Nebraska moving to conduct its first execution since 1997

The US state of Nebraska is moving to conduct its first execution since 1997. An execution date of 14 June has been set for Carey Dean Moore, who has been on death row for three decades.

Carey Dean Moore was re-sentenced to death in 1995 after his original 1980 sentence was overturned on appeal. He was one of more than 300 people sentenced to death in 1995. Indeed, in 1994, 1995 and 1996, over 300 people were sentenced to death each year in the USA, the most recorded in any years since executions resumed in 1977. In the past decade one of the signs that the USA is beginning to turn against the death penalty is that the number of death sentences passed each year has substantially declined. Since 2006 just over 100 people have been sentenced to death each year. The annual number of executions peaked at 98 in 1999, and has since fallen to around half that number each year. The last execution in Nebraska was in December 1997.

In the past four years, three states – New Jersey, New Mexico and Illinois – have legislated to abolish the death penalty. Signing these bills into law, the three state governors pointed to the death penalty’s flaws, such as the risk of irrevocable error and unfairness, its discriminatory application, its costs and diversion of resources from crime prevention and victim assistance, the lack of any proven special deterrent effect, and its potentially brutalizing effect on society. In 2008, the then most senior member of the US Supreme Court, Justice John Paul Stevens, revealed that his 33 years on the Court had persuaded him that the “imposition of the death penalty represents the pointless and needless extinction of life”. In the 14 years since Nebraska last carried out an execution, some three dozen more countries have abolished the death penalty, and today 139 countries are abolitionist in law or practice. The UN General Assembly has called on all retentionist countries to impose a moratorium on executions. During scrutiny of the USA’s human rights record under the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review Process in late 2010, numerous countries called on the USA to end its use of the death penalty.

Carey Dean Moore, who was 21 years old at the time of the crime and is now 53, is not currently seeking executive clemency. While there is therefore no clemency petition before these authorities, Amnesty International nevertheless is urging them to act to prevent Nebraska from taking the backward step of carrying out its first execution in 14 years. Carey Dean Moore is allowing his lawyers to seek a stay of execution in the courts in the context of issues relating to lethal injection, including the state’s recent purchase of drugs from a company in India.

Additional Information

Recommended action

PLEASE WRITE IMMEDIATELY in English or your own language, in your own words:

Expressing concern that the State of Nebraska is looking to conduct its first execution in 14 years;

Welcoming the growing recognition in the USA of the inherent flaws of the death penalty;

Welcoming the recent abolition of the death penalty in Illinois, New Mexico and New Jersey;

Noting the growing isolation of the USA on the death penalty, and the international calls for a worldwide moratorium on executions;

Urging the authorities to do all they can to prevent any executions in Nebraska, including of Carey Dean Moore.

Please note that as Carey Dean Moore is not currently seeking executive clemency, we are not calling for commutation of his death sentence, as there is no clemency petition before the state executive authorities. However, given our abolitionist policy and the backward step that we consider an execution in Nebraska would constitute, we should still urge these authorities to do all they can to prevent any executions in Nebraska, including that of Carey Dean Moore.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, AND BEFORE 14 JUNE 2011.

Appeals to

Secretary of State John A. Gale,

PO Box 94608,

Lincoln,

NE 68509-4608,

USA.

Fax: +1 402 471-3237 // 471-3237

Email: sos.info@nebraska.gov // sos.intlrel@nebraska.gov

Salutation: Dear Secretary of State

Attorney General Jon Bruning,

Office of the Attorney General,

2115 State Capitol,

Lincoln,

NE 68509,

USA.

Fax: +1 402 471-3297

Salutation: Dear Attorney General

Copies to

Governor Dave Heineman,

Office of the Governor,

PO Box 94848,

Lincoln,

NE 68509-4848,

USA.

Fax: +1 402-471-6031

Salutation: Dear Governor

Ambassade des Etats-Unis d'Amérique,

Sulgeneckstrasse 19,

Case postale,

3007 Berne.

Fax : 031 357 73 44 // 031 357 73 98

Internet: http://bern.usembassy.gov/

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Egypt teenager’s death sentence condemned

Amnesty International today condemned the death sentence handed down by a Cairo military court against a 17-year-old boy, warning that unfair military trials are corroding Egypt’s criminal justice system.

Ahmed Marous Ibrahim was 1 of 4 people sentenced to death by hanging by Cairo’s Supreme Military Court for abducting and raping a 17-year-old girl.

“The military cannot be judge, prosecutor and executioner in post-uprising Egypt,” said Amnesty International.

“If justice is truly to be done for this terrible crime, the accused must first have a fair and public hearing before a criminal court and the victim be granted the right to confront the suspects,” said the organization.

“Sentencing a minor to death is frankly abhorrent and goes against a very clear prohibition in international law“.

The other three men convicted in the case are Mohamed Tarek Ragheb, 33, Karim Dahrouj Ahmed el-Sawy, 28, and Mahmoud Ramadan Abdul Hussein, 21.

Amnesty International is calling for Ahmed Marous Ibrahim and the 3 others to be re-tried before a civilian court. The organization has also urged the Egyptian authorities to ensure that the girl who was sexually assaulted is offered support, including counselling, and sees justice being done in a open and fair trial.

Hundreds of civilians have been tried before military courts since the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), Egypt’s governing military body, took power in February 2011. The SCAF has pledged to hand over power to civilians before the end of this year.

Amnesty International opposes trials of civilians before military courts, whose judges are serving members of the military.

“These courts flout international standards for fair trial, and are grossly unjust. The faith of many Egyptians in the criminal justice system is being sorely tested by military courts”.

“Law and order cannot be restored with the summary trials and sentencing of hundreds of civilians”.

Those convicted face an uncertain future. In military trials, the right to appeal to a higher tribunal is limited to hearings before the Supreme Court for Military Appeals (SCMA) which is composed exclusively of military officers.

The SCMA only examines the law and its interpretation, rather than the evidence itself or the factual basis of the charges. The right to an effective appeal is a fundamental judicial guarantee.

On 1 April, the SCAF announced that it would permit the death penalty for convicted rapists if the victim was under 18. The law would apply to minors under 18 as well. Both Egyptian and international law prohibit the death penalty for minors.

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all circumstances as the ultimate form of inhumane and degrading punishment.

Source: Amnesty International, May 19, 2011

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Amnesty slams US on detentions, executions

The US human rights record has been marred by indefinite detentions at Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan and by a flawed capital punishment system, Amnesty International said Friday.

In its annual global human rights report, the London-based organisation said US authorities executed 46 people over the past year, despite doubts in several case about the defendants' guilt and questions in others over legal representation or mental impairment.

At the Guantanamo Bay detention center on a US naval base in Cuba, 174 men were still being held at the end of the year, "including 3 who had been convicted under a military commission system which failed to meet international fair trial standards," the report said.

"Scores of men remained in indefinite military detention in Guantanamo as President (Barack) Obama's one-year deadline for closure of the facility there came and went," it said.

"Military commission proceedings were conducted in a handful of cases, and the only Guantanamo detainee so far transferred to the US mainland for prosecution in a federal court was tried and convicted."

Additionally, the report said "hundreds" were being held at the US airbase in Bagram, Afghanistan, without due process and some were "subjected to torture or other ill-treatment, including prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation and exposure to extreme temperatures."

