Obituary
We attach a link to the Guardian‘s obituary of Sir Nigel Rodley who was a key member of Amnesty and did so much to get the legal tools enacted in the anti-torture campaign and also worked hard to end the death penalty.
Urgent action: Iran
Imminent execution of a young man convicted whilst a juvenile and by the alleged use of severe torture. This is an update of an earlier UA but there have been recent significant developments and his execution is now more probable. The full details are attached. If you can find time to write or send emails this would be appreciated. Thank you
Three executed in Bahrain
Three men executed today in Bahrain – the first in 2017
Three men were executed today, 15 January 2017, in Bahrain. This has taken place in a country which likes to claim its commitment to human rights. The convictions were allegedly procured using torture which – according to local human rights groups – included suspension from the ceiling, beatings, electric shock to the genitals and elsewhere, food and sleep deprivation. Violent demonstration are said to have broken out.
The human rights situation in Bahrain is described as ‘dismal’ and in addition to the use of torture, there has been an orchestrated crack-down on the right to free speech and human rights activists and opposition politicians face arrest and repression.
Britain is closely involved in the Kingdom and Theresa May visited the country recently as part of a bid to boost trade. This has raised the issue of our relationship with a country with such poor human rights. She was quoted as saying:
There will be some people in the UK who say we shouldn’t seek stronger trade and security ties with these countries because of their record on human rights. But we don’t uphold our values and human rights by turning our back on this issue. We achieve far more by stepping up, engaging with these countries and working with them
It doesn’t seem to be going so well. There is indeed something to be said for engagement if it does over time secure better standards. It was reported today that Yarls Wood detention centre received a visit by Bahraini officials from the very prisons where torture is alleged to take place. The funding was from the secretive Conflict Stability and Security Fund which a select committee of MPs has been unable to find out much about. But once again it looks like fine words when in reality there is no improvement and all that seems matter is securing business. The UK has just opened a naval base in the state so our ability to apply pressure is further limited.
A Salisbury based firm has allegedly been supplying spyware equipment to enable the Bahraini security forces to penetrate mobile phones and computers.
Sources:
Mail Group Newspapers; Guardian; Observer; Amnesty International; Reprieve; Bahrain Center for Human Rights
January meeting minutes
Attached are the minutes of the January meeting thanks to group member Lesley for preparing them. We discussed the death penalty, forthcoming events including the film Fire at Sea, talk by a North Korean, the stall and the music festival.
Death penalty report: Dec – Jan
The latest monthly death penalty report for December – January is now available thanks to group member Lesley for doing the research and compiling it.
Report (Word)
Iranian youth sentenced to death again
URGENT ACTION
Salar Shadizadi has been sentenced to death for a second time and is now in solitary confinement. He was 15 at the time he committed the crime and it is contrary to the Iran penal code to execute minors. Please write if you can.
December meeting minutes
We are pleased to attach the minutes of the December meeting thanks to group member Lesley for preparing them.
Death penalty report for November
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.
Urgent action: Iran
Further information on UA: 72/16 Index: MDE 13/5217/2016 Iran Date: 25 November 2016
Young man at risk of execution in Iran
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.
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Will we see an end to the death penalty in our lifetime?
A talk by Dan Dolan of Reprieve
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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Amnesty in Salisbury & South Wiltshire 