Mission & Justice

Md. Rasooldeen; 14/10/08

A Jeddah court sentenced three Sri Lankans to death and eight others, including five Indians, to imprisonment after they were found guilty of armed robbery and murder of a Yemeni national. Gayan Nanayakkara, Dinesh Perera and Bandara Tennekoon were sentenced to execution in public. Two Sri Lankan women — Noura Mohammed and Raziah Samad — received prison time and lashes. The Indian Embassy did not disclose the names of the convicted Indian nationals. The 11 foreigners were arrested after the murder of Omar Yeslam, a Yemeni, and were found guilty of armed robbery.

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14/10/08

Vietnam has agreed to grant clemency to two Australians facing execution for drug trafficking. During his meeting with the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, in Canberra yesterday, the Vietnamese Prime Minister, Nguyen Tan Dung, said his country would spare the lives of Jasmine Luong and Tony Manh, who are both from Sydney. “Building upon the excellent friendship between our two countries and on humanitarian grounds, I have been informed that the Vietnamese President has decided to grant clemency to two Vietnamese-Australians charged with drug trafficking,” he said. Luong was arrested at Ho Chi Minh City airport as she tried to board a flight to Australia on February 13 last year. Customs officials said they found heroin in her shoes and luggage. Manh was arrested in March last year with heroin hidden on his body as he was about to board a flight to Sydney.

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13/10/08

Two Saudi men convicted of murder were beheaded by the sword today, the Saudi interior ministry announced. Musaed bin Attiyah al-Ruwaili was executed in the northern town of Ar’ar after he was found guilty of “detaining, beating and electrocuting Ahmad bin Obaid al-Anzi until he passed away”, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency. Badr bin Hmoud al-Khumaisi was executed in the western Jeddah region after he was found guilty of fatally shooting Shayem bin Saleh al-Rashidi following a dispute, the ministry said. The beheadings bring to 74 the number of executions carried out by Saudi Arabia this year.

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Katie Wood; 10/9/08

Today, in Vietnam, Tang Thi Ba, a 52-year-old former post office treasurer, is facing the death penalty. She was sentenced to death in May on charges of embezzlement. It is likely she will be executed by a five-person firing squad, possibly in public. Her family will not be informed beforehand. Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all circumstances and works for its abolition in all countries, in all cases. The Australian Government has a policy of opposition to the death penalty. However, it intervenes on behalf of some individuals who face the death penalty but not others. As the final legal manoeuvres play out for the Bali bombers in Indonesia, recent comments by the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General have again plunged Australia’s position on the death penalty into ambiguity.

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Connie Levett; 7/10/08

Confidential government documents show Australia has devalued its moral authority to oppose capital punishment in South-East Asia through its willingness to assist in death penalty cases, say civil liberties advocates. This erosion of principled opposition to capital punishment has severely damaged the Government’s ability to lobby for relief for the three “Bali Nine” Australians on death row in Indonesia, Pauline Wright, vice-president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, said. The documents, obtained under a freedom-of-information request, show how Australia’s long-standing opposition to capital punishment has been undermined by a series of decisions since 1998, and how the process speeded up dramatically after the 2002 Bali bombings. Last week the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, confirmed the Howard government’s earlier position that the Government would not oppose the death penalty for the Bali bombers. “It jeopardises us severely,” Ms Wright said of the Government’s attitude to the Bali bombers’ death sentence. “That’s the problem. It puts us on the moral back foot. We have no real right to say we want clemency in the case of our citizens but where it involves your citizens doing bad things to our citizens we are going to help you facilitate the death penalty. You have to be consistent.”

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Md Rasooldeen; 5/10/08

The Kingdom’s Human Rights Commission will attempt to persuade the mother of an infant who died in the care of a Sri Lankan woman hired as a house cleaner but given nanny duties to cease pursuit of the death penalty. The father, according to the mediators, has expressed his desire to forgive the maid. HRC President Turki Al-Sudairy conveyed the latest information in this much-publicized case to Sri Lankan Ambassador Abdul Ageed Mohammed Marleen at a recent meeting at the HRC headquarters in Riyadh. Al-Sudairy said that HRC officials met the father, Naif Jiziyan Khalaf Al-Otaibi, and he expressed willingness to pardon 20-year-old Rizana Nafeek. However, the mother still claims her private right in the case and is not ready to forgive the maid.

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Rana Husseini; 27/9/08

The Criminal Court has sentenced a 25-year-old man to death after convicting him of robbing and murdering two men in Maan in December 2006. The court declared Abdul Mahdi W. guilty of shooting Marwan Deeb to death and running over Wasfi Ali in a deserted area near the city of Maan on December 3 and handed him the death sentence. The same tribunal acquitted a second man standing trial on the same charges of premeditated murder and robbery, for lack of evidence. Court papers said the defendant’s father owned a jewellery shop, which the two victims visited on regular basis because they worked in a jewellery factory.

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Cynthia Banham; 23/9/08

Pressure is mounting on the Rudd Government from the Labor back bench to adopt a tougher stand against the death penalty. With three Australians on death row in Indonesia - including the 22-year-old convicted drug mule Scott Rush - a push is on for the Government to voice more publicly throughout the region its position as an abolitionist country. The NSW MP Chris Hayes has lodged a notice of motion in Parliament calling on the Government to take a number of steps, including passing laws making it illegal for states and territories to reintroduce the death penalty. The current legal position means states and territories could reintroduce it, should they wish.

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Shlomo Shamir; 22/9/08

A group of Iranian organizations working in the U.S. is preparing to stage a rally against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ahead of the Iranian President’s visit to New York on Monday for the United Nations General Assembly. The Iranian activists, some of them known as human rights activists, are organizing a mass demonstration on Tuesday, titled “Ahmadinejad, why are you executing children?” Within the framework of the rally, to be held in the plaza adjacent to the United Nations building in New York, organizers plan to erect a “wall of shame” which will include a series of pictures and documented proof of Iran’s abuse of jailed minors.

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Mark Forbes; 19/9/08

The fate facing condemned Australian drug smugglers and the three Bali bombers was played out in grisly detail as the bombers’ death penalty challenge heard a first-hand account of firing squads yesterday. Catholic priest Charlie Burrows softly echoed the moans made by two Nigerian drug traffickers as their life blood ebbed away close to midnight on June 26. “They were moaning again and again for seven minutes,” he told Indonesia’s Constitutional Court. “I think it is cruel, the torture.” Desperate to provide some sort of consolation, Father Burrows sang Amazing Grace as the pair slowly died. They were pronounced dead 10 minutes after they were shot.

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