Amnesty said US authorities also "blocked efforts to secure accountability and remedy for crimes under international law committed against detainees previously subjected to the USA's secret detention and rendition programme."

It said there were questions about "crimes under international law of torture and enforced disappearance," under the CIA program where detainees were transferred from one state to another "by means that bypass judicial and administrative due process."

It also noted that former president George W. Bush acknowledged in his memoirs that "he had personally authorised 'enhanced interrogation techniques' for use by the CIA against detainees held in secret custody."

In other criticisms of the United States, Amnesty said "excessive force" by US law enforcement was a concern, with 45 people killed during the past year after being struck by police Tasers -- 450 deaths since 2001.

"Most of the deceased were unarmed and did not appear to present a serious threat when they were shocked," it said.

Amnesty also expressed concern about an immigration law passed in Arizona which could allow police to demand proof of legal status, fearing it would increase "racial profiling."

It also said "hundreds of women continued to die from preventable pregnancy-related complications" because of a lack of health care coverage.

Source: Agence France-Presse, May 13, 2011

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North Korea: 60 executed publicly in 2010 - Amnesty International

May 12, 2011: About 60 North Koreans were executed publicly in 2010 for acts against its regime, up from seven a year before, Amnesty International said in its annual report.

“North Korea continues to carry out executions, some in public and others in secret. At least 60 people are believed to have been executed publicly,” Amnesty said.

It said an armaments factory worker was executed in late January in Hamheung for divulging ― via an illegal Chinese mobile phone ― rice prices and other information on living conditions to a friend who had defected to South Korea.

Source: Korean Times, May 12, 2011

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URGENT ACTION APPEAL for Sherko Moarefi, a member of Iran's Kurdish minority, at imminent risk of execution in Iran

Sherko Moarefi, a member of Iran's Kurdish minority, was not executed on 1 May, as had been widely expected.  However, his sentence has now been sent for implementation, the final stage of the process, and he could be executed at any time. 

Sherko Moarefi had been informally told by prison officials that he would be executed on 1 May 2011, but  never received official confirmation of this. He went on hunger strike on 28 April 2011 to protest his  "unknown and unspecific" legal circumstances, though he has since ended his hunger strike. On 27 April 2011, Sherko Moarefi's file was sent it to the Office for the Implementation of Sentences (OIS) in Saqqez, in the north-western province of Kordestan after Branch 27 of the Supreme Court had upheld Sherko Moarefi's death sentence for a second time. His lawyer has said that steps have been taken to bring procedural irregularities to the attention of the court, but that as the case has passed to the OIS, the sentence could be implemented at any time. 

Sherko Moarefi was arrested in October 2008 in the village of Dowlat Ghaleh near Saqqez, after which he was sentenced to death by a Revolutionary Court. Amnesty International has for many years raised concerns about the fairness of trials before Revolutionary Courts in Iran. Sherko Moarefi was sentenced to death for "acting against national security" and "enmity against God" for his alleged links to Komala, a banned Kurdish opposition group. The sentence was upheld on appeal and confirmed by the Supreme Court. 

Another Kurdish political prisoner, Habibollah Latifi, remains at risk of execution after his execution scheduled for 26 December 2010 was called off at the last minute after domestic and international pressure (see UA 271/09, and follow ups). He is an industrial engineering student at Ilam University in western Iran convicted of membership of and alleged activities on behalf of the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), another proscribed armed group. At least 14 other Kurdish political prisoners are known to be on death row. 

BACKGROUND INFORMATION 

Sherko Moarefi's death sentence was upheld first by an Appeal Court and then by the Supreme Court. His court-appointed lawyer stated in an interview on 18 October 2009 that his request to the Amnesty and Clemency Commission had been rejected and that he had applied for a judicial review. This, too, was denied. Sherko Moarefi was told verbally in March that his execution was scheduled for 1 May, but his lawyers were never officially informed. Under Iranian law lawyers must be notified 48 hours prior to the implementation of the death penalty for a client. He went on hunger strike on 28 April 2011 to protest his "unknown and unspecific" legal circumstances, though he has since ended his hunger strike. His family was able to visit him on 3 May 2011. 

Kurds, who are one of Iran's many minority groups, live mainly in the west and north-west of the country, in the province of Kordestan and neighbouring provinces bordering Kurdish areas of Turkey and Iraq. They experience discrimination in the enjoyment of their religious, economic and cultural rights (see: Iran: Human rights abuses against the Kurdish minority, 30 July 2008 at: http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE13/088/2008/en ). For many years, Kurdish organizations such as the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) and the Marxist group Komala conducted armed struggle against the Islamic Republic of Iran, although neither currently does so. An alleged member of the KDPI, Farhad Tarom, was reported by Kurdish sources to have been executed in February 2011. A further group, the Party For Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), was formed in 2004, and carried out armed attacks against Iranian security forces, but declared a unilateral ceasefire in 2009, although it still engages in armed clashes with security forces in what it terms "self-defence". Hossein Khezri, a member of Iran's Kurdish minority, is feared to have been executed on 15 January 2011 in north-western Iran after being convicted of "enmity against God" on account of his membership of PJAK. The authorities announced that a PJAK member was executed on 15 January 2011 but did not name the individual. On 16 January 2011, PJAK issued a statement pledging an "appropriate response" to what they clearly believe to have been Hossein Khezri's execution and calling for a week of "resistance" to Iran. 

Amnesty International condemns without reservation attacks on civilians, which includes judges, clerics, and locally or nationally-elected officials, as attacking civilians violates fundamental principles of international humanitarian law. These principles prohibit absolutely attacks on civilians as well as indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks. Such attacks cannot be justified under any circumstances. 

The scope of capital crimes in Iran is broad. The death penalty is one of four possible punishments for those convicted of moharebeh, a charge often brought against those accused of armed opposition to the state. Other capital crimes include other national security offenses such as espionage. At least 13 other Kurdish men and one Kurdish woman are believed to be on death row in connection with their alleged membership of and activities for proscribed Kurdish organizations. They are Sami Hosseini, Jamal Mohammadi, Rashid Akhkandi, Rostam Arkia, Anvar Rostami, Mostafa Salimi, Mohammad Amin Abdollahi, Ghader (or Aziz) Mohammadzadeh, Hassan Talai, Habibollah Golparipour, Abdollah Sorouri, Loghman (or Loqman) Moradi, Zaniar Moradi (who was only 17 when arrested) and Zeynab Jalalian. Some have had initial prison sentences increased to death sentences. Ehsan Fattahian, a member of Komala, was executed on 11 November 2009 in Sanandaj, the capital of Kordestan province. 

December 2010 and January 2011 saw an alarming rise in the rate of executions, mainly of individuals convicted of offenses related to trafficking and possession of illegal drugs, although the rate has since declined. Additionally, since the start of 2011, up to 18 men have been hanged in public, compared to 14 such executions recorded by Amnesty International in the whole of 2010. Thirteen of those executions have taken place since 16 April 2011. On 20 April 2011, two juvenile offenders -- identified only as "A.N" and "H.B" - 

were among three individuals hanged in public in Bandar Abbas, southern Iran, after being convicted over a rape and murder committed when they were only 17. A fourth man was hanged at the same time for rape. A 16-year-old member of the Ahwazi Arab minority was reportedly hanged in Khuzestan province between 5 and 7 May 2011 in the wake of clashes between Arabs and security forces on 15 April 2011. 

RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible: 

- Urging the Iranian authorities not to carry out the execution of Sherko Moarefi and to grant a judicial review; 

- Calling on them to commute the death sentences of Sherko Moarefi, Habibollah Latifi and anyone else on death row, including other Kurdish political prisoners; 

- Stating that Amnesty International recognizes the right and responsibility of governments to bring to justice, in conformity with international standards for fair trial, those suspected of criminal offenses, but opposes the death penalty as the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. 

APPEALS TO: 

Leader of the Islamic Republic 

Ayatollah Sayed 'Ali Khamenei 

The Office of the Supreme Leader 

Islamic Republic Street – End of Shahid Keshvar Doust Street 

Tehran 

IRAN 

Email: info_leader@leader.ir

via website: http://www.leader.ir/langs/en/index.php?p=letter (English) 

Twitter: @khamenei_ir 

(please add #Iran in the body of the message which cannot exceed 140 characters, including spaces and 

punctuation) 

Salutation: Your Excellency 

Head of the Judiciary 

Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani 

[care of] Public relations Office 

Number 4, 2 Azizi Street 

Vali Asr Ave., above Pasteur Street intersection 

Tehran 

IRAN 

Email: bia.judi@yahoo.com

(In subject line: FAO Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani) 

Salutation: Your Excellency 

COPIES TO: 

Secretary General, High Council for Human Rights 

Mohammad Javad Larijani 

High Council for Human Rights 

[Care of] Office of the Head of the Judiciary 

Pasteur St., Vali Asr Ave. south of Serah-e Jomhouri, 

Tehran 1316814737 

IRAN 

Email: info@humanrights-iran.ir (subject line: FAO Mohammad Javad Larijani) 

Salutation: Dear Sir 

Iran does not presently have an embassy in the United States. Instead, please send copies to: 

Iranian Interests Section 

2209 Wisconsin Ave NW 

Washington DC 20007 

Phone: 202 965 4990 

Fax: 202 965 1073 

Email: requests@daftar.org

PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY.

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Rights group urges Iran not to blind woman's attacker with acid

Ameneh Bahrami - Majid Movahedi

Tehran, Iran (CNN) -- A human rights group on Saturday urged Iranian authorities not to put acid in the eyes of a man found guilty of blinding a woman who scorned him.

Majid Movahedi is scheduled to be blinded by having five drops of acid in each eye Saturday, according to Amnesty International.

It was unclear what time -- or whether -- the punishment will take place Saturday. The semiofficial Iranian Students' News Agency, or ISNA, reported Saturday that the acid punishment had been postponed and another date hadn't been established.

Movahedi was convicted in 2008 of throwing a bucket of acid on Ameneh Bahrami.

The attack blinded Bahrami, who sought to have authorities render the ancient punishment of "an eye for an eye" in accordance with Islamic law.

The rights group is urging Iran to forgo the acid punishment.

"It is unbelievable that the Iranian authorities would consider implementing such a punishment," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, an Amnesty International deputy director.

"Regardless of how horrific the crime suffered by Ameneh Bahrami, being blinded with acid is a cruel and inhuman punishment amounting to torture, and the Iranian authorities have a responsibility under international law to ensure it does not go ahead."

Bahrami said it has been very difficult for her since the attack.

She says she first met Movahedi in 2002 when they attended the same school.

She was a 24-year-old electronics student. He was 19. She never noticed him until he sat next to her in class and brushed up against her. Bahrami says she knew it wasn't an accident.

"I moved away from him," she said, "but he brushed up against me again."

Bahrami said that over the next two years, Movahedi harassed her and made threats, even asking her to marry him.

"He told me he would kill me. He said, 'You have to say yes.' "

On a November afternoon in 2004, his threats turned to violence when he followed her from the medical engineering company where she worked.

As she walked to the bus stop, she sensed someone behind her.

She turned around and was startled to see Movahedi, who threw something over her. What felt like fire on her face was acid searing through her skin.

"I was just yelling, 'I'm burning! I'm burning! For God's sake, somebody help me,' " she said.

The acid seeped into her eyes, and streamed down her face into her mouth. When she covered her face with her hands, streaks of acid ran down her fingers and onto her forearms.

In 2009, Bahrami told CNN that she had undergone more than a dozen surgeries on her badly scarred face, but still imagined that in the future she would have a wedding day.

"I always see myself as someone who can see and sometimes see myself in a beautiful wedding gown, and why not?" She said.

Source: CNN, May 14, 2011

Related articles:

- "Iranian to be blinded with acid for doing same to woman", CNN, December 15, 2008

- "A man will be punished by dripping acid into his eyes in Tehran on Saturday May 14- Norway condemns the punishment", Iran Human Rights, May 12, 2011

- "Retribution Punishment of Blinding with Acid Postponed for Iranian Man", Persian2English, May 14, 2011

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Amnesty International Reveals Increasing North Korean Political Prisons

By BOB Goswami
May 04, 2011

NORTH KOREA NEWS - In a recent document released by Amnesty International revealed satellite images of North Korea's political prison camps, expressing concern over the growing in numbers and pathetic conditions in the camps.

In the report the rights group has shed light on the horrible conditions in the camps, detailing the accounts of torture, starvation and mass executions of political inmates.

Amnesty International urged North Korea to close all the camps. Moreover, it also expressed the secretive state to confess about the existence of the clandestine prison camps.

Earlier, North Korea was blamed for mass political prison camps but the N. Korean government denied the allegations. The recent report once again put a strong question mark of the government remarks, though Pyongan still to comment on the reports.

The images shows four of the six camps located in a vast wilderness in the provinces of South Pyongan, South Hamkyung and North Hamkyung.

The comparative analysis of 2001 images and recent findings shows a significant increase in number of camps in the area.

Amnesty's Asia Pacific director Sam Zarifi said that the sites are placed away from the human eyes. He expressed his concern over the political instability in N.Korea, which seemed to be moving towards a new leadership. The growing prison camps are not the biggest worry for International rights groups.

Amnesty recorded the testimony of 15 former inmates and some prison guards and other eyewitnesses. One former prisoner at one camp at Yodok recalled how they were forced to work like slaves and tortured and treated like animals. Whenever anyone tried to escape, they were caught and interrogated for two or three months and then executed mercilessly.

Amnesty in its report also highlighted the inhuman food for prisoners where people survived by eating rats or picking corn kernels out animal waste.

URGENT APPEAL for Troy Davis facing the possibility of his 4th execution date

Troy Davis

Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis is facing the possibility of his fourth execution date in four years after the US Supreme Court dismissed his appeal on 28 March. Doubts persist about his guilt in the crime for which he was sentenced to death two decades ago.

Troy Davis was sentenced to death in 1991 for the murder of police officer Mark Allen MacPhail in Savannah, Georgia in 1989. No physical evidence directly links Davis to the murder – no murder weapon was ever found. The case against Davis primarily rested on witness testimony. Since his trial, seven of nine key witnesses have recanted or changed their testimony, some alleging police coercion.

In 2009, the US Supreme Court ordered a federal evidentiary hearing to review Troy Davis’ innocence claim.

