Tag Archives: Execution

North Korea conducts public executions for theft, watching South Korea media: report

A graphic showing suspected killing sites in North Korea is seen in a report compiled by Transitional Justice Working Group, during an interview with a researcher from the group in Seoul, South Korea, July 19, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

By Christine Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea carries out public executions on river banks and at school grounds and marketplaces for charges such as stealing copper from factory machines, distributing media from South Korea and prostitution, a report issued on Wednesday said.

The report, by a Seoul-based non-government group, said the often extra-judicial decisions for public executions are frequently influenced by “bad” family background or a government campaign to discourage certain behavior.

The Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG) said its report was based on interviews with 375 North Korean defectors from the isolated state over a period of two years.

Reuters could not independently verify the testimony of defectors in the report. The TJWG is made up of human rights activists and researchers and is led by Lee Younghwan, who has worked as an advocate for human rights in North Korea.

It receives most of its funding from the U.S.-based National Endowment for Democracy, which in turn is funded by the U.S. Congress.

The TJWG report aims to document the locations of public killings and mass burials, which it says had not been done previously, to support an international push to hold to account those who commit what it describes as crimes against humanity.

“The maps and the accompanying testimonies create a picture of the scale of the abuses that have taken place over decades,” the group said.

North Korea rejects charges of human rights abuses, saying its citizens enjoy protection under the constitution and accuses the United States of being the world’s worst rights violator.

However, the North has faced an unprecedented push to hold the regime and its leader, Kim Jong Un, accountable for a wide range of rights abuses since a landmark 2014 report by a United Nations commission.

U.N. member countries urged the Security Council in 2014 to consider referring North Korea and its leader to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity, as alleged in a Commission of Inquiry report.

The commission detailed abuses including large prison camps, systematic torture, starvation and executions comparable to Nazi-era atrocities, and linked the activities to the North’s leadership.

North Korea has rejected that inquiry’s findings and the push to bring the North to a tribunal remains stalled due in part to objections by China and Russia, which hold veto powers at the U.N. Security Council.

TJWG said its project to map the locations of mass graves and executions has the potential to contribute to documentation that could back the push for accountability and future efforts to bring the North to justice.

It said executions are carried out in prison camps to incite fear and intimidation among potential escapees, and public executions are carried out for seemingly minor crimes, including the theft of farm produce such as corn and rice.

Stealing electric cables and other commodities from factories to sell them and distribution of South Korean-produced media are also subject to executions, which are most commonly administered by shooting, it said.

Testimonies also showed people can be beaten to death, with one interviewee saying: “Some crimes were considered not worth wasting bullets on.”

Government officials were executed on corruption and espionage charges, and bureaucrats from other regions would be made to watch “as a deterrence tactic”, the report said.

Defectors from the North have previously testified to having witnessed public executions and rights abuses at detention facilities.

(Reporting by Christine Kim; Editing by Paul Tait)

Hamas executes three Palestinians over killing says ordered by Israel

Members of Palestinian security forces loyal to Hamas ride a truck outside a Hamas-run military court where alleged collaborators with Israel are prosecuted, in Gaza City May 21, 2017. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – Gaza’s ruling Hamas movement executed three Palestinians on Thursday convicted of killing a commander in the Islamist group’s armed wing while acting on Israel’s orders.

Hamas’ military prosecutor said the three men admitted to receiving orders from Israeli intelligence officers to track and kill Mazen Fuqaha on March 24 in Gaza City.

A military court convicted one of carrying out the shooting and the two others of providing Israel with information about Fuqaha’s whereabouts.

Two of the men, aged 44 and 38, were hanged while the third, 38, a former security officer, was shot by firing squad, the Hamas-run interior ministry said.

The executions took place in an open yard of Gaza’s main police headquarters, witnessed by leaders from Hamas and other Palestinian factions, as well as heads of Gaza clans.

Israel has established a network of contacts in the Palestinian territories, using a combination of pressure and sweeteners to entice Palestinians to divulge intelligence.

The Shin Bet security service, which carries out covert operations against Palestinian militants, did not respond to a request by Reuters for comment.

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, in an interview with Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper soon after Fuqaha’s killing, said his death was part of an internal power dispute within Hamas.

Israel jailed Fuqaha in 2003 for planning attacks against Israelis, sentencing him to nine life terms. He was released in 2011 in a group of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners who Israel freed in exchange for a captured soldier.

Israeli media said that after Fuqaha’s release and exile to Gaza he continued to plan attacks by Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian and International human rights groups have repeatedly urged Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to suspend use of the death penalty.

Palestinian law says President Mahmoud Abbas, who has no actual control over Gaza, has the final word on whether executions can be carried out.

Hamas has sentenced 109 people to death and executed at least 25 since 2007, when the group seized power in Gaza from Abbas in a brief civil war.

Human Rights Watch’s executive director of the Middle East division, Sara Leah Whitson, denounced what she called Hamas’ “reliance on confessions, in a system where coercion, torture and deprivation of detainees’ rights are prevalent.”

