Amnesty in Salisbury & South Wiltshire
Promoting human rights from Salisbury UK
December 2016
The latest death penalty report is now available thanks to group member Lesley for compiling it. Generally gloomy with several countries around the world reverting – or threatening to revert to – the penalty.
Further information on UA: 72/16 Index: MDE 13/5217/2016 Iran Date: 25 November 2016
Himan Uraminejad has been warned by prison officials that he is at risk of execution as Iran’s Head of Judiciary has approved the implementation of his death sentence. He has been on death row since 2012 for a crime committed when he was 17 years old.
Amnesty International has learnt on 21 November that Himan Uraminejad, aged 22, was informed by prison officials on 6 October that the Head of Judiciary had approved the implementation of his death sentence and his family should intensify their efforts to seek a pardon from the family of the deceased because his execution could be carried out at any moment. He was sentenced to death in August 2012 after a criminal court in Kurdistan Province convicted him of murder over the fatal stabbing of a boy during a group fight. He was 17 years old at the time of the crime.
In September 2014, the Supreme Court quashed his death sentence and granted him a retrial, based on new juvenile sentencing provisions in Iran’s 2013 Islamic Penal Code. In June 2015, however, he was sentenced to death again. The criminal court presiding over his retrial referred to an official medical opinion that found “no evidence of a disorder at the time of the crime that would remove criminal liability”. The court also referred to Himan Uraminejad’s statements that he had no “mental illness or history of hospitalization” and understood killing someone was “religiously forbidden” (haram). The Supreme Court upheld the death sentence in November 2015 and rejected a subsequent request for retrial.
Grossly unfair trial
Himan Uraminejad (pictured, left) was sentenced after a grossly unfair trial that relied on evidence obtained through torture. He was arrested on 22 April 2012 when he was 17 years old. He was subsequently transferred to an undisclosed detention centre where he was held for 20 days, without access to his family and lawyer. He has said that during this period, he was tortured, including by repeated beatings that left scars and bruises all over his face and body, and suspension from the ceiling by a rope tied to his feet. He has said that police also raped him with an object shaped like an egg, threatened to cut off his testicles and walked over his body with boots. Himan Uraminejad’s trial was held before an adult court, without special juvenile justice protections. The court ordered no investigation into his allegations of torture.
Please write immediately in English, Persian, Arabic, French and Spanish or your own language:
– Urging the Iranian authorities to halt any plans to execute Himan Uraminejad, and commute his death sentence without delay;
– Urging them to ensure that his conviction is quashed and that he is granted a fair retrial in accordance with the principles of juvenile justice, in particular ensuring that no statements obtained through torture and other ill-treatment
are admitted as evidence;
– Urging them to ensure his allegations of torture are investigated and those responsible are brought to justice;
– Immediately establish an official moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty.
PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE 6 JANUARY 2017 TO:
Head of the Judiciary
Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani
Prosecutor General of Khoy
Hojatoleslam Alizadeh
And copies to:
President
Hassan Rouhani
PLEASE SEND YOUR APPEALS FOR THE ATTENTION OF THE AUTHORITIES IN IRAN VIA THE UK EMBASSY:
H.E. Hamid Baeidinejad, Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 16 PRINCES GATE LONDON SW7 1PT, Tel: 02072254208 or 02072254209 Email: iranconsulate.lon@mfa.gov.ir
Please check with your section office if sending appeals after the above date. This is the first update of UA 72/16.
Further information: https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde13/3722/2016/en/
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
The minimum age of criminal responsibility in Iran is set at nine lunar years for girls and 15 lunar years for boys. From this age, a child who is convicted of murder or crimes that fall in the category of hodud (offences that carry inalterable punishments prescribed by Shari’a law) is generally convicted and sentenced in the same way as an adult. However, since the adoption of the 2013 Islamic Penal Code, judges have been given discretion not to sentence juvenile offenders to death if they determine that juvenile offenders did not understand the nature of the crime or its consequences, or their “mental maturity” is in doubt.
The criteria for assessing “mental growth and maturity” are unclear and arbitrary. As illustrated by the case of Himan Uraminejad, judges often conflate the issue of lesser culpability of juveniles because of their lack of maturity with the diminished responsibility of people with mental illness, concluding that the juvenile offender was not “afflicted with insanity” or was “in a healthy mental state”, and therefore deserved the death penalty. Sometimes, judges focus exclusively on whether the juvenile could tell that it is wrong to kill a human being, and disregard interdisciplinary social science studies on the relationship between adolescence and crime, including neuroscientific findings on brain maturity, which have informed juvenile justice principles considering juveniles less culpable than adults due to their developmental immaturity and cognitive limitations (see Growing up on death row: The death penalty and juvenile offenders in Iran, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde13/3112/2016/en/).