At the hearing in June 2010, US District Court Judge William Moore addressed not whether the state could demonstrate a watertight case against Troy Davis, but whether Davis could show “by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable juror would have convicted him in the light of the new evidence” that had emerged since his 1991 murder trial. Under this “extraordinarily high” standard, Judge Moore wrote, “Mr Davis is not innocent”. Elsewhere in his ruling, however, he acknowledged that the new evidence presented by Troy Davis cast “some additional, minimal” doubt on his conviction, and that the state’s case was not “ironclad”. In 1991, the jury had found Troy Davis guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt,” Judge Moore noted, “but not to a mathematical certainty”.

On 28 March, the US Supreme Court refused to take the Davis case, clearing the way for Georgia to set an execution date. Troy Davis was less than 24 hours from execution in 2007 when the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles issued a stay. The Board said in 2007 that it would not allow an execution to go ahead “unless and until its members are convinced that there is no doubt as to the guilt of the accused”. Since then Troy Davis has faced two more execution dates, both in 2008, which were stayed by the courts.

Since 2007, three states in the USA have legislated to abolish the death penalty. When signing the abolitionist bills into law the three state governors all pointed to the risk of irrevocable error as a reason to support abolition. Since Troy Davis has been on death row, more than 90 prisoners have been released from death rows around the country on grounds of innocence. In each case, at trial the defendant had been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

In the past four years, three states in the USA – New Jersey, New Mexico and Illinois – have legislated to abolish the death penalty. Signing the bills in law, the three governors pointed to the risk of irreversible error in an imperfect system as a reason to support abolition. In 2007, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine said that “government cannot provide a foolproof death penalty that precludes the possibility of executing the innocent”. In 2009, Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico said that to carry out an irrevocable punishment, “we must have ultimate confidence – I would say certitude – that the system is without flaw or prejudice.” This, he added, “is demonstrably not the case”. In March 2011, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn said that the capital justice system was “inherently flawed”, and that it was “impossible to devise a system that is consistent, that is free of discrimination on the basis of race, geography or economic circumstance, and that always gets it right.” He said that, “as a state, we cannot tolerate the executions of innocent people because such actions strike at the very legitimacy of a government”.

More than 130 people have been released from death rows across the USA since 1976 on the grounds of innocence. Among other things the cases reveal the frequent unreliability of witness testimony. The Troy Davis case is one in which most of the witnesses who testified against the defendant have since retracted or contradicted their trial testimony in sworn statements. Nevertheless, a prisoner seeking to rely on revised witness testimony faces a high hurdle in the face of deference to the original jury verdict. At the June 2010 evidentiary hearing in US District Court, the Georgia prosecutor argued that “every court in the United States at every level has said, recantations are not favoured, they are looked at with great scepticism, they’re unreliable.” She concluded about the Troy Davis case: “This was their chance. The standard is extremely high…, they have not met it”.

One of the witnesses who appeared at the hearing was Benjamin Gordon, who in 2008 had signed a statement that an alternative suspect (a relative of his by marriage) had told him that he had shot Officer MacPhail. At the hearing, Benjamin Gordon asserted for the first time that he had actually seen this individual shoot the police officer. Benjamin Gordon, who had just turned 16 at the time of the crime, again alleged that he had been coerced by police into signing a statement implicating Davis. He said that he had not come forward sooner with the assertion about seeing who shot the officer out of fear, and that he had decided to “come in today and just let the truth be known”. Judge Moore concluded that Benjamin Gordon was “not a credible witness”.

The international community has agreed safeguards for capital cases in those countries that still retain the death penalty. One of these concerns the burden of proof on the death penalty state: “Capital punishment may be imposed only when the guilt of the person charged is based upon clear and convincing evidence leaving no room for an alternative explanation of the facts”. The “extraordinarily high” burden of proof chosen by Judge Moore is less protective than this.

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases, unconditionally, regardless of questions of guilt or innocence, the crime in question, or the method of execution. There have been 1,246 executions in the USA since judicial killing resumed there in 1977, including 12 so far this year. Georgia currently does not have the drugs necessary to carry out a lethal injection after the Drugs Enforcement Administration of the US Department of Justice seized sodium thiopental in the possession of the state in order to conduct an investigation into how it was obtained. It is not known how long this may delay an execution date being set.

For further information on the Troy Davis case, see USA: ‘Unconscionable and unconstitutional’: Troy Davis facing fourth execution date in two years, May 2009, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/069/2009/en ; USA: Less than ‘ironclad’, less than safe, 27 August 2010, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/077/2010/en

RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible:

-Acknowledging the seriousness of the crime for which Troy Davis was sentenced to death;

-Noting that doubts persist in the case even after the federal evidentiary hearing in 2010;

-Pointing out that the Board acts as a failsafe against irreversible error, and recalling its statement in 2007 that it would not allow any execution to proceed where there was any doubt about the guilt of the prisoner;

-Pointing to the substantial evidence of the fallibility of the capital justice system;

-Calling on the Board to grant clemency and to commute the death sentence of Troy Davis.

APPEALS TO:

State Board of Pardons and Paroles

2 Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, SE

Suite 458, Balcony Level, East Tower

Atlanta, Georgia 30334-4909, USA

Salutation: Dear Board members

PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY.

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URGENT APPEAL for Mohammad Zafari at risk of execution in Iran

Farzad Alizadeh Mohajer, also known as Abbas, was executed on 12 January 2011 in Evin Prison, Tehran, the capital of Iran. Mohammad Zafari, who was sentenced along with Farzad Alizadeh Mohajer, may still be at risk of execution.

According to reports, Farzad Alizadeh Mohajer and Mohammad Zafari were sentenced to death by Branch 17 of the Revolutionary Court in the town of Karaj, near Tehran, for the rape of a girl in Karaj in January or February 2005. Their sentences were upheld on appeal on 6 September 2006 by Branch 77 of the Criminal Court in Tehran, and were confirmed by Branch 39 of the Supreme Court. They were reportedly represented by court-appointed lawyers. Amnesty International has no information as to whether Mohammad Zafari has been executed or not.

Amnesty International recorded over 200 executions in Iran in 2010 that were acknowledged by the authorities. Credible reports suggest that hundreds more people were executed in secret, mostly convicted drugs offenders held in Vakilabad Prison, Mashhad, north-east of the country. The rate of executions in Iran has sharply increased since December 2010. So far in 2011, over 100 people have been executed, mainly those convicted of alleged drug-related offenses. Some have reportedly been executed in secret (for further information, see Iran: Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi and Rights Groups Demand Moratorium on Executions, 16 February 2011, (http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE13/015/2011/en).

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

There is no specific offense of rape in Iran, which is instead dealt with under the "zena" (sexual relations outside marriage) provisions of the Penal Code. Under these provisions, someone who is raped is not liable to punishment for "zena", but the penalty for the rapist is a mandatory death sentence.

Amnesty International recognizes the rights and responsibility of governments to bring to justice those suspected of criminal offenses such as rape, but opposes the death penalty as the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Human Rights Committee has clarified in its General Comment 6 that the death penalty should be an "exceptional measure", and the Commission on Human Rights clarified in Resolution 2005/59 that the notion of "most serious crimes" does not go beyond intentional crimes with lethal or extremely grave consequences. It also says that the death penalty should not be a mandatory sentence. In 2010, less than 10 per cent of those whose executions were announced officially were convicted of murder or other crimes with a lethal consequence.