(Writing by Nidal Almughrabi; editing by John Stonestreet)

Fourteen bodies found after ‘execution’ in Benghazi, Libya

UN leader talking with Libyan immigrant

BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) – Fourteen unidentified bodies with shot wounds to the head have been found in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, a hospital official said on Friday.

U.N. Libya envoy Martin Kobler said he was “shocked and dismayed by the summary execution,” labeling it a war crime and calling for those responsible to be brought to justice.

The bodies were recovered from Laithi, a neighborhood that forces loyal to eastern commander Khalifa Haftar captured this year from a loose alliance of Islamists and other opponents.

Military officials from Haftar’s forces refused to comment, saying the incident was under investigation.

Benghazi has seen some of the heaviest violence of the sporadic conflict that developed after Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was toppled in an uprising in 2011.

Haftar has been waging a military campaign there for the past two years against a coalition of armed groups called the Shura Council of Benghazi Revolutionaries. His forces have advanced in several areas in recent months, but have not gained full control over the city.

Campaign group Amnesty International said on Thursday that air strikes by Haftar’s forces were endangering the lives of scores of detainees being held captive in Benghazi.

Amnesty said it appeared that the Shura Council may be using the captives as human shields, which can constitute a war crime. It said the captives were likely being held in the district of Ganfouda, where Haftar’s forces have recently dropped leaflets urging civilians to leave.

(Reporting by Ayman al-Warfalli; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Phillippines confirms execution of Canadian by al Qaeda

Philippine President Aquino arrives at a session of the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

By Allison Martell and Manuel Mogato

TORONTO/MANILA (Reuters) – The Philippines confirmed on Tuesday the execution of a Canadian who had been held hostage by the al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf Islamist militant group on a remote southern island with three other people since September 2015.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in Toronto on Monday that it appeared the second execution of a Canadian hostage by Abu Sayyaf in recent months had taken place.

That was later confirmed in Manila.

“We strongly condemn the brutal and senseless murder of Mr. Robert Hall, a Canadian national, after being held captive by the Abu Sayyaf group in Sulu for the past nine months,” outgoing Philippines President Benigno Aquino said in a statement.

A Philippines military spokesman said earlier a severed head had been found near a Catholic cathedral on a remote southern island late on Monday. No identification had been made yet.

Hall was taken captive by the militants with three others from an upscale resort on Samal island, hundreds of miles east of Jolo. Another Canadian who was held captive, former mining executive John Ridsdel, was executed by the group in April.

A Norwegian man and a Filipina are still being held.

Trudeau told reporters that “Canada holds the terrorist group who took Mr. Hall hostage fully responsible for this cold-blooded and senseless murder”.

He said Sunday’s attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and the killing of Hall “serve as devastating reminders for all of us, the vicious acts of hatred and violence cannot be tolerated in any form”.

Abu Sayyaf, based in the south of the mainly Roman Catholic Philippines, is known for kidnapping, beheadings and extortion.

Security is precarious in the southern Philippines despite a 2014 peace pact between the government and the largest Muslim rebel group that ended 45 years of conflict.

In Manila, President-elect Rodrigo Duterte’s national security adviser said Duterte’s new government, which takes charge on June 30, would “take a stronger action against lawlessness in the south”.

“We cannot allow this situation to continue, this should end once and for all,” Duterte’s adviser Hermogenes Esperon told Reuters.

Abu Sayyaf had initially demanded one billion pesos ($21.7 million) each for the detainees, but it lowered the ransom to 300 million pesos each early this year.

Preliminary intelligence reports in the Philippines indicated Hall had been beheaded 10 minutes after a 3 p.m. deadline lapsed in the mountains outside Jolo’s Patikul town.

Philippine media had already quoted Abu Raami, a spokesman for Abu Sayyaf, confirming the execution.

(Reporting by Allison Martell in TORONTO and Manuel Mogato in MANILA; Editing by W Simon and Paul Tait)

ISIS Forces Civilians To Watch Executions In Amphitheater

The Islamic terrorist group ISIS, attempting to solidify their takeover of the ancient city of Palmyra, have forced the residents of the town to fill an ancient amphitheater to watch the execution of 20 men.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the men were accused of serving as members of the army for President Bashir al-Assad.  The method of execution was not reported by the group.

The United Nations World Heritage site was overrun by the terrorists last week.  The U.N. also reported that residents told them the Syrian government forced them to remain until all troops withdrew from the city, placing them at the mercy of the terrorists.

The terrorists have also killed 67 civilians, including 14 children and 12 women, in the city of al-Sikhni.  The terrorists said they were harboring regime forces to hide them from ISIS.

The UN has also reported that the terrorists burned a young woman alive because she would not be used as a sex slave by the group.

“They are institutionalizing sexual violence,” Zainab Bangura, the U.N.’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, said of the Islamic State. “The brutalization of women and girls is central to their ideology.”

ISIS Built Their Own “Guantanamo”

A former ISIS hostage has written that ISIS build their own version of “Guantanamo” to torture Western hostages near Aleppo.

They said that “Jihadi John” staged mock executions at the facility.

Javier Espinosa, a Spanish journalist, recorded his memories in the newspaper El Mundo.

