Iraq: This Year’s Official Executions Already Surpass 2011′s

Πηγή: Antiwar
By by Margaret Griffis
Feb 21 2012

According to a justice ministry official, the Iraqi government has officially executed 69 people during 2012. Last year, only 68 people suffered the death penalty during the entire year. Four of the recently condemned were put to death yesterday. Two of them were found guilty on terrorism charges, while the other two were common criminals.

Groups, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights, have recently criticized the increasing number of executions. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called on Iraq to suspend the death penalty until there is more transparency in the courts.

The numbers only reflect official executions. What has gone on in Iraq’s secret prisonsis not completely known. As recently as November, the Interior Ministry has beenaccused of killing prisoners, and the ministry once harbored Shi’ite death squads.

At least five Iraqis were killed and five more were wounded in other violence.

In Mosul, a policeman and a civilian were killed in separate attacks.

A roadside bomb in Qaim killed a petrol station manager and wounded two other people.

A blast killed two people in Yathrib.

In Baiji, two people were wounded in a roadside bombing.

A policeman was wounded during a blast in Baquba.

The CIA as Executioner

Πηγή: Counterpunch
by LIAQUAT ALI KHAN

Nov 3 2011

President Obama has openly deployed murder as an instrument of foreign policy. Soon after assuming office, Obama authorized the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to plan and execute the murder of terrorists and other enemies, regardless of whether they are U.S. citizens. Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki, and Muammar Gaddafi are the prominent murder victims while numerous others in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iran, and Pakistan have been purposely targeted and killed. The legitimization of extra-judicial killing is a disturbing development in international law as other nations are certain to follow suit. In pursuit of pre-meditated murders, the collateral damage (the killing of the obviously innocent) has been extensive. The claim that such murders can be executed with electronic precision, though false, serves as an incentive for other nations to develop drones to perpetrate their own surgical assassinations. For now, however, the CIA enjoys the monopoly over drone kills.

Covert Murders

The 1947 National Security Act created the CIA for the purpose of gathering and evaluating information necessary to protect the nation from foreign threats. Right from the beginning, however, the CIA assumed a proactive role in promoting U.S. economic and military interests. In 1948, the CIA was transformed into a paramilitary organization, empowered under law to engage in “propaganda, economic warfare, sabotage, subversion against hostile states through assistance to underground resistance movements and guerillas.” Ever since, the CIA has engineered world events for U.S. hegemony.

The murder policy under the CIA aegis is by no means an Obama invention. Over the decades, the CIA has spearheaded what Vice President Dick Cheney once described as the “dark side” of the United States. Previously, however, the murders were covert, not to be openly admitted. In the 1960s, the CIA planned the murders of “communists who threatened the free world,” including those of Patrice Lumumba of Congo and Fidel Castro of Cuba. Researchers dispute over whether the CIA participated in Che Guevara’s murder. The evidence is mounting, however, that the CIA head in Bolivia had a “prior agreement or understanding with the Bolivians that Che would be killed if captured.” (See Ratner & Smith, Who Killed Che?: How the CIA Got Away with Murder).

Covert murders were planned to shield the President from the attendant foreign policy fallout and the moral discomfort emanating from cold-blooded strategies. Notably, the President chairs the National Security Council (NSC), the supreme body that empowers the CIA to conduct covert operations. In the early decades, intelligence experts instituted the doctrine of plausible deniability under which the facts of a covert operation were reported to the President in a way that he could deny the knowledge of a murder. The words “killing” or “murder” or “assassination” were rarely used in oral and written memos to the President. For example, Che’s murder was reported to President Johnson as a “stupid murder.” Such wink, wink linguistic deceptions allow the President to occupy the high moral ground and deny that the U.S. “murders” foreign enemies or “tortures” detainees. The President’s veil of deniability was considered necessary to safeguard America’s image as “the city on the hill,” “the beacon of liberty,” “the greatest nation in the world,” etc.

Audacity of Murder

Since the 9/11 attacks, the policy logistics of murder have been dramatically transformed. The doctrine of plausible deniability has been discarded. Moral constraints on killing enemies, including heads of states and governments, have been cast away. The notion of the U.S. as a “moral nation” is now viewed as an impediment in the conduct of international relations. The “dark side” freely informs the foreign policy. The audacity of murder has gained depth and momentum. The President does not think twice about the moral implications of boasting a drone kill.

