Force private wrongfully executed in August 1997 after confessing under torture to a rape-murder, said Lin. “This fact shows how frightening the death penalty truly is.”

President Ma, who as president has overseen the ending of a nearly five-year moratorium on the death penalty with nine executions, told reporters Aug. 31 that he hoped that there would never again be such a case and that there would no longer be cases in which confessions were obtained through improper means from suspects.

Human rights activists warn that Taiwan government prosecutors have sent a message that torture is permissible by refusing to indict a former defence minister and eight other former military officers behind the wrongful execution of a young Air Force private by torturing him into confessing rape and murder.

A young girl was found dead after being raped in the Taiwan Air Force headquarters complex in Taipei in September 1996.

A month later, 20-year-old Air Force private Chiang Kuo-ching was indicted by military prosecutors for the rape-murder. After being convicted by a military tribunal even though he recanted his confession, he was executed by a shot to his head on Aug. 13, 1997.

Chiang’s case became a benchmark human rights issue through a decade-long campaign by his father Chiang Chih-an and his mother Wang Tsai-lien to clear his name. They insisted that Chiang was innocent, and had been tortured into making a false confession.

In May 2010 Control Yuan, Taiwan’s official watchdog, ordered reopening of the case. This led to a re-investigation by the Special Investigation Division (SID) of the Supreme Prosecutors Office early last year. A military re-trial exonerated the late Air Force private in September last year.

Hsu Jung-chou, 35, who had also served in the AOC, was convicted last December of the crime and given an 18-year sentence.

The military court acknowledged that Chiang’s ‘confession’, the prime basis for his conviction by the military tribunal, had been extracted under torture by officers under then Air Force Combat Operations Command (AOC) commander  Chen Chao-min, who was later defence minister from May 2008 to September 2009.

For the first time in Taiwan history, the SID investigation and the military court had identified the perpetrators as well as the victims in a case of state torture. But in May 2011, Taipei District Court prosecutors refrained from indicting any of the implicated former officers on the grounds that the 10-year statute of limitation for offences of “coercion” and “intimidation and endangerment” had expired. The offences carry a maximum punishment of less than three years imprisonment.

After being ordered by the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors Office to re-investigate the case, the Taipei District Court Prosecutors Office again refused Aug. 24 to issue any indictments. It rejected calls by lawyers for the Chiang family that Chao and the other officers should be indicated for murder or for “causing death through abuse of the power of prosecution.”

Taipei District Prosecutor Office spokesman Huang Tieh-hsin said on Aug. 24 that Chen Chao-min and the others could not be indicted for murder even though they had used electric cattle prods to beat and torture Chiang to confess because they aimed to “gain merit by solving the case” and did not deliberately intend to cause Chiang’s wrongful death.

“Since there was no cause and effect relationship, we have decided not to issue any indictment,” Huang stated.

Lawyer Greg Yo Po-hsiang told IPS that Chiang’s mother Wang Tsai-lien, who had earlier said that her son’s exoneration would be “meaningless” unless his torturers were brought to justice, was “furious” when informed of the new finding.

“Since these reasons fly in the face of common sense, her anger is understandable,” said Yo, who is also an executive director of the Taipei Bar Association.

“Chao and the other officers were fully aware that conviction of rape-murder would carry a mandatory death penalty under military law and that therefore it was a virtual certainty that a confession would result in Chiang’s execution,” Yo told IPS.

Yo said the claim that Chen Chao-min and the other officers could not have known that forcing Chiang to confess would result in his death “might have a shred of credibility if there had been any precedents in which persons convicted by military courts of crimes carrying mandatory death sentences had not actually been executed.

“I have not heard of even one such case,” said Yo. Neither Ms Wang nor any of her legal team were asked for their views during the investigation, Yo said.

Lawyers representing Chiang’s mother will now file a motion for “reconsideration”, Yo said, after receiving the official notification of the Taipei District Prosecutor Office’s decision.

Taiwan Alliance Against the Death Penalty executive director Lin Hsin-yi told IPS that the decision not to indict “sends a chilling message that the Taiwan judicial system believes that there is nothing wrong with torture” and shows that “victims of torture will never receive justice and that the persons who tortured them will never need to bear responsibility.”

Lin said there are several death row inmates who have been victims of torture, notably Chiou Ho-shun, now in his 50s, who was arrested in 1989 on suspicion of the kidnap and murder of nine-year old boy and a female insurance agent. He was sentenced to death based almost entirely on confessions obtained in police interrogations.

Despite appeals by Amnesty International, Chiou’s conviction and death sentence were finalised in July 2011 by the Taiwan Supreme Court even though an investigation by Control Yuan in 1994 had found that the investigating police had tortured Chiou and other defendants during their interrogations.