On 16 March 2011, the Head of the Supreme Court said the Head of the Judiciary had requested that cases of "evildoers and those who disturb public order or create unease in the public mind" should be dealt with more quickly by the Supreme Court, and confirmed that in future, death sentences confirmed by lower courts would be processed by the Supreme Court in less than 10 days.

RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible:

-- Deploring the execution of Farzad Alizadeh Mohajer;

-- Calling on the Iranian authorities to clarify whether Mohammad Zafari is still alive, and what his current legal status is;

-- Urging the Iranian authorities not to execute Mohammad Zafari, if he is still held under sentence of death and to immediately implement a moratorium on all executions.

APPEALS TO:

Leader of the Islamic Republic

Ayatollah Sayed ‘Ali Khamenei

The Office of the Supreme Leader

Islamic Republic Street – End of Shahid Keshvar Doust Street

Tehran

ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN

Email: info_leader@leader.ir

via website: http://www.leader.ir/langs/en/index.php?p=letter (English)

Salutation: Your Excellency

Head of the Judiciary

Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani

[care of] Public relations Office

Number 4, 2 Azizi Street

Vali Asr Ave., above Pasteur Street intersection, Tehran

ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN

Email: bia.judi@yahoo.com (In subject line: FAO Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani)

Salutation: Your Excellency

COPIES TO:

Secretary General, High Council for Human Rights

Mohammad Javad Larijani

High Council for Human Rights

[Care of] Office of the Head of the Judiciary, Pasteur St., Vali Asr Ave. south of Serah-e Jomhouri,

Tehran 1316814737

ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN

Email: info@humanrights-iran.ir (subject line: FAO Mohammad Javad Larijani)

Salutation: Dear Sir

Iran does not presently have an embassy in the United States. Instead, please send copies to:

Iranian Interests Section

2209 Wisconsin Ave NW

Washington DC 20007

Phone: 202 965 4990

Fax: 1 202 965 1073

Email: requests@daftar.org

PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY.

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Japan: Death row inmate, 75 today, should be granted a stay of execution after 43 years in solitary confinement on death row

Execution chamber
at Tokyo Detention Center

A man believed to be the world’s longest serving death row inmate, who has spent the last 43 years on death row and is 75 today, should be granted a stay of execution, removed from death row and his case reviewed, Amnesty International said today.

Amnesty International and the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network (ADPAN) today called on the Minister of Justice to grant a stay of execution for Hakamada Iwao in accordance with Article 479 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and for him to be taken off death row. Article 479 provides for a person to be granted a stay of execution in cases where the person is found to be suffering from mental illness.

Clare Bracey, Death Penalty Campaigner for Amnesty International UK, said:

“Having been locked away on death row for the last 43 years, with over 1/2 of that time spent in solitary confinement [emphasis added], and not knowing if each day might be his last, it is no wonder that Hakamada Iwao is suffering from physical and mental ill health.

“International law prohibits the execution of people with mental health issues, and Hakamada's case typifies the worst consequences of Japan's justice system

“The Japanese authorities should grant him a stay of execution in accordance with the law and review all similar cases."

Hakamada Iwao, has been on death row since 1968. He was convicted after an unfair trial of the 1966 murder of the managing director of the factory where he worked, and the man's wife and 2 children.

Within months of the finalisation of his death sentence, Hakamada began to show signs of seriously disturbed thinking and behaviour. The Prison authorities have refused access to Hakamada’s medical records, even to his family members and his legal representatives. Hakamada’s mental health condition continues to be of concern.

Hakamada confessed after 20 days of interrogation by police without a lawyer present but later retracted his confession saying that he had been beaten and threatened during the interrogations. One of the judges who convicted Hakamada, Kumamoto Norimichi, stated publicly in 2007 that he believed Hakamada was innocent, but that he had been outvoted in the decision.

Visitors to Hakamada in recent months have found him to be "confused, disorientated and rambling". He has been known to refuse his medication for hypertension and he suffers from diabetes.

His legal team, family and supporters are calling for Hakamada to be granted a stay of execution and removed from death row. They also continue to press his claim for a retrial based on concerns about the soundness of evidence against him. Japan has not commuted a death sentence since 1975.

Amnesty International further calls on the Government of Japan to initiate an immediate independent review of all cases where there is credible evidence that prisoners may be mentally ill and could fall within the scope of Article 479.

Executions in Japan are by hanging and are typically carried out in secret. Death row inmates are only notified on the morning of their execution and their families are usually informed only after the execution has taken place.

This means that prisoners live in constant fear of immediate execution. Enduring these conditions for years, or even decades, has led to extensive depression and mental illness among death row inmates.

Notes: The Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network (ADPAN) is a regional network of over 50 members including lawyers, NGOs, journalists, human rights defenders and activists from 23 countries across the Asia Pacific region. ADPAN campaigns for an end to the death penalty across all countries in the region.

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty as a violation of the right to life in all cases without exception, regardless of the nature of the crime, the characteristics of the offender, or the method used by the state to carry out the execution. It calls on the government of Japan to immediately commute all death sentences and introduce an official moratorium on executions as a first step towards abolition of the death penalty.

A study group on the death penalty established by the former Justice Minister Ms Chiba Keiko is continuing to work under the current Justice Minister, Mr. Eda Satsuki. No date for its report has been announced.

Source: Amnesty International, March 10, 2011

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URGENT APPEAL for Aleh Gryshkautstou and Andrei Burdyka likely to be executed within the next few weeks in Belarus

The clemency applications of two men on death row in Belarus, Aleh Gryshkautstou and Andrei Burdyka have been turned down. They are likely to be executed within the next few weeks.

Aleh Gryshkautsou, aged 29, and Andrei Burdyka, aged 28, were sentenced to death by shooting on 14 May 2010 for crimes committed during an armed robbery on a flat in Grodno in October 2009. Both men were found guilty of premeditated murder, armed assault, arson, kidnapping of a minor, theft and robbery. On 17 September 2010, the Supreme Court in Minsk turned down their appeals.

The families of the two men only learnt that President Lukashenka had refused their requests for clemency after the news was broadcast on national television on 22 February. On 24 February, Andrei Burdyka’s mother received a letter from him in which he said that he would be seeing a priest on 23 February. This may indicate that his execution is very imminent.

Aleh Gryshkautstou and Andrei Burdyka have not denied the charges. However, Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception. It violates the right to life, as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.

In Belarus, prisoners on death row are told that they will be executed only moments before the sentence is carried out. They are shot in the back of the head; sometimes more than one bullet is needed. The body is not handed over to the family, who are often informed only afterwards, and the place of burial is kept secret, causing further distress to relatives.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Aleh Gryshkautsou is also known as Aleg Gryshkautsou.

Belarus carried out two executions in 2010. Vasily Yuzepchuk and Andrei Zhuk, were executed in March 2010, approximately two months after their clemency applications had been turned down. As in all death penalty cases in Belarus, neither the prisoners nor their relatives were informed of the date in advance. Andrei Zhuk’s mother only learnt of her son’s execution afterwards when she tried to deliver a food parcel on 19 March. The execution was carried out despite the fact that both men had applied to the UN Human Rights Committee, and on 12 October 2009 the Committee had made a request to the government not to execute the two men until it had considered their cases.

RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible:

--Calling on President Lukashenka to stop the executions of Aleh Gryshkautstou and Andrei Burdyka;

--Calling on President Lukashenka to establish an immediate moratorium on the use of the death penalty, in line with UN General Assembly resolution 63/168, adopted on 18 December 2008.

APPEALS TO:

President

Alyaksandr Lukashenka

Administratsia Prezidenta Respubliki Belarus

ul.Karla Marksa, 38

220016 Minsk

BELARUS

Fax: 011 375 17 226 06 10 OR 011 375 17 222 38 72

Email: contact@president.gov.by

Salutation: Dear President Lukashenka

COPIES TO:

Ambassador Oleg Kravchenko

Embassy of the Republic of Belarus

1619 New Hampshire Ave NW

Washington DC 20009

Fax: 1 202 986 1805

Email: usa@belarusembassy.org

politics@belarusembassy.org

PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY.

President Lukashenko denies clemency to Aleh Hryshkawtsow and Andrey Burdyka

February 25, 2011: Belarusian president Alyaksandr Lukashenko rejected clemency requests from death row inmates Aleh Hryshkawtsow, 29, and Andrey Burdyka, 28, according to Belarusian human right defenders. They were were sentenced to death by the Hrodna Regional Court on May 14, 2010, for an alleged triple murder in October 2009.

Burdyka and Hryshkawtsow, who had previous convictions, were found to have robbed an apartment in Hrodna in October 2009, killing one man and two women and taking a child hostage. They reportedly set fire to the apartment and then forced a taxi driver to drive them to Minsk or Moscow, but were arrested the following morning when the taxi driver escaped.

On 17 September, the Supreme Court of Belarus rejected appeals against the death sentences.

In their appeals, Burdyka and Hryshkawtsow argued that investigators had violated procedural regulations and the International Covenant on Civic and Political Rights, using illegal methods to obtain confessions. In addition, both Burdyka and Hryshkawtsow insisted that they had murdered only one person and blamed the other two murders on each other.

The two men are currently held in the detention centre on Minsk's Valadarskaha Street.

Source: BBC, 25/02/2011
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URGENT APPEAL for Johnnie Baston due to be executed in Ohio on 10 March 2011

Johnnie Baston

Johnnie Baston, a 36-year-old African American man, is scheduled to be executed in Ohio on 10 March. He was sentenced to death in 1995 for a murder committed during a robbery in 1994.

Chong Hoon Mah, a South Korean immigrant to the USA, was shot and killed on 21 March 1994 during a robbery of one of the retail shops that he owned in Toledo, Ohio. Johnnie Baston was arrested after police received information that he was involved in the crime. He told police that he had participated in the robbery with an accomplice named “Ray”, a high-ranking gang member, who was the gunman. However, police were never able to identify or locate this person, and came to believe that Johnnie Baston acted alone. He was charged, pleaded not guilty, and chose to be tried before a three-judge panel rather than a jury. The judges sentenced him to death on 27 February 1995, finding only one mitigating factor – his young age – and ruling that this was outweighed by the nature of the crime.

Johnnie Baston has been on death row for 16 years, most of his adult life. At the time of the crime, he was just past his 20th birthday. He had been abandoned by his biological mother soon after he was born, and has never seen her since, his only communication with her being a letter from her after he was sent to death row. As a young boy, he was adopted by his aunt after she saw his bruising and malnourishment, evidence of a pattern of physical abuse and neglect in his first years at the hands of his father. At the clemency hearing before the Ohio Adult Parole Authority on 3 February 2011, his adoptive mother recalled that his parental abandonment had led to serious behavioural problems in his teenage years, culminating in her throwing him out of the home about a week before the crime.

Also at the clemency hearing was one of the prosecutors from the original trial. She said that Chong Mah’s son had asked her to appear to reiterate the victim’s family’s opposition to the execution of Johnnie Baston because of their respect for human life. Last year she and another prosecutor signed sworn statements that the Mah family had been opposed to the death penalty at the time of the trial as well. Last month, Chong Mah’s son also signed a statement that “my family and I are opposed to Mr Baston being executed”.

A senior Justice on the Ohio Supreme Court has called for abolition of the state’s death penalty, describing it as a “death lottery”. By way of illustration, Johnnie Batson’s clemency petition points to the case of another defendant who was tried in the same county (Lucas County) for a comparable crime in 1994 (shooting of a store manager at close range during a robbery) and was sentenced to life imprisonment. The petition also pointed to the disproportionate number of death sentences passed against black defendants in Lucas County. Of the 21 death sentences passed there since 1981, in 16 cases the defendant was black, and in four cases white.

The parole board voted 9-0 against recommending clemency. Their recommendation is not binding on the Governor.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases, unconditionally. To end the death penalty is to abandon a degrading, destructive, diversionary and divisive public policy that is not consistent with widely held values. It not only runs the risk of irrevocable error, it is also costly, in social and psychological terms as well as to the public purse. It has not been proved to have a unique deterrent effect. It tends to be applied in a discriminatory way, on grounds of race and class. It diverts resources that could be better used to work against violent crime and assist those affected by it. The death penalty extends the suffering of the victim’s family to that of the condemned prisoner.

Public and political support for the death penalty has weakened in recent years, and the rate of death sentencing has declined. One possible factor contributing to this decline is the adoption across the US states of life without the possibility of parole. Ohio adopted this as a sentencing option in 1996, a year after Johnnie Batson’s trial. In the decade from 1990 to 1999, 127 death sentences were passed in Ohio, at an average of nearly 13 per year. In the following decade, the 43 death sentences were passed in the state, at an average of just over four per year.

In 2008, then Senior US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens revealed that he had decided, after more than three decades on the country’s highest court, that the death penalty was a cruel waste of time. “I have relied on my own experience”, he wrote, “in reaching the conclusion that the imposition of the death penalty represents the pointless and needless extinction of life with only marginal contributions to any discernible social or public purposes”. In Ohio, Senior Justice Paul Pfeifer of the state Supreme Court, who when he was a state legislator was a co-author of Ohio’s death penalty statute enacted in 1981, wrote in January 2011: “I helped craft the law, and I have helped enforce it. From my rather unique perspective, I have come to the conclusion that we are not well served by our ongoing attachment to capital punishment… I ask: do we want our state government – and thus, by extension, all of us – to be in the business of taking lives in what amounts to a death lottery? I can’t imagine that’s something about which most of us feel comfortable. And, thus, I believe the time has come to abolish the death penalty in Ohio”. Also in January, a former Director of the Ohio Department of Corrections, who witnessed 33 executions between 2001 and 2010, urged Ohio officials to consider abolition of the death penalty.

There have been 1,242 executions in the USA since judicial killing resumed there in 1977, including eight so far this year. Ohio has executed 42 people since resuming executions in 1999. Thirty-two of them were put to death under a three-drug lethal injection process (sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride) used in most US death penalty states to anesthetize, paralyze and kill the prisoner. In November 2009 the Ohio authorities responded to ongoing legal challenges to the three-drug procedure – and to events two months earlier when the state’s lethal injection team attempted and failed over the course of two hours to execute death row prisoner Romell Broom – by changing to a one-drug protocol whereby the condemned inmate would be injected with five grams of sodium thiopental, essentially an overdose of this anaesthetic. Having executed 10 prisoners in this way between December 2009 and February 2011, but now faced with the nationwide sodium thiopental shortage after the only US supplier, Hospira, ceased production of this drug, Ohio has decided to switch to another barbiturate, pentobarbital. The execution of Johnnie Baston is due to become the first carried out in Ohio with this drug. From late 2010, Oklahoma turned to this drug as the substitute for sodium thiopental in its three-drug execution method.

