Cultural figures and rights groups call for release of poet facing execution

Leading international cultural figures have joined human rights campaigners in calling for the release of Ashraf Fayadh, the Palestinian poet and artist facing execution in Saudi Arabia.

Chris Dercon, the director of Tate Modern, British poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, historian Simon Schama, playwright David Hare, and Egyptian novelist and commentator Ahdaf Soueif are among the those calling for the death sentence imposed on Fayadh by a Saudi court last week to be overturned.

More than a dozen organisations for artists, writers, musicians and freedom of expression from the UK, North America and Africa – including Index on Censorship, literary association PEN International and the International Association of Art Critics – have also signed a joint statement condemning Fayadh’s conviction for renouncing Islam, a charge which he denies. The statement, which will be delivered to the Saudi embassy in London by English PEN on Friday, says: “We believe that all charges against him should have been dropped entirely, and are appalled that Fayadh has instead been sentenced to death for apostasy, simply for exercising his rights to freedom of expression and freedom of belief.”

More at The Guardian

Ali Mohammed al-Nimr: Sentenced to death

Interview with the father of Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, the activist sentenced to death by crucifixion in Saudi Arabia. He says there are 7 other men who also face the death penalty.

The Real News

David Cameron on Ali Mohammed al-Nimr and Saudi Arabia

The British Prime Minister suggests that he will try and personally intervene with Saudi Arabian authorities in the case of Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, who has been sentenced to death, as he is tackled over the British response to human rights abuses.

Channel 4 News

Who is Ali Mohammed al-Nimr and why is Saudi Arabia planning to behead and crucify him?

Ali Mohammed al-Nimr's name is well-known in eastern Saudi Arabia, the hotbed of the country's Shia minority and the scene of a burgeoning protest movement. Ali, 21, is the nephew of Shia cleric and activist Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, who was jailed and sentenced to death for his fiery speeches against Saudi Arabia's ruling House of Saud dynasty, which has controlled the Arabian Peninsula since the 1930s. Sheikh al-Nimr was detained and then sentenced to death on terrorism charges as well as "waging war on God" for his speech during anti-government protests in Qatif, a city that saw massive street protests followed by a bloody crackdown by the Saudi authorities in the wake of the Arab Spring.

Most of the 2.7 million Shia in Saudi Arabia live in al-Ahsa and al-Qatif districts in the country's eastern province, which also contains the bulk of the kingdom's oil. Ruled by a Sunni monarchy and under a strict interpretation of Islam, Wahabbism, Shia are often portrayed as heretics or agents of Riyadh's major rival, Iran. Ali Mohammed al-Nimr faces death by beheading and crucifixion for alleged participation in anti-government protests Facebook

It was revealed this week that Ali's appeal against the death penalty has been denied and he will be put to death by the Saudi authorities, first beheaded and then his body strapped to a cross and left to rot.

Ali was arrested in 2012 when he was 17 years old for taking part in a protest. According to anti-death penalty charity Reprieve, Ali was tortured and forced to sign a confession in 2012 and after two years he was sentenced to death in May 2014. During his "trial", Ali raised the claims of torture but no investigation took place and the court used the confession to sentence him, the charity claims. He was convicted under a range of charges, from the most seemingly innocuous to the gravely serious. As well as being accused of being part of a terrorist organisation, carrying weapons and targeting security patrols with Molotov cocktails, Ali was also charged with encouraging others to protest using his BlackBerry and explaining to others how to give first aid, Reprieve claimed in a statement on 17 September.

International Business Times

ExecutedToday.com

Last year on this date, to the impotent howls of human rights groups, five men were beheaded in Jizan, Saudi Arabia and then “crucified.” “In Saudi Arabia, the practice of ‘crucifixion’ refers to the court-ordered public display of the body after execution,” Amnesty UK noted, “along with the separated head if beheaded. It takes place in a public square to allegedly act as a deterrent.”

