Mission & Justice

Joe Kelly & Stephen Fitzpatrick; 31/10/08 (2 Items)

Lawyers representing Australians on death row in Indonesia have urged the Rudd Government to signal its in-principle opposition to the imminent execution of the Bali bombers, or risk being “objectively identified as hypocrites” across Asia. Colin McDonald QC, who represents Bali Nine member Scott Rush, said the Rudd Government needed to speak with one voice in condemning capital punishment or it would be harder to save Australian lives in the future. “In practical terms, it makes it so much harder to save the lives of Australian citizens when there is apparent political ambivalence about the carrying-out of the death penalty overseas,” he said. Kevin Rudd told Neil Mitchell yesterday on Melbourne Radio 3AW that his Government was “universally opposed to the death penalty”, but would intervene only “in the case of Australian citizens”.

(more…)

Rana Husseini; 30/10/08

The Criminal Court on Wednesday sentenced a 40-year-old man to death after convicting him of raping a minor in an Amman neighbourhood. The defendant stood motionless and did not utter a word as presiding Judge Mohammad Ibrahim read out the verdict in court. The defendant was convicted of raping a 14-year-old girl nine times over a one-month period in January of this year. The court said the defendant, a refrigerator repairman, saw the girl when he went to work on her grandmother’s fridge, according to court papers. The defendant asked the victim to come home with him so he could “introduce her to his mother, because she knew some men who were interested in getting married”.

(more…)

Peter N. Miller; 28/10/08

Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic; By Ingrid D. Rowland; Hill & Wang
On February 17, 1600, Giordano Bruno was executed for his ideas, burned at the stake in the centre of Rome, his tongue spiked to prevent him from speaking or crying out. In her provocative biography, a marvellous feat of scholarship, Ingrid Rowland brings before us the pieces of an extraordinary 16th-century life. She begins, in fact, with that death and with the memorial to it, the famous statue of the murdered thinker, on the Campo dei Fiori. Most of the time the brooding figure on his plinth is lost amid the diurnal market stalls and nocturnal revels that make this Roman Covent Garden such a crossroads. But on one day a year, Rowland reminds us, things on the Campo dei Fiori are different. The mayor of Rome comes and lays a wreath in the name of his city, and then various groups of ideologues come and turn the sculpture into a soapbox. The place has been consecrated to freedom of thought and speech for a long time. Already in the 19th century, when the sculpture was commissioned by the students of Rome and dedicated to a new patron saint, it was seen as a blow against papal domination of secular, modern and (it was hoped) enlightened interests. At first, Bruno’s back was turned to the Vatican, but this was too much even for those who despised clericalism. Now his hooded eyes glower in the direction of his persecutors.

(more…)

29/10/08

Japan executed two convicted murderers today as the country steps up the number of executions to a level unseen in more than three decades. The country, which has one of the world’s lowest crime rates, is the only major industrial nation other than the United States to use the death penalty. Its use enjoys wide support among the Japanese public. Today’s executions are the first since conservative Prime Minister Taro Aso took office last month. “The executions were carried out after we repeatedly gave full, cautious and appropriate consideration,” Justice Minister Eisuke Mori told reporters. Tuesday’s hangings brought to 15 the number of people executed this year, the highest total since 1975 when Japanese authorities hanged 17 people.

(more…)

Hayat Al-Ghamdi; 22/10/08; (3 Items)

A Saudi father has been preventing his four daughters from continuing their education and leaving their home ever since he divorced their mother four years ago, the mother charged yesterday. The man has also denied the woman visitation rights granted by the court. “I have not seen my daughters for three years now,” Amina, the mother, told Arab News. “Despite the existence of human rights organizations in the Kingdom, my daughters have been prevented from continuing their education, which is a God-given right. I was also deprived of my legal right to see them,” she said. The father, an employee of the Ministry of Defense and Aviation, has been in jail in Khamis Mushayt since the beginning of September for refusing to implement a court verdict which granted his divorced wife the right to see their daughters during the summer break.

(more…)

Editorial; 22/10/08; (2 Items)

It may have been their last party before the firing squad, but Indonesia’s celebrity terrorists still managed to gloat. By all accounts, it was a grotesque and deeply offensive scene: the Bali bombers, all dressed up for the recent Islamic holiday and crowing over the carnage they unleashed in 2002, their fawning prison guards and followers hanging off their every word. No case has tested opposition to the death penalty more sorely than these abhorrent, grinning assassins. Yet those who universally oppose the death penalty would argue that the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, was wrong, just as the former prime minister John Howard was wrong, to declare the Bali bombers “deserve the justice that will be delivered to them”. Opposition to the death penalty is a moral absolute. Australia cannot endorse the apparently imminent execution of the Bali bombers yet seek to save the lives of Australian citizens on death row. Nowhere is the moral contradiction more problematic than in Indonesia, where three of our own, convicted drug smugglers, are facing execution.

(more…)

18/10/08; http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1&section=0&article=115558&d=18&m=10&y=2008

Saudi man identified as Fatin bin Fallaj bin Abdullah Al-Shibani Al-Otaibi was executed in Quwaieya, near Riyadh, on Thursday after being convicted of murdering an Indian worker named Yousuf Ahmed Pera, the Saudi Press Agency reported. According to the Interior Ministry, the Saudi man stabbed the Indian to death after taking him to a deserted place and robbing him of his money and other valuables.

Frank Brennan; 17/10/08

Last Friday, I visited 22-year-old Australian citizen Scott Rush in the Kerobokan prison on the Indonesian island of Bali where he is on death row for being a hapless drug mule. Scott wrote a letter that day to those attending a dinner organised by his parents in Brisbane for Australians Against Capital Punishment: “I’d like to thank you all for all that you are doing for me and the others here at the Death Tower. To all of you who have come to this function I would like to thank you for your caring and showing solidarity by your presence. There is not much that I can say in my circumstances but I can say this: I’m not a celebrity. I have committed a serious crime but I am reforming myself and want to show you that I am capable of complete reform. Sunday was the sixth anniversary of the Bali bombings which claimed 202 lives, including 88 Australians… Early morning, the Australian Consulate hosted a memorial service for victims’ families… Many wept … The media-amplified pleas of some of them that the bombers be executed, and quickly, were understandable. For me, talk of the death penalty evoked the young, frightened face of Scott Rush, as well as the laughing, haughty faces of Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra. I had been troubled by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s response to the gloating Bali bombers at the end of Ramadan a couple of weeks earlier: ‘The Bali bombers are cowards and murderers pure and simple, and frankly they can make whatever threats they like,’ he said. ‘They deserve the justice that we delivered to them.’ I thought the time had come when our national leaders could espouse that justice excludes the death penalty for anyone, no matter what their offence and no matter what their lack of remorse. After all, just before Christmas, the new Rudd Government had voted at the UN for a motion urging retentionist States to ‘establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty’.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)