Tag Archives: Death Sentence

Iran’s supreme leader pushes ICC beyond arrest warrants; demands death sentence for Israeli leaders

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Important Takeaways:

  • The supreme leader of Iran, which backs the Hamas and Hezbollah militants fighting Israel in Gaza and Lebanon, said Monday that death sentences should be issued for Israeli leaders, not arrest warrants.
  • Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was commenting on a decision last week by the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defense chief and a Hamas leader, Ibrahim Al-Masri.
  • “They issued an arrest warrant. That’s not enough. … Death sentence must be issued for these criminal leaders,” Khamenei said, referring to Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Secretary Yoav Gallant.
  • In their decision, the ICC judges said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for acts including murder, persecution and starvation as a weapon of war as part of a “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Gaza.”
  • The decision was met with outrage in Israel, which called it shameful and absurd.
  • Israel has rejected the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and denies committing war crimes in Gaza.

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Saudi man sentenced to death for social media posts

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Important Takeaways:

  • A Saudi court has sentenced a man to death over his posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, and his activity on YouTube, the latest in a widening crackdown on dissent in the kingdom that has drawn international criticism.
  • “Al-Ghamdi’s death sentence over tweets is extremely horrific but stands in line with the Saudi authorities’ escalating crackdown,”
  • The sentences appear part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s wider effort to stamp out any defiance in the kingdom as he pursues massive building projects and other diplomatic deals to raise his profile globally.

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In Pakistan lynching has become the norm as Court upholds Death Sentence for brothers charged with Blasphemy

Matthew 10:28 “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Important Takeaways:

  • Pakistani High Court Upholds Death Sentence of Christian Brothers Charged with Blasphemy
  • They were accused of posting blasphemous contents on the internet… Judge Javed Iqbal Bosal sentenced them to death, with a 100,000 rupee (USD $719) fine.
  • “This will be the 3rd case of blasphemy which will be heard by the Supreme Court. We still believe that the brothers are innocent and it has not been proved that they had published any blasphemous contents.”
  • Lynching and vigilante justice have become everyday phenomena in Pakistan. Because of the government’s inaction and support from hardline religious groups, criminals are encouraged and continue killing innocent people with impunity.

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‘Ashamed’: Pakistan grapples with fallout from mob killing

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – A shocking and deadly mob attack on a Sri Lankan factory manager accused of blasphemy in eastern Pakistan last week prompted days of soul searching as the man’s remains were flown to his home country.

The violence, which was condemned by rights watchdogs including Amnesty International, also drew intense responses from politicians, celebrities and journalists on social media.

“Ashamed!! Sick to my stomach!!,” actress Mahira Khan wrote on Twitter shortly after the lynching.

The mob of factory employees in Pakistan’s Punjab province tortured and burned a Sri Lankan manager on Friday in an attack that Prime Minister Imran Khan said brought shame on the country.

The killing raised alarm over the potential for accusations of blasphemy to fuel crowd violence in Pakistan, coming just weeks after at least seven policemen were killed in clashes with the radical TLP movement, which has built its identity on fighting what it sees as blasphemy.

Mob killings over accusations of blasphemy are frequent in Muslim-majority Pakistan, where the crime can carry the death sentence.

Other politicians and the country’s powerful military also released statements condemning the attack.

“Mob violence cannot be acceptable under any circumstance as (the) state has laws to deal with all offences,” said Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari on Twitter.

The victim’s body was returned to Sri Lankan officials over the weekend and then flown to his home country, a government source in Punjab province told Reuters.

Punjab’s police said arrests were continuing.

“In the last 12 hours, police have arrested seven more key figures, including one involved in planning an attack on a Sri Lankan manager,” they said in a statement.

Some politicians and activists argued that broader societal and political change was needed, beyond legal consequences for those involved.

“Arrests should of course be made, but there has to be a clear appraisal of why mobs feel the impunity,” said Senator Sherry Rehman, a member of the opposition Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

In an editorial entitled “Horror in Sialkot,” leading newspaper Dawn on Sunday criticized Pakistan for “appeasing religious extremists.”

“Once again, we are reminded how far this nation has descended into the abyss,” the editorial said.

(Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

Biden administration pushes for Boston Marathon bomber death sentence

By Nate Raymond

BOSTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department has urged the Supreme Court to reinstate the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, despite President Joe Biden’s stated opposition to capital punishment.

The department in a 48-page brief filed late on Monday argued that a lower court wrongly overturned Tsnarnaev’s death sentence and ordered a new trial to determine what sentence he deserved for carrying out with his older brother the attack that killed three people and wounded more than 260 others.

The filing marked the latest deviation between the policy views of Biden, a Democrat who has said he wants to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and the Justice Department, whose independence he has vowed to promote.

“The jury carefully considered each of respondent’s crimes and determined that capital punishment was warranted for the horrors that he personally inflicted,” Acting Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said in the Justice Department’s brief.

David Patton, Tsarnaev’s lawyer, has argued that the U.S. government should allow his client to serve life in prison. Patton did not respond to a request for comment.