Jizan is a city being developed as a deep water shipping depot by Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia’s extreme southwest corner near Yemen; this was the ethnicity of the executed men as well. According to the Saudi Interior Ministry, brothers Khaled, Adel and Qassem Saraa as well as Saif Ali al-Sahari and Khaled Showie al-Sahari comprised a gang who carried out robberies in various different cities. They beat and strangled to death at least one man.

ExecutedToday.com

Egyptian judge sentences 720 men to death

A judge in Egypt has sentenced to death 720 men, including the head of the Muslim Brotherhood, in a pair of mass trials that were both completed after two brief court sessions. In the first case, 683 men – including the Brotherhood leader, Mohamed Badie – were sentenced to death on charges of killing a policeman in a southern Egyptian town last August.

Minutes later, in a second and separate case, the same judge, Saeed Youssef, upheld the death sentences of 37 of the 529 men he notoriously sentenced to hang last month. The remaining 492 had their sentences commuted to 25-year jail terms, with all 529 convicted of killing a second police officer in a neighbouring town on the same day.

In a separate development on Monday, a Cairo court banned the 6 April youth movement, the liberal protest group charged with playing a leading role in Egypt's 2011 revolution. A spokesman for the group, Ahmad Abd Allah, said the move highlighted the extent of Egypt's counter-revolution. "It shows that it's not just the Islamists who are being targeted, it's also liberal groups like us. And [the government] will continue all the way to close down all democratic forces," Abd Allah said. "What else did you think a military coup would do? It's something expected from a military regime that has killed thousands of people, and imprisoned thousands more. And it's just the beginning."

More at The Guardian

Iranian man granted mercy by victim’s family during execution

A man sentenced to death for murder in Mashad, northeastern Iran, was granted mercy at the very last moment just as he was being hung from the scaffold.

According to Iranian Mehr news agency, Vahid Zare had been charged with killing a young person doing his military service. He was granted mercy by the victim’s family when he started choking, seconds after the executioner pulled the gallows from beneath his feet.
Once the members of the victims’ family confirmed that they were pardoning the culprit, the officials took Zahe down and sent him to the hospital.

hurriyet daily news – pictures here

Death Penalty

George Carlin

Saudi Arabia to execute 25 Indonesian maids for alleged crimes

The Saudi Arabian regime has ruled to execute 25 Indonesian maids working in the kingdom over alleged crimes, a report says.

According to a report published by Lebanese Ad-Diyar Arabic daily on Sunday, 22 other Indonesian maids have been acquitted and deported from the kingdom.
Meanwhile, the Indonesian government plans to send a delegation to Riyadh for negotiations over the death sentences. Indonesian Embassy officials in Riyadh say six of the maids sentenced to death worked in the capital. About 1,700 Indonesian nationals are in prison in Saudi Arabia, the Indonesian Embassy says.

PressTV

Amnesty alarmed by execution surge

Executions around the world soared last year with countries like Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia resorting to the death penalty more often, Amnesty International has said in a new report.

The rights group said on Tuesday that at least 676 people were executed in 20 countries in 2011 compared with 527 executions in 23 countries in 2010, a 78 per cent increase. Executions in the Middle East rose by almost 50 per cent last year to 558, the group said. Methods of execution used around the world included beheading, hanging, lethal injection and shooting.

However, Amnesty said China executed more people than the rest of the world put together. Data on the death penalty in China is a state secret and Amnesty International no longer publishes a figure for Chinese executions, but it said they were in the thousands.

Salil Shetty, Amnesty's secretary-general, said that when Amnesty was launched in 1961 only nine countries had abolished the death penalty for all crimes, whereas last year only 20 countries carried out executions.

Al Jazeera English

Florida executes killer after 31 years on death row

A American man convicted of raping a 29-year-old mother and dragging her into Tampa Bay's surf to drown more than three decades ago was executed by lethal injection Wednesday at Florida State Prison.