In January, the Ohio authorities were contacted by the Denmark-based pharmaceutical company Lundbeck Inc. The letter states: “In the wake of the decision of Hospira to cease production of sodium thiopental, which is used in the execution of prisoners, Lundbeck has become aware that the State of Ohio has now decided to use Lundbeck’s product Nembutal® (pentobarbital sodium injection USP) for this purpose. Lundbeck is adamantly opposed to the use of Nembutal, or any other product for that matter, for the purpose of capital punishment… [W]e urge you to discontinue the use of Nembutal in the execution of prisoners in your state because it contradicts everything we are in business to do – provide therapies that improve people’s lives.”

RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible:

- Acknowledging the seriousness of the crime for which Johnnie Baston was sentenced to death;

- Calling on the governor to commute the death sentence and to work to lead Ohio away from the death penalty.

APPEALS TO:

Governor of Ohio

Governor John Kasich

Riffe Center, 30th Floor, 77 South High Street

Columbus, Oh 43215-6117,

USA

Fax: 1 614 466 9354

Email: http://governor.ohio.gov/ShareYourIdeas.aspx

Salutation: Dear Governor

PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY.

New drug doesn't worry condemned man -- But he admits that he is afraid to die

Condemned killer Johnnie Baston says he isn't worried about being the 1st person in the U.S. to be executed using a new drug.

"New drug, old drug, it doesn't matter," said Baston, who is scheduled to be lethally injected March 10. "The whole process should be eliminated."

But Baston, 37, who was sentenced to death for the execution-style slaying of Toledo store owner Chong Mah during a robbery on March 21, 1994, acknowledges that he is "very scared" to die.

"The fact that I'll be placed on a table and poisoned to death, I can't find any comfort in that. It's kind of a sick feeling."

Baston would be the first person executed in the U.S. using only pentobarbital, a fast-acting barbiturate. Ohio and most other states have used sodium thiopental for lethal injections, but the U.S. manufacturer stopped making the drug.

In an interview today on Death Row at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown, Baston said he was present during the robbery, but he denied killing Mah. He said the shooter -- who used Baston's gun -- was a mysterious Chicagoan named "Ray" whom he had met at a party a few days before the robbery.

However, Baston has run out of legal appeals and appears resigned to being executed. He said he is more concerned about the impact his death will have on his 2 teenage children and making sure that Mah's family knows how he feels.

"I would like to tell them how sorry I am. ... It's something I've been carrying with me for 17 years ...

"I made a mistake, and it was a tragic mistake. It cost a man his life. I can never take that back. That day will stay with me the rest of my life. Most likely, as I take my last breath, I'll be thinking about it.

Baston, who went to prison when his daughter was a few months old and his son hadn't been born, said his children will "have to live with this the rest of their lives. I won't just be their father. I'll be their father who was on death row and was executed."

Mah's family opposes the death penalty and has asked that Baston not be executed. However, the Ohio Parole Board voted 9-0 against granting clemency, concluding that Baston's failure to accept responsibility for the crime, his criminal history and Mah's shooting at point-blank range "outweigh their personal opinions regarding the death penalty."

Gov. John Kasich has not decided on Baston's clemency request.

In the meantime, Baston is writing letters to family, friends and supporters and weighing his last words.

"I'm not a monster. I made mistakes. I want people to understand that even if I was executed, I was a good person before, I was a good person on death row, and I will be a good person if I'm not executed."

Source: Columbus Dispatch, February 23, 2011
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Visit to Brussels by Patches Rhode, mother of executed US prisoner

Last week the EU institutions office in Brussels hosted Patches Rhode and Joshua Ladner, the mother and brother of Brandon Rhode, who was executed by lethal injection in the US state of Georgia last September. Six days before his execution Brandon had almost died after slashing his arms and neck with a razor. The hospital revived him, stitched him up, and he was brought back to prison. There he was held in a restraint chair, in which he was reported to be “in severe pain and discomfort”.

Patches and Joshua had come over from the United States of America to London as guests of the NGO Reprieve, where they had met British officials and addressed a Parliamentary hearing. Their main objective in Brussels was to see if they could secure EU-wide controls on the export of the anaesthetic sodium thiopental, the first of three drugs which are used in most executions by lethal injection in the USA. The sodium thiopental used in the execution of Brandon Rhode had been purchased from a British company, Dream Pharma, since Georgia’s supplies had run out.

A key concern for Brandon’s family has been their understanding that the drug failed to work as it was meant to during his execution, citing the fact that his eyes remained open until his death. It’s normally expected for the prisoner to lose consciousness before the other two drugs are administered. If the anaesthetic didn’t work, Brandon would have suffered excruciating pain until his heart finally stopped.

Since 2006 the EU has had a law which purports to prevent EU companies from exporting products intended to be used in executions or torture. Amnesty International and Omega Research Institute have identified serious loopholes in how this law operates. Our office and national sections in the EU have been lobbying for simple changes to the law which would prevent firms from selling sodium thiopental and other drugs for use in future executions. Frustratingly, we’re facing a bureaucratic brick wall.

Should the EU, which is a staunch opponent of capital punishment, be doing more to block exports of drugs which can be used in executions? We believe it should. It’s hard to explain to a grieving mother and brother that despite the EU’s abolitionist stance, bureaucracy can block Brussels from taking all possible measures against executions. Perhaps meeting the families of people who have been executed and encountering their pain will jog officials into action.

Meeting Patches and Joshua was one of those moments when you glimpse the reality of suffering, and are reminded of how the death penalty extends the suffering of the relatives of murder victims to the families of the condemned. These were real people who had lived through the agony of waiting for Brandon to be killed and who will live out their lives with the pain and grief of the whole gruelling experience. But they emphatically refused to be seen as victims. Their focus was on trying to spare other death row inmates and their families from this cruel and inhuman punishment. And they are fighting for this cause with great eloquence and dignity.

Source: Amnesty International, David Nickols, Senior Executive Officer, EU Foreign Policy, Amnesty International, February 21, 2011

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Trinidad and Tobago urged to stop drive towards executions

Amnesty International has urged members of Trinidad and Tobago's parliament to vote against a constitutional amendment Bill which would allow executions to be resumed in the country.

Under the proposed Bill, scheduled to be debated on 18 February, courts across the country would be able to circumvent judicial rulings that enhanced human rights protection and resulted in a halt to executions in 1999.

Authorities in the Caribbean nation claim carrying out executions is a way to tackle rising numbers of murders and deter others from committing violent crime.

"Trinidad and Tobago has a real problem with murder and violent crimes, but experience has shown that facilitating executions is not the solution," said Chiara Liguori, researcher on Trinidad and Tobago at Amnesty International.

"Hurrying executions or ignoring appeals already in progress violates defendants' rights by denying them due process guaranteed under international law.

"The proposed Bill would allow people to be executed even if they were appealing against their sentence, which is their right."

"We urge Parliament not to accept the proposed Bill and instead tackle the root causes of violent crime and reform the police and justice systems."

"What may seem a technical change in the Constitution is in fact a matter of life and death for many people."