As a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Iran is legally obliged to treat everyone under the age of 18 as a child. This is different from the minimum age of criminal responsibility, which is the age below which children are deemed not to have the capacity to break the law. This age varies between countries, but it must be no lower than 12 years, according to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. People who have broken the law who are above the minimum age of criminal responsibility, but under 18, may be considered criminally responsible, prosecuted, tried and punished. However, they should never be subjected to the death penalty or life imprisonment without the possibility of release.
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child reviewed Iran’s implementation of the CRC in January 2016. The Committee’s Concluding Observations expressed “serious concern” that the exemption of juvenile offenders from the death penalty is “under full discretion of judges who are allowed, but not mandated to seek forensic expert opinion and that several persons have been resentenced to death following such retrials”. Beside Himan Uraminejad, Amnesty International is aware of several other cases, including Salar Shadizadi, Hamid Ahmadi and Sajad Sanjari, who have been retried, found to have sufficient “mental maturity” at the time of the crime and sentenced to death again. Amnesty International is also aware of at least 15 juvenile offenders who have been sentenced to death for the first time since the adoption of the 2013 Islamic Penal Code.
Amnesty International has recorded at least 75 executions of juvenile offenders between 2005 and 2016, including two in 2016. One of them was Hassan Afshar, who was hanged in July. Iran’s lack of transparency on its use of the death penalty means that the total number of executions of juvenile offenders could be much higher. According to a UN report issued in 2014, at least 160 juvenile offenders are now on death row. Amnesty International has been able to identify the names of 78 of these juvenile offenders. Some of them have been on death row for over a decade and are either unaware of their right to seek a retrial based on the new provisions of the 2013 Islamic Penal Code or do not have the means to retain a lawyer to seek it for them.
The Head of the Judiciary must provide a type of approval known as estizan in all cases where the death penalty has been imposed under the Islamic principle of “retribution-in-kind” (qesas) before the sentence can be implemented.
Further information on UA: 72/16 Index: MDE 13/5217/2016 Issue Date: 25 November 2016
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! Please let us know if you have taken action on this case. You can either include us – iar@amnesty.org.uk – in the email you send to the authorities or send us a separate email if you’ve sent your appeal by post or fax. Tell us any way you like! All we need to know if that you’ve sent an appeal and the UA number – which is at the top of each email. Thank you.
We are now on twitter, follow us for information on Urgent Action cases: @AmnestyUKUrgent
You can view all UAs on our website here.
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How about this death row prisoner’s definition of Capital Punishment?
Them without the capital get the punishment.
This was how Dan Dolan launched his talk on the work of Reprieve, which started by taking on the defence of British nationals on the USA’s death row and, 30 years later takes on any nationality. They expose the torture and unjust sentencing of Guantanamo inmates but their chief mission is to end the Death Penalty – on the grounds that it is not a deterrent, but an expensive public policy disaster. They work mostly as ‘lawyers in courts’ but also know how to influence ‘the court of public opinion’.
Their focus is twofold: first, a campaign to end the use of lethal injection in the USA and second, to fight the use of the death penalty for drug-related crime in Iran, Pakistan and elsewhere. Dan explained that in the context of the gas chamber, hanging, and firing squad, the use of lethal injection gave a veneer of respectability to the death penalty. But ‘humane execution’ is a myth – the drugs are not designed by clinicians, and are administered by untrained prison staff.
Their investigations amazingly found that ‘Dream Pharmer’, the main supplier of death row drugs to the USA, was actually one man operating from behind a London driving school with a cupboard-full of imported drugs from the EU! After initially losing their case against the UK government, Reprieve, following judicial review, achieved a ban on specific lethal drug exports. This UK ban then became an EU one.
Next, the Danish pharmaceutical firm Lundbeck was persuaded to apply distribution controls to prevent the inadvertent supplying of companies feeding death row executions. 30 businesses followed in 6 years and with that supply failure came a pause in executions. And with that pause came reflection. Utah, Kansas and New Hampshire are looking at a moratorium. Those that are looking elsewhere for suppliers (Texas, Georgia, and Mississippi) are more exposed to ‘the court of public opinion’ – a public gaze directed at botched executions.
Reprieve’s methods are pragmatic – focusing not on moral arguments but on tracing sources and support structures: ‘throwing sand in the wheels of the machinery of death’.