In a major policy shift, the murder has been institutionalized. Now, the NSC may itself approve a pending murder. Remember the President and statutory members of the NSC (including Secretaries of State and Defense and the CIA Director) watching bin Laden’s murder as it was happening. The NSC released the picture for public consumption, implying that watching the murder of a noted enemy is morally acceptable. Imagine barbarism if this practice is writ large in the world. No one would be surprised if the NSC itself has authorized the murder of Anwar Awlaki, a U.S. citizen or if the NSC itself has authorized the drone attack on the Gaddafi motorcade to flush him out for murder in public view.

These and similar international murders are no longer the CIA secrets that the Senate needs to investigate as it did in the 1970s. This time, the fascination with murder has metastasized. It is bipartisan. Except Ron Paul, Republican Presidential candidates endorse the murder of “terrorists” who threaten “our way of life.” (Juxtapose the historical massacres of Indian “savages” who too threatened “our way of life.”). Upon the execution of a successful murder, President Obama walks to the podium to express joy in a causal tone of voice. Many politicians join the happy hours. Congratulations are exchanged. The corporate media invites the public to celebrate the great news. This is the most vivid moral collapse of a nation that brazenly talks about human rights and universal values. The American people cannot choose to be silent. They must restore the nation’s moral dignity.

Ali Khan is professor of law at Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kansas and the author of A Theory of International Terrorism (2006).

In Libya, Massacre Site Is Cleaned Up, Not Investigated

Volunteers in Surt removed bodies of people apparently killed in reprisal by anti-Qaddafi militias. Many had their hands bound and had been shot in the head.

Πηγή: New York Times
By KAREEM FAHIM and ADAM NOSSITER

Oct 24 2011

SURT, Libya — In the parched garden of the Mahari Hotel, volunteers on Monday scrubbed signs of a recent massacre. They collected dozens of bodies, apparently of people executed on the hotel grounds several days ago, but left other evidence behind, like the plastic ties that were used to bind the hands of victims and shell casings, scattered on the dead grass in patches of blood.

The volunteers said the victims included at least two former Qaddafi government officials, local loyalist fighters and maybe civilians. The killers, they believed, were former rebel fighters, belonging to anti-Qaddafi units that had used the hotel as a base in recent weeks. It appeared to be one of the worst massacres of the eight-month conflict, but days after it occurred, no one from Libya’s new government had come to investigate.

The interim leaders, who declared the country liberated on Sunday, may simply have their hands full with the responsibilities that come with running a state. But throughout the Libyan conflict, they have also shown themselves to be unwilling or incapable of looking into accusations of atrocities by their fighters, despite repeated pledges not to tolerate abuse.

The lack of control came into sharp focus last week, when former rebel fighters arrested Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. In videos of the capture on Thursday morning, victorious fighters were shown manhandling Colonel Qaddafi, who appeared to be bleeding and distressed but conscious. This was moments after he was pulled from a large drainage pipe where he had hidden after a NATO air assault destroyed part of his convoy. Subsequent video shows his bruised corpse, with at least one bullet wound to the head.

On Monday, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, the chairman of the Transitional National Council, as the interim governing body is known, announced the formation of a commission of inquiry into the death of Colonel Qaddafi.

In his announcement, Mr. Abdel-Jalil acknowledged that pressure from foreign powers and rights groups — including some that supported the rebellion — had prompted the decision to investigate how Colonel Qaddafi wound up dead with a bullet to the head. Mr. Abdel-Jalil referred to “demands of the international community” for an investigation.

But it was unclear from his comments how much authority the committee would have to pursue an investigation and whether anyone might be held accountable. He also suggested that anti-Qaddafi fighters may not have been the ones who killed him, hinting that the fatal bullets might even have come from Colonel Qaddafi’s own supporters. That suggestion is sharply at odds with the video evidence that has surfaced of Colonel Qaddafi’s death.