Espinosa said that the prisoners called their guards “The Beatles” and that they focused on showing the prisoners what could happen to them.

“The Beatles … loved this sort of theatre. They had me sat on the floor, barefoot, with a shaven head, a thick beard and dressed in the ‘orange’ uniform’ that had made Guantanamo, the American prison, famous,” Espinosa wrote, according to Scotsman.

“Jihadi John wanted maximum drama. He had brought along an antique sword of the kind Muslim armies used in the Middle Ages. It was a blade of almost a meter in length with a silver handle,” added Espinosa, who was kidnapped on Sept. 16, 2013 and freed on March 29, 2014.

Espinosa said that executed American James Foley told him ISIS had been planning this for a long time.

“‘They had this project for a long time. The [head guard] told us at the beginning they wanted to intern Westerners in a high-security prison with cameras and lots of guards.’ ‘They told us that we would be here for a very long time, because we were the first ones they captured,'” Foley told him.

ISIS Crucifies 17 Men

The executions of Islamic terrorist group ISIS is continuing as 17 men were crucified for refusing to submit to the terrorist group’s “caliphate.”

The terrorists released a group of photos on a social media site showing the murders of the men.  One showed two men being thrown off a tall building.  Others showed the brutal crucifixion process.

The videos and photos posted by the group are intended to have “Muslims come watch the application of the law.”

In addition to the men, a woman was shown being stoned to death on accusations of adultery in a wooded area hidden from public view.

“The Islamic State group has executed 16 men in Deir Ezzor and one more in Raqa, to send a message to all their opponents after recent assassinations of 12 Syrian, Iraqi and Algerian jihadists,” said Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Director Rami Abdel Rahman. “ISIS is sending a message to all people living under its control, to say: ‘This is what will happen to any opponent.'”

ISIS Executes Almost 1,900 In Six Months

A British group that has been monitoring the violence connected to the Syrian civil war says they have proof the terrorists leading ISIS ordered almost 1,900 executions during a six-month period that ended December 27th.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says that since the group declared their “caliphate” in Syria the terror group has killed at least 1,175 people in summary executions.

The group admits that the number could be much higher because they have reports of thousands missing including over 1,000 men from a single tribe.

The data includes deaths in the provinces of Deir Ezzor, al- Raqqa, al- Hasakah, Aleppo, Homs and Hama.

U.S. officials say the continued airstrikes against ISIS have weakened the group and has demoralized the group’s forces.  The terrorists recently lost a town in the northern part of Iraq to fighters from the Kurds.

Christian Pastor Executed by Pakistani Government

The Pakistani police have summarily executed a Christian Pastor.

Zafar Bhatti had been imprisoned since 2012 on charges that he has committed blasphemy for preaching Jesus was the only way.  The men had long been receiving death threats from fellow prisoners and guards because of their Christian faith.

“This is a barbaric act,” Xavier Williams of Life for All told The Express Tribune. “There had been threats. The court should have instructed police to ensure Bhatti’s safety.”

The country passed a blasphemy law claiming that it would be a tool to stop religious intolerance in the country.  However, Muslims have used the law as a way to take religious minorities to jail them, force them to convert to Islam or kill them.

“Unfortunately, pressure from Islamic radical groups and general discrimination against Christians in Pakistan has transformed trial courts into little more than rubber stamps for blasphemy accusations brought against Christians, regardless of the evidence brought to bear in the case,” William Stark of the International Christian Concern said.  “Also, little is done to ensure the safety of those merely accused of blasphemy, leading to the deaths of at least 48 people, many of whom could have been proven innocent.”

This is the second major incident involving Christians accused of blasphemy in Pakistan.  A Christian couple was sentenced to death in April for sending text messages that were called blasphemous by the court.  However, the couple has been proven to be illiterate, so they could not send text messages.  The death sentence is still in effect.

President Obama Speaks Out Against ISIS

President Obama held a press conference to address the beheading of an American journalist by the Islamic terrorist group ISIS and made an unusually strong denouncement of an Islamic group.

“The United States of America will continue to do what we must do to protect our people. We will be vigilant and we will be relentless. When people harm Americans, anywhere, we do what’s necessary to see that justice is done. And we act against ISIL, standing alongside others,” President Obama said, referring to the group by their previous name, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

The President went on to denounce the group has not being a religious group at all because of their extreme views and actions.

“No just God would stand for what they did yesterday, and for what they do every single day,” the President said.  “ISIL has no ideology of any value to human beings. Their ideology is bankrupt. They may claim out of expediency that they are at war with the United States or the West, but the fact is they terrorize their neighbors and offer them nothing but an endless slavery to their empty vision, and the collapse of any definition of civilized behavior.”

The President ordered the U.S. military to continue to conduct air strikes against positions of the terrorists in northern Iraq.  After the President’s address, the military carried out a series of strikes against terror positions near the country’s biggest dam to help support Iraqi and Kurdish troops who recaptured the dam earlier this week.

The President also spoke of the victim of the killing, photojournalist James Foley.

“Jim Foley’s life stands in stark contrast to his killers,” President Obama said.