More than 40 people are currently on death row in Trinidad and Tobago.

In 1984, the United Nations' Economic and Social Council said an execution should not be carried out if there's any appeal or recourse procedure pending on the case.

The new Bill would circumvent this principle and allow for expedited executions.

Currently, under a ruling by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, acting as the highest court in the country, any execution carried out five years after the original sentence constitutes torture, which is illegal under the country's Constitution.

The lengthy appeals process for death penalty cases means that, in practice, no executions are able to be carried out within the five year period and most sentences have been commuted to prison terms.

But Amnesty International says the proposed Bill will ignore that ruling and make the constitution inconsistent with human rights.

We are extremely concerned that the New Bill would allow for someone to be executed within a short period after a sentence is passed, not allowing for proper appeals and that others could be kept on death row for years on end," said Chiara Liguori.

The prime minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, has been reported as referring to the death penalty as a "weapon in [our] arsenal" to fight the murder rate.

She is quoted on her Facebook website as saying: The Government that I have the honour to lead will ensure that this law is implemented and convicted murderers must suffer and pay the ultimate price by having the sentence of death carried out."

The country is one of 93 countries in the world which retains the death penalty for ordinary crimes.

Even though death sentences have continued to be handed out in Trinidad and Tobago, no executions have been carried out since 1999.

Source: Amnesty International, Feb. 16, 2011

URGENT ACTION APPEAL - From Amnesty International USA

TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO -- Dozens of People on Death Row

On 18 February the Congress of Trinidad and Tobago will debate changes to the constitution that could put dozens of people on death row in immediate danger of execution. The new legislation is aimed at resuming executions, which have not taken place in the country since 1999.

On 14 January 2011, Trinidad and Tobago’s government, led by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, submitted a Bill for approval by the Parliament aimed at reforming the Constitution in relation to the implementation of the death penalty. The Bill is scheduled to be debated on 18 February, and the law could be implemented in the following weeks. Amnesty International is concerned that the adoption of the Bill, as currently drafted, will put dozens of people currently on death row at serious risk of being executed in violation of international human rights laws and standards.

The Bill would enable death sentences to be carried out while appeals before international bodies are pending. In particular, it will give power to the President of posing time-restrictions for individuals under sentence of death to appeal, consult, communicate and conclude appeal with any person or body of persons outside Trinidad and Tobago. After the time limits ends, executions could be carried out even if the appeal has not been concluded. Implementing a death sentence while an appeal is pending is against international human rights standards related to the due process of law.

The Bill would also permit authorities to circumvent a 1993 ruling by the highest court of appeal for Trinidad and Tobago, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. This stated that a delay of more than five

years in implementing a death sentence would be cruel and inhuman treatment. If the Bill is passed, people who will be in the future sentenced to death could be executed even if they remain on death row for more than five years.

Amnesty International is deeply concerned that the desire to resume executions is being presented as a crime-control measure, despite the lack of convincing evidence of the deterrent effect of the death penalty on the crime situation.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Trinidad and Tobago, along with all English speaking Caribbean countries, retains the death penalty. The last executions took place in June and July 1999, when 10 men were hanged. The country has previously executed prisoners who still had legal avenues of appeal available to them. In 1994, Glen Ashby was executed as two courts examined his appeals. One of the courts issued a stay of execution at the same time as the hanging was taking place. On 22 June 1999, Anthony Briggs was executed despite an order, issued on the 25 May 1999, from the Inter-American Court on Human Rights that his life "be preserved until such time as the Court... issues a decision on the matter".

Even though no execution has been carried out since 1999, death sentences have continued to be handed out. The execution of Charles Elroy Laplace in St Kitts and Nevis in December 2008 was the first in the English-speaking Caribbean since 2000. His execution sparked fears that other English-speaking Caribbean nations will follow suit as pressure grows on the region's governments to be seen to be tackling an increase in violent crime.

The jurisprudence of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the court of final appeal for most English-speaking Caribbean nations, and of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights have set important standards to regulate the implementation of the death penalty.

Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados are the only English-speaking Caribbean countries which retain mandatory death penalty for murder. However Barbados has pledged to remove the mandatory sentence, as Guyana did it last October 2010. The proposed Bill in Trinidad and Tobago retains the mandatory imposition of the death penalty for certain categories of murders, meaning that sentences of death are not the product of individualized determinations and are imposed without affording the convicted person the opportunity to present mitigating circumstances. The UN Human Rights Committee stated that "the automatic and mandatory imposition of the death penalty constitutes arbitrary deprivation of life". Regional and national jurisdictions have been continuously ruled out the mandatory imposition of the death penalty.

Trinidad and Tobago suffers from high levels of violent crime -- there were 472 reported homicides in 2010 and already 46 murders are reported just for January 2011. Scientific studies have consistently found no convincing evidence that the death penalty deters crime more effectively than other punishments. Given the low conviction rate in Trinidad and Tobago, the emphasis should instead be put on improving the capacities of the police to detect and solve crimes, on the implementation of an effective witness protection programme and the implementation of effective measures tackling the root causes of crime and violence.

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty as a violation of the right to life and the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. The organization recognizes the duty of governments to tackle violent crime but believes that the death penalty is by nature ineffective and arbitrary, and is not an effective deterrent to crime. The application of death penalty inevitably leads to inconsistencies and errors, inescapable flaws which are exacerbated by discrimination, prosecutorial misconduct and inadequate legal representation. It brutalizes those involved in the process of executions and wider society as a whole. The organization believes that the rise in crime affecting much of the Caribbean will only be solved by addressing urgent reforms to police and justice systems and by implementing effective measures tackling the root causes of crime and violence, not with state killings.

RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible:

- Asking the Head of the ruling party and the Leader of the opposition to instruct the Members of the Parliament of Trinidad and Tobago to reject the proposed amendment to the Constitution, contained in the Constitution (Amendment) (Capital Offenses) Act, 2011, as it would enable executions in violation of international human rights laws and standards;

- Reminding them that there is no convincing evidence that the death penalty deters crime;

- Calling on them to ensure that all people on death row are not executed;

- Calling, pending abolition, to immediately remove all provisions in national law which are in breach of international human rights law and standards, in particular by abolishing all provisions which provide for mandatory death sentences.

APPEALS TO:

Head of the ruling party

The Honourable Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar

Office of the Prime Minister

13 - 15 St. Clair Avenue, St. Clair

Port of Spain,

Trinidad and Tobago

Fax: 011 868 622 0055

Email: opm@ttgov.gov

Salutation: Dear Prime Minister

Leader of the opposition

The Honourable Dr. Keith Rowley

Parliament

Red House P.O. Box 878

Port of Spain,

Trinidad and Tobago

Fax: 011 868 625 4672

Email: webmaster@ttparliament.org; administration@ttparliament.org

Salutation:Dear Sir

COPIES TO:

President of the Senate

Senator the Hon. Timothy Hamel-Smith

Parliament

Red House P.O. Box 878

Port of Spain,

Trinidad and Tobago

Fax: 011 868 625 4672

Email: timothyhamel@timothyhamel.com

administration@ttparliament.org

Ambassador Glenda Patricia Morean-Phillip

Embassy of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago

1708 Massachusetts Ave. NW

Washington DC 20036

Fax: 1 202 785 3130

Email: info@ttembwash.com

PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY.

_________________________

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