As in several previous instances during the uprising when anti-Qaddafi fighters were suspected of abuses or of extralegal killings, the leaders of the rebellion face a delicate balance as they try to bolster their own legitimacy by courting or coddling powerful militia leaders. The interim leaders have also failed to establish a chain of command among the armed militias, despite repeated attempts to form a national army.

Some of the anti-Qaddafi fighters have been accused of arbitrary arrests and torture, and others have been implicated in killings. In August, Gen. Abdul Fattah Younes, the rebel’s top military commander, was killed in Benghazi along with two of his aides, Mr. Abdel-Jalil also said then that there would an investigation, asserting that no one, not even the highest officials, would be immune.

At the time, Mr. Abdel-Jalil suggested that Colonel Qaddafi’s loyalists might have been responsible, even as his colleagues conceded that rebel fighters were the chief suspects in the killings. No one has been prosecuted for the killing.

On Monday, in offering his new theory for how Colonel Qaddafi may have died at the hands of his own disciples, Mr. Abdel-Jalil suggested that they may have feared he would implicate them in atrocities if he had survived and been put on trial.

“Let us question who has the interest in the fact that Qaddafi will not be tried,” he said. “Libyans want to try him for what he did to them, with executions, imprisonment and corruption. Free Libyans wanted to keep Qaddafi in prison and humiliate him as long as possible. Those who wanted him killed were those who were loyal to him or had played a role under him. His death was in their benefit.”

This theory appeared to be an attempt to deflect sharp international questions about the government’s handling of Colonel Qaddafi’s final moments. The body, which has been on public display since Thursday in the western city of Misurata, was scheduled to be buried on Tuesday in a secret location in the desert, according to a Transitional National Council official, Reuters reported. Saying that the “corpse cannot last longer,” the official said Muslim clerics would attend the ceremony.

The colonel’s death has ended the fighting for now, but abuses by former rebel fighters continue: they were seen looting generators, cars and an exercise bike in Surt on Monday.

The Mahari Hotel, which overlooks the sea, was filled with suspicious signs about the killers, but nothing conclusive. The names of anti-Qaddafi brigades were scrawled on a whiteboard in the lobby, including brigades called Tiger, Lion, Panther and the Sand. Several of the brigades listed were from Misurata.

At a graveyard near the hotel, a local doctor looked after the massacre victims, photographing the bodies and pulling a tooth from each victim, collecting evidence for the men’s families and for a criminal trial, should one take place. He ordered an assistant to splash water and spray insect repellent on the decomposing corpses that were waiting for burial.

Several of the victims wore fatigues. The hands of one man, who looked to be in his 20s, were bound behind his back. Several victims wore bandages, leading the volunteers to speculate that they had been patients at the city’s main hospital who were detained when the former rebels captured it.

Another doctor, watching, shook his head. “What kind of democracy costs all this blood?” he said.

The doctor, who requested anonymity because he feared retribution by former rebel fighters, said that if the killings were not investigated, the inaction would fuel dangerous resentments. “There will be no peace in Libya for years,” he said.

Libya urged to investigate Gaddafi supporters' "execution"

Πηγή: Orlando Sentinel
By Reuters
Oct 24 2011

SIRTE, Libya (Reuters) - A human rights group called Monday for an investigation into a suspected mass execution of 53 Gaddafi supporters and urged Libyan authorities to crack down on violence or other crimes by fighters who helped oust the former Libyan leader.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said 53 bodies were found last week, clustered together and surrounded by spent rifle cartridges, on a grass area of an abandoned hotel in a part of Sirte that was controlled by anti-Gaddafi fighters.

Officials from the human rights watchdog, who saw the bodies Sunday, said some of the victims had their hands tied behind their backs when they were shot and were identified by local residents as Gaddafi loyalists.

Human Rights Watch called on the National Transitional Council (NTC), Libya's new leadership, to conduct an "immediate and transparent" investigation into the deaths in Sirte, the hometown of fallen Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi.

"This requires the immediate attention of the Libyan authorities to investigate what happened and hold accountable those responsible," Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

The NTC was not immediately available for comment.

Human Rights Watch said the condition of the bodies suggested the victims had been killed on location at Hotel Mahari between October 14 and 19.

Local residents told the group they found the bodies when they returned home on October 21, the day after Gaddafi was captured and killed, ending fighting in Sirte after a two-month siege.