Covenants Watch executive director Kao Yung-cheng told IPS that the decision also cast serious doubt on the willingness and capability of the Taiwan government to implement the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which it ratified and incorporated into domestic law effective December 2009.

Kao, a former prosecutor, told IPS that the ICCPR’s Article 2 requires states which ratify the covenant to ensure that persons who have their rights violated have effective remedies, and to enforce those remedies.

“The most important responsibility of the State is to find and expose the truth and the prosecutors have refused to face this obligation,” Kao told IPS.

Earlier this week a coalition of rights organisations issued a ‘shadow report’ on Taiwan’s compliance with two international human rights covenants, which it incorporated into domestic law in 2009, probing the country’s track record on human rights.

Liao Fu-teh, associate research fellow at the Academia Sinica Institute of Law, who edited the shadow report, said, “The government itself thinks it is in fine health, but from the standpoint of civil society we find that its body may have high blood pressure and even some worrisome tumours.”

The ‘Taiwan Human Rights Report 2011: Shadow Reports on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) from NGOs’ published by the Taiwan Association for Human Rights and Covenants Watch, a coalition of over 60 civil organisations, was formally released on May 22.

“We probably set a record in responding to a national human rights report with a shadow report within one month,” said Covenant Watch Convenor Kao Yung-cheng.

The official report was released Apr. 20, by President and ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou, just over three years after Taiwan’s national legislature ratified the ICCPR and ICESCR and enacted an “implementation law” for their domestic application, effective Dec. 10, 2009.

Liao said the official report failed to incorporate the numerous “general comments” drafted by the United Nations Human Rights Commission for the ICCPR and by the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights for the ICESCR, which provide concrete interpretations of the content of human rights provisions on major thematic issues.

“The government thus is unable to have a complete understanding of how these covenants are supposed to be applied to many substantive issues,” Liao added, noting that the Taiwan government has yet to even publish a full Chinese-language edition of the general comments for use by government agencies.

Kao said the civil shadow report responded to numerous shortcomings in the KMT government’s official report, raised human rights issues not mentioned in the government’s review and offered specific recommendations for improvement on each article.

With regard to the ICCPR, the shadow report reviewed the KMT government’s human rights performance in the fields of: the right to self-determination, the right to life, prohibition of torture, prohibition of human slavery, personal freedom, the rights of liberty of movement and residence, the right to privacy, the rights of freedom of expression and news freedom, the rights of assembly and association, the rights of children, the right of political participation and the rights of minority peoples.

With regard to the ICESCR, the shadow report dealt with human rights problems in the fields of: the rights of work, working conditions and labour rights, the right to a suitable standard of living, the right to health and the right to receive education and the need to address various types of discrimination.

With regard to the right to self-determination, enshrined in the first article of both covenants, the shadow report related that the government had failed to grant equal treatment for Taiwan’s indigenous peoples, that the KMT government had even violated many if not most of the articles of the ‘Indigenous Peoples Basic Law’ and that a draft bill introduced by the KMT for indigenous peoples self-government would actually abrogate the land rights of indigenous peoples.

Moreover, the shadow report noted that the stiff 50 percent voter turnout quorum and the vetting of referendum topics by a referendum review committee in January 2004 had “added difficultly on to difficulty for the exercise by people of the right to direct democracy.”

Such rules have effectively stymied citizen efforts to use referendums to resolve major public policy controversies – such as whether to continue construction of a fourth nuclear power plant – and have blocked efforts by the Dawu indigenous people on Orchid Island (Lanyu) to secure the removal of a low- level radioactive waste storage facility established without permission of the residents.

With regard to the right to life in Article Six, the report urged the government to respect the U.N. “Safeguards Guaranteeing Protection of the Rights of those Facing the Death Penalty,” including by prohibiting the execution of psychologically or mentally impaired convicts; establish a clear and complete procedure for appeals for clemency; and review whether current procedures and standards for determining death sentences are in keeping with the ICCPR.

Citing capital punishment cases in which convictions and sentences were based on confessions extracted using torture, the shadow report reminded the government that States bound by the ICCPR are obliged to prohibit mistreatment or torture of suspects, provide channels for appeal and reparations for torture victims and improve the provision of medical care for convicts or other persons under detention.

The shadow report also stated that Taiwan’s attempts to prevent human trafficking were “full of problems”, including grossly inadequate shelter facilities and interpretation and protection services for victims and insufficient training of staff in related labour affairs and judicial agencies.

With regard to the right of liberty and security ensured by Article 9 of the ICCPR, the shadow report called on the government to expunge current rules that permit extended (and in some cases indefinite) detention for persons suspected of “serious crimes”.