The second focus of Reprieve’s current work is withdrawing EU aid to drug-related executions, chiefly in Iran and Pakistan which account hugely for the global total. (Iran hanged 600 last year, Pakistan has 112 on death row.) Here the ‘chain of complicity’ is being investigated. The officials who arrested and prosecuted Arshad Ahmed were trained by UK staff, used scanners provided by UK aid and received UK legal assistance in the making of their laws. The innocent ‘mule’ was the only prosecution among 25 arrests – and he awaits the death sentence.
So the policy is both unjust and counter-productive – with an increase in drugs trafficking and a heroin confiscation of only 2 – 4 %. Reprieve persuaded the UK to make ‘Raid Aid’ conditional on Pakistan renouncing the death penalty. Now 6 EU countries have withdrawn ‘Raid Aid’ to focus on rehabilitation and give law-enforcement support only when not death-penalty related.
The analysis of agency – the use of leverage and the building of ‘coalitions of interest’ – are the methods that Reprieve (with only 30 staff) has employed so effectively. However Dan wryly admitted that the possibility of ending the Death Penalty in our lifetime has perhaps receded significantly given this week’s US election result.
Our thanks to Dan Dolan and to New Forest Amnesty for hosting this lively and informative talk.
Hosted by New Forest Amnesty in The Lymington Centre on 12 November 2016.
Read our review of Clive Stafford Smith’s book Injustice
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The latest edition of the death penalty report is now available thanks to group member Lesley for compiling it. China leads the world in the number of its citizens it executes.
There has been a world wide campaign to stop the Iranian authorities from executing Zeinab Lokran.
We have received a message from Amnesty which says
By standing up to the Iranian authorities, you have helped to keep 22-year-old Zeinab alive. Thank you for defending her right to life.
Her execution, which was scheduled to go ahead as early as 13 October is no longer imminent. Zeinab now has a new lawyer working on her case. Together they will submit an application for a retrial – which is Zeinab’s right under Article 91 of Iran’s Islamic Penal Code.
While this is extremely good news, her death sentence remains in place until a retrial is granted by the authorities.
Please share: Continue to put pressure on Iranian authorities not to execute Zeinab
It sometimes comes as a shock to people that the only country in the Americas which still has the death penalty is the USA. It is especially favoured by the southern states such as Louisiana, Texas and Florida and we have on many occasions on this blog mentioned particular cases where the wrong man is convicted of a crime or where the evidence is at best doubtful.
Our view here in the UK of the justice system in America is heavily conditioned by Hollywood films, on screen or on TV, which give a highly biased view of the real life situation. In these depictions, an innocent man or woman has been wrongfully arrested. Clean cut lawyers appear for the defendant and there is a tense meeting in the DA’s office. At some point, the defence (or defense if you’re reading this in the USA) lawyer says ‘we’re outa here’ and they all sweep out. Hearings, such as a Grand Jury happen as if by magic and subsequent court appearances take place soon after. Few episodes can go by without a lawyer saying someone’s ‘Miranda rights have been infringed’ and more people sweep out. Everyone is dedicated to securing justice with the exception of one individual (a witness, police officer or someone needed for the plot) who is found out at the end. More clean cut young people find a tiny and crucial piece of evidence and this is sufficient to set a defendant free, often in the last minute or so of the trial. The overall impression is of a system that works – albeit uncertainly at times – with the good guy getting off at the end.
If you read Clive Stafford Smith’s book Injustice * you will find that these Hollywood stories are for many in the States, fiction. Clive has spent many years in the USA helping people on death row, the majority of whom should not be there. The book is about one individual, Krishna Maharaj (pictured), who was on death row in Florida for 28 years before being released. It is a truly astonishing book with 110 pages of detailed notes and describes the dysfunctional legal system in states such a Florida.
The problem – bizarrely – is that an innocent man or woman is often more at risk that someone who is guilty. Innocent people believe, often wrongly to their cost, that they don’t have to prove anything because they are innocent. There cannot be any evidence to prove they did it because they didn’t. They also think that the justice system is unbiased and the truth will out eventually, a ‘touching faith’ as Clive describes it.
The book explores these issues in great detail. America elects its law officers and so there is great pressure to convict to prove to the electorate that you are ‘tough on crime’. Sentencing people to death is a great way to prove this. Unlike recent changes to the justice system in the UK, the defence has no right of disclosure. So the police need only present evidence allegedly proving guilt, and not reveal evidence that proves the defendant innocent. This practice was also commonplace in the UK before new rules were introduced following some high profile injustices were discovered. In Florida, because of the enormous amount of money flooding in to the state from the drug barons, corruption is rife throughout the justice system. Amazingly, the judge himself in Krishna’s trial was arrested for bribery and corruption after three days of hearings. The police are often themselves involved in the drugs trade.
