Global executions up 15% in 2013

 

NEW YORK, March 27 (AP): The number of known executions around the world rose almost 15 percent in 2013, and the United States was among the five countries putting the most people to death, a new report says.

The Amnesty International report released Wednesday comes shortly after a stunning decision this week by an Egyptian court to sentence to death 529 alleged supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood after a two-session trial. The London-based rights group has called the action “grotesque.”

The new report said the 778 judicial executions in 22 countries the group was able to count last year don’t include the thousands of people put to death in China, where such information is a state secret. China’s foreign ministry referred a question about its executions last year to the justice ministry, which did not respond to phone or fax.
Last year’s global increase is due in part to more executions in Iran and Iraq, followed by Saudi Arabia, the report said. The number of officially acknowledged executions in Iran was at least 369, but the rights group said “credible sources” reported 335 more. The group said Iraq executed at least 169
people.

Executions in chaotic Syria and Egypt could not be confirmed. Amnesty International is blunt about its stance on the issue. “We oppose the death penalty in all cases, without exception,” Jose Luis Diaz, the group’s representative at the United Nations, told reporters Wednesday. “It is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading
punishment.”

He also criticized this week’s sweeping decision in Egypt, which he called “in recent history the largest number of death sentences handed down by a court at a single instance.”
The Amnesty International report counted more than 23,000 people on death row worldwide as of the end of 2013. It also counted at least 1,925 people sentenced to death in 57 countries last year, up from the year before.

Amid the bleak numbers, the rights group pointed out that a small number of countries — about one in 10 — carry out executions, and 140 countries are against the death penalty either in law or actions.

“The overall data demonstrate that the trend is still firmly towards abolition,” the report said. “Excluding China, almost 80 percent of all known executions worldwide were recorded in only three countries: Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.” Both Europe and Central Asia had no reported executions, the first time since 2009.
The number of people put to death in the United States, the only country in North or South America to carry out executions in 2013, continued to go down, the report said. It executed 39 people last year, down four from 2012. More than 40 percent were by the state of Texas.

But the rights group was alarmed by four countries that resumed executions after a pause of a year or more: Indonesia, Kuwait, Nigeria and Vietnam. The report also objected to “’confessions’ that were possibly extracted through torture of other ill-treatment,” and it said the proceedings in a majority of countries that executed people or sentenced them to death “did not meet international fair trial standards.”

Executions in 2013 were recorded for crimes including adultery, in Saudi Arabia; blasphemy, in Pakistan; economic crimes in China, North Korea and Vietnam; and reportedly in North Korea for pornography, escaping to China and watching banned videos from South Korea, Amnesty International said.

“In India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia and South Sudan, prisoners were not informed of their forthcoming execution, nor were their lawyers and families,” the report said. “In Botswana, India and Nigeria, and in some cases in Iran and Saudi Arabia, the bodies of executed prisoners were not returned to their families for burial.”

The report listed the countries where public executions were known to occur: Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Somalia. And it listed the known methods of execution, including beheading in Saudi Arabia, electrocution in the United States and lethal injection in China, Vietnam and the United States. Several countries were listed as using hanging and shooting. The report said there were no reported executions last year by stoning.

 

 

Tokyo, March 27 (AFP): A man believed to be the world’s longest-serving death row inmate was Thursday granted a retrial in Japan over multiple murders in 1966, decades after doubts emerged about his guilt.

Shizuoka District Court decided to “start the retrial over the case” of Iwao Hakamada, 78, who was convicted for the grisly murder of his boss and the man’s family, a court official said. Delivering his ruling, presiding judge Hiroaki Murayama cited possible planting of evidence by investigators to win a conviction as they sought to bring closure to a crime that shocked the country.

“There is possibility that (key pieces of) evidence have been fabricated by investigative bodies,” Murayama said in his decision, according to Jiji Press. The judge also ordered Hakamada’s release, saying continued confinement “goes against justice”.

Apart from the United States, Japan is the only major industrialised democracy to carry out capital punishment, a practice that has led to repeated protests from European governments and human rights groups.

Hakamada is the sixth person since the end of World War II to receive a retrial after having a death sentence confirmed, and his case will bolster opponents of capital punishment, including rights group Amnesty, which has just launched its annual report on the practice.

Shizuoka prosecutors told Japanese media that they are undecided on whether to appeal the decision, according to national broadcaster NHK. Hakamada initially denied accusations that he robbed and killed his boss, the man’s wife and two children before setting their house ablaze.
But the former boxer, who worked for a bean paste maker, later confessed following what he subsequently claimed was a brutal police interrogation that included beatings. He retracted his confession, but to no avail, and the supreme court confirmed his death sentence in 1980.

Doubts over evidence
Prosecutors and courts had used blood-stained clothes, which emerged a year after the crime and his arrest, as key evidence to convict Hakamada.
The clothes did not fit him, his supporters said. The blood stains appeared too vivid for evidence that was discovered a year after the crime. Later DNA tests found no link between Hakamada, the clothes and the blood stains, his supporters said.

But the now-frail Hakamada has remained in solitary confinement on death row, regardless. His supporters and some lawyers, including the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, have loudly voiced their doubts about evide nce, the police investigations and the judicial logic that led to the conviction.
Even one of the judges who originally sentenced Hakamada to death in 1968 has said he was never convinced of the man’s guilt but could not sway his judicial colleagues who out-voted him. Japan has a conviction rate of around 99 percent and claims of heavy-handed police interrogations persist under a long-held belief that a confession is the gold standard of guilt.

The decision came as Amnesty International issued its annual review of reported executions worldwide, which showed Japan killed eight inmates in 2013, the ninth-largest national tally in the world.

Hakamada’s sister Hideko, 81, who has passionately campaigned for a retrial for decades, thanked dozens of supporters who gathered in front of the court house. “I want to free him as soon as possible,” she told a press conference held shortly after the court announced its decision. “I want to tell him, ‘You did well. You will finally be free’,” she said.

Hakamada seems to have developed psychological illnesses after decades in solitary confinement, Hideko told AFP in an interview last year. “What I am worried about most is Iwao’s health. If you put someone in jail for 47 years, it’s too much to expect them to stay sane,” Hideko said in the interview.

Amnesty, which has championed Hakamada’s cause and says he is the world’s longest-serving death row detainee, called on prosecutors to respect the court’s decision. “It would be most callous and unfair of prosecutors to appeal the court’s decision,” said Roseann Rife, the organisation’s East Asia research director.