The local residents identified some of the deceased as Sirte residents and Gaddafi supporters.

Bouckaert said Human Rights Watch saw the bodies at the hotel Sunday as well as the names of several anti-Gaddafi brigades from Misrata written on the walls of the building.

Bouckaert said there was no direct evidence that these groups were involved in the deaths but he said violence of any kind inflicted during an armed conflict on fighters who had laid down their arms or were in detention was a war crime.

"This latest massacre seems part of a trend of killings, looting, and other abuses committed by armed anti-Gaddafi fighters who consider themselves above the law," he said.

"It is imperative that the transitional authorities take action to rein in these groups."

Human Rights Watch said it had found the remains of at least 95 people at the site where Gaddafi was captured. It said most of these had been killed in fighting and NATO strikes but between six and 10 appeared to have been executed at the site.

The group said it had also seen the badly decomposed bodies of 10 people at a separate site in Sirte but added that it was not possible to identify the victims or establish if Gaddafi forces or anti-Gaddafi fighters were responsible.

In addition, Human Rights Watch said it was told by medical officials in Sirte that their teams and anti-Gaddafi fighters had found 23 bodies, their hands bound, between October 15 and 20.

Iran: Fourteen more executions in Vakilabad prison, says human rights group

Πηγή: IGV
Oct 23 2011

GVF — Another fourteen prisoners have been hanged in Iran’s Vakilabad prison, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said on Friday.

The organisation reported that a group execution of seven prisoners was carried out on 11 August in Vakilabad prison in Mashhad, north-east of Iran, while adding that seven other Vakilabad inmates were also hanged in a similar way on 20 September.

An “informed” source maintained that those executed had been convicted of drug related offences. The executions were reportedly carried out without due process, without the knowledge and presence of families and lawyers of those executed, and were unannounced by judiciary or government officials or Iranian media.

Authorities have thus far generally refused to publicly accept responsibility for the execution or to announce names, numbers, or dates about the executions, making it difficult to obtain exact figures. However on 22 June, Mashad Prosecutor Mahmoud Zoghi confirmed executions had taken place in “five stages” inside Mashad’s Vakilabad Prison, just in the “first three month of the [Iranian] year” (March 21-May 21 2011).

The Campaign has reported similar executions of “hundreds of prisoners” in 2009, 2010, and 2011 at Vakilabad Prison in Mashad. Authorities reportedly conducted more than 300 secret executions at Vakilabad prison in 2010 alone. In July 2011, local sources told the Campaign that thirty prisoners convicted of drug trafficking were hanged inside Mashad’s Vakilabad Prison on 29 June (12 inmates), and 3 July (18 inmates). Similar to two most recent cases, these inmates were also hanged in groups.

In his first report published on 23 September, Ahmad shaheed, UN’s Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, expressed “serious concerns” over the frequency of the application of capital punishment.

“[T]he Special Rapporteur is concerned that the death penalty is regularly used in cases where due process rights were denied to the accused. Secret group executions inside prisons, which reportedly occur in alarmingly high numbers, are often carried out without the knowledge and presence of families and lawyers,” the report said, adding that the investigator “is troubled by reports of the widespread application of the death penalty for crimes that do not meet the international standard for most serious crimes.”

The World's Top Executioners

Πηγή: Foreign Policy
BY JOSHUA E. KEATING

Sep. 22 2011

CHINA

Number of executions: Thousands -- reliable statistics are hard to come by.*

The number of executions carried out every year in China is a state secret, but Amnesty International believes that it numbers in the thousands. There are 55 crimes punishable by death in China, including economic crimes like corruption and embezzlemen, though a judicial reform carried out this year removed such crimes as issuing false tax invoices, robbing ancient ruins, and smuggling rare animals from the list.

The most common methods of execution are firing squad and lethal injection, though China has been something of a grim innovator on this front, launching a fleet of mobile "death vans" that travel from town to town administering injections.

In a recent high-profile case, China sentenced four Uighur separatists to death for their role in the ethnic unrest that swept through Xinjiang autonomous region in July.