The shadow report devoted considerable space to Article 19 of the ICCPR and noted that the government document “did not seriously address the problems encountered in Taiwan regarding freedom of expression and news freedom.”

“Although Taiwan is disadvantaged by being isolated from the U.N. system, we have an opportunity to show some leadership in innovation and obtain a deeper and more profound review of our human rights situation than can be done by the overburdened UNHRC,” said Peter Huang Wen-hsiung, former president of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights.

Huang stated that a seven-person committee of civil organisation representatives and members of the presidential human rights advisory commission has been formed to map out procedures for the review and to choose a panel of prominent human rights specialists to review Taiwan’s national report and submissions of shadow and alternative NGO reports.

(END)

On Monday, Dec. 6, a district court in Texas will be asked – for the first time in that U.S. state’s history – to decide whether the death penalty is unconstitutional based on the “disproportionately high risk of wrongful convictions” in Texas.

John Edward Green, Jr., the defendant in Texas v. Green, is charged in the fatal shooting of a 34-year-old Houston woman during a 2008 robbery. He has not yet been convicted, but prosecutors say they would seek the death penalty.

Green’s attorneys have filed a pretrial motion in Harris County District Court. Judge Kevin Fine will hear arguments that the death penalty is unconstitutional because it creates an unacceptable risk of executing innocent people

Green’s attorneys contend that a number of factors in Texas’s legal system increase the risk of innocent people being executed.

According to the defence, these include a lack of safeguards to protect against mistaken eyewitness identification, faulty forensic evidence, incompetent lawyers at the appellate level, failures to guard against false confessions, and a history of racial discrimination in jury selection.

Paul Cates, director of communications for the Innocence Project, told IPS, “The Innocence Project will be participating in the hearing specifically to put on evidence about the cases of Claude Jones and Cameron Todd Willingham. Both Jones and Willingham were executed in Texas.”

He said, “In the case of Claude Jones, DNA evidence has proven that critical physical evidence (a hair sample) used to place him at the scene of the crime did not belong to Jones. Cameron Todd Willingham was executed even though a prominent arson scientist notified the Governor and the appeals court prior to his execution that the critical testimony of the arson investigator was based on outdated arson science.”

Both Ernest Ray Willis and Cameron Todd Willingham were convicted of murder by arson and sentenced to death on the basis of junk fire science. Mr. Willingham is dead and Mr. Willis is alive — and free — because a pro bono law firm took his case.

The Innocence Project has been responsible for freeing numerous prisoners from death row, largely through its use of DNA evidence.

Maurie Levin, a law professor at the University of Texas and an expert on capital punishment, said she would not be surprised if Judge Kevin Fine ruled the death penalty to be unconstitutional in Texas.

“I would think that Judge Fine would have substantial basis in the evidence that I’m aware of that would lead to a conclusion that the Texas death penalty is unconstitutional as applied,” she told the Huffington Post.

Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, writing in the New York Review of Books this week, said he now thinks the death penalty is unconstitutional.

Since 1976, 12 people have been exonerated from death row in Texas out of 139 nationwide, and four study commissions set up by the Texas government have formally recognised the serious risks of wrongful convictions there.

Out of the 464 people executed in Texas, about 70 percent have been minorities, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

The defence motion focuses on the factors they say increase the risk of wrongful convictions and executions in Texas, including: lack of safeguards to protect against mistaken eyewitness identification, which has been a factor in 75 percent of DNA exonerations nationwide; failures to guard against false confessions, which has been a factor in 25 percent of DNA exonerations nationwide; use of notoriously unreliable informant testimony, which has been a factor in nearly half of wrongful murder convictions nationwide, and racial discrimination in jury selection.

At next week’s hearing, expert witnesses will testify about “the numerous flaws that leave Texas’ system riddled with errors, inherently unreliable, and unconstitutional as applied,” Green’s lawyers say.

They add that the clemency process fails in its role as the last safeguard against executing the innocent. Claude Jones was executed in 2000 based on false evidence. During the clemency review, then-Governor Bush was not informed that Jones had requested DNA testing that might have exonerated him.

Ten years after Jones’s execution, a DNA test showed that the hair sample at the crime scene was not his.

Four study commissions set up by the three branches of Texas government have formally recognised the serious risks of wrongful convictions, but virtually nothing has been done to fix the problem.

Nationwide, since 1976, 139 people have been exonerated from death row. Twelve of them were in Texas.

The 35 U.S. states that practice the death penalty have executed 1,233 prisoners since 1976. In 2010, executions will number 47, down from 52 a year earlier. Some 3,261 prisoners are currently on death row.

States executing the most prisoners since 1976 were Texas (466) and Virginia (108). One hundred thirty-eight prisoners have been freed from death row, largely as a result of new DNA evidence.