In overturning Tsarnaev’s death sentence, the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in July 2020 ruled that the trial judge “fell short” in screening jurors for potential bias following pervasive news coverage of the bombing. It ordered a new trial over the sentence he should receive for the death penalty-eligible crimes for which he was convicted.

Tsarnaev is a Kyrgyzstan-born U.S. citizen.

The Justice Department under Republican former President Donald Trump initiated the government’s appeal of the 1st Circuit ruling, and the Supreme Court in March agreed to take up the case. It will hear arguments and issue a ruling in its next term, which starts in October and ends in June 2022.

Tsarnaev, now 27, and his brother, Tamerlan, precipitated five days of panic in Boston when they detonated two homemade pressure-cooker bombs at the marathon’s finish line on April 15, 2013 – tearing through the packed crowd and causing many people to lose legs – and then tried to flee the city.

In the following days, they also killed a police officer, Sean Collier. Tsarnaev’s brother died after a gunfight with police.

Jurors in 2015 found Tsarnaev guilty of all 30 counts he faced and later determined he deserved execution for a bomb he planted that killed Martin Richard, 8, and Chinese exchange student Lingzi Lu, 23. Restaurant manager Krystle Campbell, 29, was also killed.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham)

Dylann Roof appeals death sentence for South Carolina church massacre

(Reuters) – Lawyers for Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine Black people at a South Carolina church in 2015, argued on Tuesday in court to overturn his conviction and sentence because he was not competent to stand trial and represent himself.

Attorneys for Roof pressed their case during an appeals court hearing on Tuesday, squaring off with U.S. government lawyers trying to uphold his conviction on 33 federal charges, including hate crimes, and subsequent death sentence.

Federal public defenders representing Roof launched the appeal in early 2020. They argued that Roof suffered from schizophrenia spectrum disorder and other mental problems and “believed his sentence didn’t matter because white nationalists would free him from prison after an impending race war.”

Ann O’Connell Adams, a U.S. Justice Department lawyer, told a panel of three judges that Roof did not act irrationally in representing himself and had shown that he understood the risk that he could face the death penalty if found guilty.

In December 2016, a jury found Roof guilty of 33 federal charges for the mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston in June 2015. The same jury sentenced him to death in January 2017.

Roof dismissed his defense attorneys just before trial and represented himself during jury selection. At the last minute he reinstated his lawyers for the guilt phase but represented himself again for the penalty phase.

(reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

California court ordered to reconsider Scott Peterson murder conviction

By Mimi Dwyer

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Two months after winning a reversal of his death sentence, lawyers for Scott Peterson, the California man found guilty of murdering his wife and unborn child in a sensational 2004 trial, have persuaded the state’s high court to order a review of his conviction.

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday sent the case back to trial court in San Mateo County to consider Peterson’s contention that his conviction on two counts of murder be set aside on grounds of prejudicial misconduct by a member of the jury.

The high court ruled in August that the trial judge had erred in jury selection, but rejected Peterson’s appeal of his conviction in the 2002 slaying of his pregnant wife, Laci, who went missing on Christmas Eve that year.

In a nearly 300-page habeas corpus petition originally filed in 2015, Peterson’s attorneys outlined 19 claims arguing for a new trial, the first being that one juror concealed a possible bias against the defendant.

According to the petition, the juror “had lied her way onto” the panel by falsely denying that she had ever been the victim of a crime or involved in a lawsuit, even though, while pregnant, she had sought a restraining order against a boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend.

“Someone who has gone through an experience where someone was threatening their unborn child will probably have a perspective on charges brought against a defendant for harming an unborn child,” Cliff Gardner, an attorney for Peterson, told Reuters on Thursday. “They may come in with a bias that other people wouldn’t have.”

The California Supreme Court ordered the state to show “why the relief prayed for should not be granted on the ground that Juror No. 7 committed prejudicial misconduct by not disclosing her prior involvement with other legal proceedings.” Prosecutors were given until Nov. 13 to respond.

John Goold, a spokesman for prosecutors handling the motion, cautioned that the order does not automatically lead to a new trial, but requires the lower court to consider a single issue raised by Peterson’s defense team in challenging the conviction.

(Reporting by Mimi Dwyer; Editing by Leslie Adler)

U.S. to ask top court to restore Boston Marathon bomber Tsarnaev’s death sentence

By Nate Raymond

BOSTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department said on Thursday it will ask the nation’s top court to reinstate Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s death sentence for helping carry out the 2013 attack that killed three people and wounded more than 260 others.

U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling in Boston said that after considering victims’ views, the department had decided to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review an appellate court’s July 31 decision to order a new death penalty phase trial for Tsarnaev.

“Our hope is that this will result in reinstatement of the original sentence and avoid a retrial of the death penalty phase,” Lelling said in a statement.

His statement came after U.S. Attorney General William Barr told the Associated Press the department will “do whatever’s necessary” and continue to pursue the death penalty, a position consistent with President Donald Trump’s views.

Victims have been divided over seeking the death penalty, and David Patton, Tsarnaev’s lawyer, had argued prosecutors should allow “closure” by permitting a life prison sentence.

In its ruling, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that a trial judge “fell short” in conducting the jury selection process and screening jurors for potential bias following pretrial publicity.