IRAN

Number of executions: 252 in 2010

Depending on the circumstances, crimes punishable by death in Iran can include fornication, adultery, homosexuality, apostasy, and blasphemy -- as well as more traditional capital crimes like rape and murder. The overwhelming number of executions are carried out by hanging. Stoning is theoretically legal for some sexual crimes including adultery, but the policy seems to be under review following the international outcry over the stoning sentence of 43-year-old widow Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani last year; her sentence was eventually reduced to a five-year jail term. Iran also periodically carries out public executions for serious crimes such as rape.

There has been a sharp escalation in the number of people executed in the Islamic Republic this year. Amnesty International believes that at least 320 people were executed in the first six months of 2011 -- a rate of nearly two per day. Iran says most of these executions are part of an effort to crack down on drug trafficking -- another capital offense -- but human rights groups believe the government might also be using execution as a means of intimidation as anti-government protests spread throughout the Middle East.

Iran also has the distinction of being the world's top executioner of children, with dozens on death row. Most recently, a 17-year-old was hanged in public in the city of Karaj on Sept. 21.

NORTH KOREA

Number of executions: 60 in 2010

Like China, the exact number of prisoners killed by the North Korean state is hard to come by -- and it's almost certainly higher if you count those who die of illness or malnourishment after being sent to one of the country's massive labor camps. Crimes punishable by death in North Korea include "treason against the Fatherland" and "treason against the people." According to Amnesty International, executions are often carried out even when the crime in question isn't a capital offense under written North Korean law.

Public executions are a hallmark of the North Korean justice system, particularly when they involve officials convicted of embezzlement or smuggling. In 2007, a South Korean aid group reported that a factory chief had been executed by firing squad in a stadium in front of 150,000 spectators for the crime of making international phone calls.

YEMEN

Number of executions: 53 in 2010

Yemen applies the death penalty for a wide range of nonviolent offences, including homosexuality. The country has also been condemned for sentencing defendants under the age of 18 to death -- despite the fact that the country's laws prohibit it. Yemen has also carried out death sentences against thementally ill. Public executions are common, including a widely covered 2009 case in which a man convicted of raping and murdering an 11-year-old boy was shot in front of a crowd in the main square of his hometown.

Since widespread anti-government protests began this year, the government has been accused of carrying out hundreds of extrajudicial killings, many by sniper fire during marches in the capital.

UNITED STATES

Number of executions: 46 in 2010, 35 so far in 2011

The United States is an extreme outlier in its embrace of the death penalty. It is the only county in the Western Hemisphere that allows capital punishment and the only industrialized democracy that executes more than a handful of people per year. There are more than 3,000 people on death row in the United States, though the appeals process can often take years. Usage varies widely by state. Sixteen states, plus the District of Colombia, prohibit the practice altogether, and several other states almost never apply it. Texas is, by far, the national leader in executions, with 17 carried out in 2010. If Texas were its own country, it would have been tied for eighth in the world with Syria.

The death penalty is a hot-button political issue in the United States, with opponents arguing that it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment -- which is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution -- and is disproportionately applied against the poor and minorities. The debate re-emerged recently over the case of Troy Davis, a Georgia man who was executed on Sept. 21 for the killing of an off-duty police officer 22 years ago, despite scant physical evidence and the recantation of several witnesses. The Davis case, as well as the execution of a Mexican national in Texas in July, has drawn widespread criticism from the international community.

Some observers believe the Davis case may be a tipping point in the national debate over the death penalty, and the issue is sure to be a topic of discussion in the 2012 presidential race with Texas Gov. Rick Perry in the running.

THE OUTLIERS

No other democratic, industrialized country carries out executions on the scale of the United States, but there are a few countries where it is used sparingly. Two convicted killers were executed in Japan in 2010, and 107 people are still on death row. Domestic support for the death penalty remains high despite the opposition of some senior officials. South Korea hasn't carried out an execution for over a decade, though it remains legal; a serial killer convicted of the murders of 10 women was sentenced to death in 2009.

India sentenced two Sikh militants to death by hanging on terrorism charges this year, which would be the country's first executions since 2004. However, executions in the country are so rare that Assam state, where the two men were sentenced, was forced to place a newspaper advertisement for the job of hangman.

Every country in the Americas, with the exception of the United States, and every country in Europe, with the exception of autocratic Belarus, has banned the death penalty.