Twice-convicted murderer Robert Brian Waterhouse, 65, was pronounced dead at 8:22 p.m., 11 minutes after the execution began. He had been on death row for more than 31 years — longer than any inmate previously executed in Florida. Gov. Rick Scott signed his death warrant last month. His execution was delayed two hours as the U.S. Supreme Court considered a last-minute appeal before rejecting it. The court had rejected a similar appeal earlier in the day.

OrlandoSentinel.com

Death penalty for asking for fair wages

After months of torture in Nigeria, labour activists Osmond Ugwu and Raphael Elobuike will go to trial Friday on murder charges that human rights groups call "an apparent bid by the police and prosecution to silence union activists." And the two activists could face the death penalty if they lose.

But Damian Ugwu (no relation to Osmond) knows that the only "crime" the two men have committed is empowering workers in Nigeria to demand fair compensation and humane treatment.

Damian is convinced that international outcry can save Osmond and Raphael -- not only from an unfair sentencing but from the possibility of assassination while imprisoned, too, which their friends fear. He started a petition on Change.org calling on government officials to drop all charges against Osmond and Raphael and release them immediately.

Click here to sign Damian's petition calling for imprisoned labour activists Osmond Ogwu and Raphael Elobuike to be released immediately, and all charges against them dropped.

Change.org - Amnesty International

New evidence could clear 14-year-old executed by South Carolina, USA

Over 67 years after 14-year-old George Junius Stinney Jr. was put to death by the state of South Carolina, he may soon be cleared of the crime that people familiar with the case say he never could have committed. A lawyer and an activist both told Raw Story recently that new evidence will show that the black boy could not have possibly murdered two white girls, 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker and seven-year-old Mary Emma Thames.

Stinney, the youngest person to receive the death penalty in the last 100 years, was executed on June 16, 1944. At five feet one inch and only 95 pounds, the straps of the electric chair did not fit the boy. His feet could not touch the floor. As he was hit with the first 2,400-volt surge of electricity, the mask covering his face slipped off, “revealing his wide-open, tearful eyes and saliva coming from his mouth,” according to author Joy James. After two more jolts of electricity, the boy was dead.

Less than three months earlier, Stinney, who had no previous history of violence, had been accused of the crime after he admitted speaking to the girls when they stopped by a field in Alcolu where he was grazing his cow to ask where they could find maypops, a type of flower. Authorities alleged Stinney had used a railroad spike to shatter both of the girls’ heads. The boy was taken into a room with several white officers and within an hour, they said he had confessed. Because there were no Miranda rights in 1944, Stinney was questioned without a lawyer and his parents were not allowed into the room.

The Raw Story

Troy Davis Executed

Huffington Post

The Long, Murderous Arm of the Law Has Killed Troy Davis 
Let us not mince words: The state of Georgia just murdered Troy Davis. The state coroner will list homicide as his cause of death. But he wasn’t the first and, sadly, he won’t be the last person slaughtered in the name of U.S. law and order. There are today dozens more people scheduled to be killed by states, according to Amnesty International. Their likely deaths represent the ultimate act of perversity in a system that destroys untold thousands of primarily black and brown lives every day. - Alternet

10 reasons why he should not be executed on The Guardian

Death-row inmate Troy Davis denied clemency

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole has denied clemency for death-row inmate Troy Davis, Amnesty International said Tuesday. Davis was convicted of the 1989 killing of Savannah, Georgia, police officer Mark MacPhail.

Davis is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 7 p.m. Wednesday at a state prison in Jackson, Georgia.

Since Davis' conviction in 1991, seven of the nine witnesses against him have recanted or contradicted their testimony. There also have been questions about the physical evidence - and, according to some, the lack thereof - linking Davis to the killing. Amnesty International was among the organizations appealing for clemency for Davis.