So if the judge was arrested, then surely the trial should start afresh? No, because defence lawyers are paid so little and on a block fee basis, to start again is something they cannot afford, so they just ploughed on with a new judge. The quality of defence lawyers is frequently poor and they fail to cross-examine properly, call relevant witnesses or even to meet the defendant that often. The problem here is that if through incompetence or otherwise the defence lawyer does not raise the issues at trial, then appeal courts will rule matters to be ‘procedurally barred’ subsequently.
So alibis are not called, forensic evidence not challenged, police witnesses’ changes in evidence not challenged and so on and so on. The result was an innocent man narrowly escaping death row for a crime he did not commit and which was committed it was eventually discovered, by someone acting for a drug cartel. The man murdered was ‘skimming’ drug profits. Errors are so great and so frequent that justice would better be served if it was done on the basis of a coin toss. Fewer would be executed on this basis.
Clive Stafford Smith is an extraordinary lawyer but he is also a great story teller and this account of Kris Maharaj death row case is a powerful thriller beautifully told. Helena Kennedy QC [senior lawyer in the UK]
Passionate and Humane Mail on Sunday
This is a highly recommended book for anyone interested in the justice system. If you have written letters to governors and others in the States it will explain a lot. Clive Stafford Smith was the founder of Reprieve.
A story about the case in Miami Herald
*Injustice by Clive Stafford Smith, Vintage books, 2013
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This story is both tragic and uplifting. Anthony Ray Hinton was released in April last year from death row in Alabama, USA having spent 28 years there for a crime he did not commit. He was not present at the crime scene when the murder happened and had good alibis to prove it. His mother had a gun but it did not match the one used in the murder.
The failures inherent in the US justice system, especially in the southern states, are fully described in Clive Stafford Smith’s book Injustice (Vintage, 2013). Clive is founder of Reprieve. He describes the low rates of pay for defence lawyers, elected prosecutors keen to convince the electorate that they are tough on crime, the lack of access to police material (disclosure) which means that information which disproves their case is not revealed until after the trial, and so on. We hope to publish a longer review of this important book soon.
His release depended on finding a good lawyer and the work of the Equal Justice Network.
In this Guardian piece Ray describes his experiences after leaving which included looking up at the stars, standing in the rain and sleeping on a full length bed.
We publish a review of the use of the death penalty around the world and the latest issue is here.
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We attach the monthly death penalty report for October thanks to group member Lesley for compiling it.
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We attach an urgent action concerning a woman, Zeinab Sekaanvand Lokran in Iran who is at imminent risk of execution. The story – which we hope you will find time to read – is pretty horrific involving torture and a stillborn child. If you can write or email that would be appreciated.
She confessed to murdering her abusive husband, was denied access to a lawyer, beaten in a police station until she confessed and then lost her child due to shock. She has received no treatment or help after her miscarriage.
The World Day Against the Death Penalty was created in Rome on 13th May 2002, with 10th October established as the date for its annual commemoration in 2003. The World Coalition against the Death Penalty has 158 member organisations, made up of NGO’s, Bar Associations, local bodies and Unions.
Amnesty International is a member of the Coalition. It has been working to end executions since 1977, when only 15 countries had abolished the death penalty in law or in practice. That number has now risen to 140.
Since that date –
The United Nations Moratorium on the Death Penalty calls for States maintaining the death penalty to establish a moratorium on its use, with a view to abolition, and in the meantime to restrict the number of offences punishable by execution, and to respects the rights of those on death row. It also calls on States that have abolished the death penalty not to reinstate it. (Note: UN resolutions are not binding).
Amnesty International is calling for:
The Salisbury Group have included the abolition of the death penalty in its campaigns from the
beginning. It is currently focusing on the sentencing to death and execution of juveniles, in particular in Iran and Saudi Arabia.
For this year’s World Day, Amnesty are highlighting the case of the Japanese prisoner, Matsumoto Kenji. The Salisbury Group manned a stall at the NWR Conference on Saturday, (see photo) in the course of which they collected 50 signatures on cards calling on the Minister of Justice to halt the execution, to end the use of solitary confinement for death row prisoners and to end the use of the death penalty in Japan.
Matsumoto Kenji factsheet (pdf)
Sources: World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Wikipedia, Amnesty International
Amnesty in Salisbury & South Wiltshire 