Saudi Arabia beheads woman for 'sorcery'

Πηγή: Aljajeera
Dec 13 2011

Human rights group describes execution as "truly appalling" and notes steep rise in country's use of capital punishment.

A Saudi woman has been beheaded after being convicted of practising sorcery, which is banned in the conservative Gulf kingdom, the country's interior ministry said.

Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nasser was executed on Monday in the northern province of Jawf for "practising witchcraft and sorcery", the ministry said in a statement carried by SPA, Saudi Arabia's state news agency.

The ministry gave no further details of the charges for which the woman was convicted.

London-based newspaper al-Hayat quoted a member of the Saudi religious police as saying Nasser was in her 60s. The official claimed she had tricked people into giving her money, claiming that she could cure their illnesses.

According to the report, she apparently charged up to $800 a session.

Amnesty International said the beheading brought the number of executions in the kingdom to 73 this year. Another woman was beheaded in October for killing her husband by setting his house on fire.

There are no available statistics on how many women have been executed in Saudi Arabia.

'Truly appalling'

Amnesty condemned Monday's execution as "truly appalling", and called on Saudi Arabia to urgently halt the practice.

"The charges of 'witchcraft and sorcery' are not defined as crimes in Saudi Arabia", Philip Luther, Amnesty's interim director of the Middle East and North Africa, said.

"To use them to subject someone to the cruel and extreme penalty of execution is truly appalling," he added in a statement, which stressed the "urgent need" to stop executions.

Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking are all punishable by death in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy with no written criminal code. Its law is based on a form of Islamic sharia law, as interpreted by the country's judges.

Amnesty has reported that Saudi Arabia executed 27 convicts in 2010, compared to 67 executions announced the year before. Luther described the increasing number of executions in Saudi Arabia as "deeply disturbing" .

Many of those executed have had no defence lawyer and are not informed about the legal proceedings against them, according to Amnesty.

"While we don't know the details of the acts which the authorities accused Amina of committing, the charge of sorcery has often been used in Saudi Arabia to punish people, generally after unfair trials, for exercising their right to freedom of speech or religion," Luther said.

Earlier this month, Amnesty accused the oil-rich kingdom of conducting a campaign of repression against protesters and reformists since the Arab Spring erupted 12 months ago.

The rights group said Saudi Arabia was one of a minority of states which voted against a UN General Assembly resolution last December calling for a worldwide moratorium on executions.

Libya: Rebels 'execute 85 mercenaries, including 12 Serbs'

Πηγή: Adnkronos
Sep. 13 2011

Belgrade, 13 Sept. (AKI) - Libyan rebels who control most of the country after defeating Muammar Gaddafi's military, have executed 85 foreign mercenaries, including 12 Serbs, in the city of Misrata alone, Serbian media reported on Tuesday.

Belgrade daily Press said the executions took place in the state insurance building in Misrata after it was taken by the forces loyal to rebels’ National Transitional Council (NTC). Among the killed mercenaries, who fought on Gaddafi’s side, were also nine Croats, 11 Ukrainians and ten Colombians, the paper said.

The report was also confirmed by Zagreb daily Vecernji list whose correspondent in Misrata, Hasan Hajdar Dijab, said many mercenaries had been killed in fighting, but those arrested were shot in the head.

It quoted a rebel commander in Misrata Abdelaziz Madini as saying “those killed weren’t soldiers but executioners who came here to kill for money”. He said other mercenaries who surrender would have a fair trial.

Balkans military analysts said they were not surprised by the report, because hundreds of veterans of 1990s Balkans war have sought engagement abroad after the end of the Balkan wars in 1995 and fought for money in various African and Asian countries.

In a related development, the human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) said in its latest report that both sides in the Libyan conflict committed crimes, especially Gaddafi’s forces, but “crimes committed by rebels weren’t negligible either”, it added.

Amnesty International has called on Libya's National Transitional Council to take steps to prevent human rights abuses by anti-Gaddafi forces.

Feds plan changes to death penalty procedure

Πηγή: Politico

July 29, 2011

It's increasingly likely that President Barack Obama will serve out his entire first-term without presiding over the execution of a prisoner on federal death row, after the federal government decided to move forward with revisions to its death penalty procedures.

The Justice Department informed a federal judge Thursday about its plans to revise the so-called protocol for executions. Government lawyers gave no reason for the changes, but they likely stem from a shortage of the key drug used in most lethal injection executions in recent decades, sodium thiopental.

"The Federal Bureau of Prisons has decided to modify its lethal injection protocol but the protocol revisions have not yet been finalized," government lawyers wrote in a court filing in a case challenging the constitutionality of the federal execution process. The Justice Department offered no timeline for completing the new protocol, but offered to update the court monthly on the progress. A spokeswoman for the department said she had no information beyond the brief statement in the court filing.

Federal executions have been effectively halted since 2006, when a judge blocked executions for three inmates. Three additional prisoners have been subsquently added to the injunction.

"We're in the midst of this litigation and the judge was about to say looks like the protocol meets the standards, but now they're going to have to stop and go back and look at that again," said Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment.

Since the Justice Department agrees that the prisoners who brought the challenge to the current protocol will be entitled to detailed information about the protocol and how it was developed, it seems likely that the legal process of green lighting it could extend through next fall's election.

"They're going to need time just to see what's happening, then the judge will make a decision. Either side will appeal to the circuit court and possibly the U.S. Supreme Court. I think it will take a year at a minimum but it's hard to predict," Dieter said.

Just last December, the Justice Department said it was ready to move forward with setting an execution date for Jeffrey Paul, who was convicted in 1997 of the shooting death of a retired, 82-year-old National Park Service employee, Sherman Williams. However, no execution date was ever set for Paul, who is not covered by the injunction.

Most executions in the U.S. are carried out by the states, which handle most murder cases. There are currently 58 prisoners on federal death row, according to DPIC. The last federal executions were three under President George W. Bush, beginning with the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh in 2001. The last previous federal execution was in 1963.

Unlike his two predecessors who had served as governors before coming to the White House, Obama has never presided over an execution or the question of whether to grant a reprieve to someone on death row. He does have some familiarity with the issue, though, since he pursued death penalty reform as a state legislator in Illinois.