CNN.com - Amnesty International Condemns Decision to Deny Troy Davis Clemency, Calling It An 'Outrageous Affront to Justice'

Rick Perry in the spotlight as Texas sets to work on controversial executions

Rick Perry, the frontrunner to become the Republican candidate in next year's US presidential election, has just hours left to prevent a man being put to death in Texas in a case in which the jury was told the prisoner was a danger to the public – and should therefore be executed – because he was black.

Duane Buck is one of four men scheduled to die by lethal injection in Texas, where Perry is governor, over the next eight days – an exceptional rate even in this execution-happy state. At Buck's sentencing hearing, the jury that set his punishment was informed by a psychologist that black people had a higher rate of violent behaviour, a statement used by the prosecution as its key argument against giving him an alternative penalty of life imprisonment.

On Tuesday night, another hotly contested case is scheduled to reach its climax with the execution of Steven Woods, who was sentenced to death for a double murder, even though an alleged accomplice later confessed to having pulled the trigger.

More on The Guardian – Also see Scheduled Executions on Texas Department of Criminal Justice

Sobibor death camp closed

The museum at the Nazi death camp where convicted war criminal John Demjanjuk was a guard during the Holocaust has been closed because of a lack of funding.

Around 20,000 people visit the site of Sobibor death camp in eastern Poland every year to pay tribute to the 250,000 Jews and non-Jews who were murdered there.

But according to German press agency dpa, the museum is no longer being allocated sufficient money by the regional government to stay open to the public.

The Jewish Chronicle

More here…

Bahrain sentences protesters to death

A Bahraini military court has sentenced four Shia protesters to death and three to life jail terms for the killing of two policemen during demonstrations last month, state media has reported. Thursday's verdicts are the first related to the uprising against the Gulf kingdom's ruling family, which began in February. The seven defendants were tried behind closed doors on charges of premeditated murder of government employees, which their lawyers have denied.

A Shia opposition official named those sentenced to death as Ali Abdullah Hasan, Qasim Hassan Mattar, Saeed Abdul Jalil Saeed, and Abdul Aziz Abdullah Ibrahim. He told the AFP news agency that Issa Abdullah Kazem, Sadiq Ali Mahdi, and Hussein Jaafar Abdul Karim were sentenced to life in prison. Sheikh Ali Salman,  president of Bahrain's Al Wefaq, the largest Shia political group in the country, told Al Jazeera that the punishments did not fit the crime. "I believe that these sentences should be revised and the international community must intervene to stop this," he said.

Al Jazeera

Bahrain military prosecutor demands death penalty for 7 Shiite protesters on trial

Look at this Bahrain billboard: It says: “We demand from the government…the maximum punishment. No to Amnesty…for the heads of fitnah and the misguided element.”

(image from A New Worlds in Birth)

Bahrain's state news agency says a military prosecutor has demanded death penalty for seven anti-government protesters on trial in the Gulf kingdom for the killing of two policemen during protests.

The Bahrain News Agency says the prosecutor presented evidence during a hearing Sunday that showed the opposition supporters attacked the policemen "on purpose and called for inflicting the capital punishment."

The seven were charged in a military court with premeditated murder of government employees. The defendants' lawyers denied the charges, the report said.

The next hearing is set for Thursday. Hundreds of protesters calling for greater rights and freedoms have been detained since Bahrain declared martial law last month.

Winnipeg Free Press

A FOURTH detainee has died in Bahraini custody, the country's Shi'ite opposition claims, as Human Rights Watch urged the Gulf kingdom to investigate the deaths of arrested activists.  Read more at news.com.au

China and US among top punishers but death penalty in decline

China, Iran, North Korea, Yemen and the US carried out the most executions last year, bucking a global trends towards abolition of the death penalty, a report has said .

China again was by far the world's most prolific executioner in putting to death thousands, said Amnesty International in its report on the death penalty worldwide. Amnesty does not provide a precise figure of executions in China as Beijing keeps such figures secret.

Instead, it has challenged the Chinese authorities to publish figures for the number of people sentenced to death and executed each year to confirm claims of a reduction in the use of the death penalty.

See The Guardian for full story