Tsarnaev, 27, and his older brother, Tamerlan, sparked five days of panic in Boston on April 15, 2013, when they detonated two homemade pressure cooker bombs at the marathon’s finish line and then tried to flee the city.

In the days that followed, they also killed a police officer. Tsarnaev’s brother died after a gunfight with police.

A federal jury in 2015 found Tsarnaev guilty of all 30 counts he faced and later determined he deserved execution for a bomb he planted that killed 8-year-old Martin Richard and 23-year-old Chinese exchange student Lingzi Lu. Restaurant manager Krystle Campbell, 29, was also killed.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Peter Cooney and Richard Pullin)

Iran says it will execute man convicted of spying on Soleimani for CIA

By Parisa Hafezi

DUBAI (Reuters) – An Iranian who spied for U.S. and Israeli intelligence on slain Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani has been sentenced to death, Iran said on Tuesday, adding the case was not linked to Soleimani’s killing earlier this year.

On Jan. 3, a U.S. drone strike in Iraq killed Soleimani, leader of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force. Washington blamed Soleimani for masterminding attacks by Iran-aligned militias on U.S. forces in the region.

“Mahmoud Mousavi-Majd, one of the spies for the CIA and the Mossad, has been sentenced to death … He had shared information about the whereabouts of martyr Soleimani with our enemies,” judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said in a televised news conference.

“He passed on security information to the Israeli and American intelligence agencies about Iran’s armed forces, particularly the Guards,” Esmaili said.

Esmaili said Mousavi-Majd’s death sentence has been upheld by a supreme court and “he will be executed soon.”

Later, the judiciary said in a statement that Mousavi-Majd’s conviction was not linked to “the terrorist act of the U.S. government” in Soleimani’s killing in Iraq.

“All the legal proceedings in the case of this spy … had been carried out long before the martyrdom of Soleimani,” the statement said, adding that Mousavi-Majd had been arrested in October 2018.

Officials have not said whether Mousavi-Majd’s case is linked to Iran’s announcement in the summer of 2019 that it had captured 17 spies working for the CIA, some of whom it said were sentenced to death.

Nor have they said whether Mousavi-Majd’s case is linked to Iran’s announcement in February of this year that Iran had sentence to death a man for spying for the CIA and attempting to pass on information about Tehran’s nuclear program.

Soleimani’s killing led to a peak in confrontation between Iran and the United States. Iran retaliated with a rocket attack on an Iraqi air base where U.S. forces were stationed. Hours later, Iranian forces on high alert mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian passenger airliner taking off from Tehran.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Peter Graff and William Maclean)

Khashoggi’s fiancee says execution of those convicted would conceal truth

ANKARA (Reuters) – The fiancee of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi described the sentencing of five people to death in relation to the killing as unfair and invalid, adding that their execution would further conceal the truth.

Khashoggi disappeared after going to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018, to obtain documents for his planned wedding. His body was reportedly dismembered and removed from the building and his remains have not been found.

A Saudi court on Monday sentenced five people to death and three to jail over the murder, while dismissing charges against three others, finding them not guilty. A U.N. investigator accused Riyadh of making a “mockery” of justice by exonerating senior figures who may have ordered the killing.

The presiding Saudi court rejected the findings of a U.N. inquiry by ruling that the killing was not premeditated, rather carried out “at the spur of the moment”.

Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancee, was waiting outside the consulate when he went inside to retrieve the documents.

In a statement on Tuesday, Cengiz said the trial did not reveal why those convicted had killed Khashoggi because the trial was held behind closed doors.

“If these people are executed without any chance to speak or explain themselves, we might never know the truth behind this murder,” she said.

“I’m calling upon every authority in the world to condemn this kind of court decision and urgently prevent any execution, because this would just be another step in concealing the truth.”

“SHAM TRIAL”

Turkey said on Monday the trial outcome fell far short of serving justice, and on Tuesday Turkish Communications Director Fahrettin Altun slammed the verdict as an “insult to the intelligence of any fair observer”.

“The international media must pursue the case of Khashoggi until there is true accountability… Those responsible must face justice sooner or later,” Altun said on Twitter, calling the case a “sham trial”.

“This despicable murder was done at a diplomatic facility against every diplomatic norm imaginable! We will follow this case to the end regardless (of) how high it goes.”

The murder of Khashoggi, a U.S. resident and critic of the kingdom’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, caused a global outcry, and some Western governments, as well as the CIA, said they believed the prince ordered the killing.

Saudi officials say he had no role, though in September the crown prince indicated some personal accountability, saying “it happened under my watch”.

After Monday’s verdict, a source familiar with U.S. intelligence assessments said key U.S. government agencies rejected the validity of the court proceedings and CIA experts still believed Prince Mohammad personally ordered, or at least approved of, the killing.

The source said the five men condemned to death were essentially foot soldiers in the killing, while two senior security officials acquitted played a more significant role.

(Reporting by Yesim Dikmen, Tuvan Gumrukcu and Ece Toksabay; Writing by Ali Kucukgocmen; Editing by Daren Butler, Mark Heinrich and Nick Macfie)