Amnesty International Urgent Action - EXECUTION LOOMS FOR SAEED SEDEGHI - Index Number: MDE 13/056/2012 Date Published: 3 August 2012

 

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Amnesty International Urgent Action 

Index Number: MDE 13/056/2012
Date Published: 3 August 2012

EXECUTION LOOMS FOR SAEED SEDEGHI

Saeed Sedeghi, a shop worker sentenced to death for a drugs offence, appears to be at imminent risk of execution. He was transferred from Tehran’s Kahrizak detention centre to Ghezel Hesar Prison in Karaj on 1 August, where he could be executed at any time.

On 28 July 2012, Saeed Sedeghi was brought before Branch 30 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, where he was required to sign a document, apparently informing him that his death sentence was going to be implemented. Saeed Sedeghi’s lawyer was not present. Saeed Sedeghi had previously made an application to the Amnesty and Clemency Commission. He was never formally told of the outcome of this application, but given what happened in court on 28 July, it appears to have been rejected.

Saeed Sedeghi had an unfair trial, on 26 May 2012, before Branch 30 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, where he was represented by a state-appointed lawyer.

This lawyer had had no contact with Saeed Sedeghi, or access to his casefile, before the trial. The court sentenced him to death on 2 June 2012 for participating with three other men in the purchase and possession of 512 kg of methamphetamine. Saeed Sedeghi was also ordered to pay a fine of two million rials (approximately US$163) and sentenced to 20 lashes for individual possession of 21 grams of the drugs opium and marijuana.

Please write immediately in
Persian, Arabic, English or your own language:

Urging the Iranian authorities not to carry out the flogging or execution of Saeed Sedeghi, and to commute his death sentence, and that of anyone else on death row;
Calling on them to ensure Saeed Sedeghi is given immediate and regular access to any medical attention he may require, his family and a lawyer of his own choosing:

Acknowledging that the authorities have a right to prosecute anyone for offences connected to the production and supply of illegal drugs, but pointing out that drugs offences do not meet the threshold of “most serious crimes” to which the death penalty must be restricted under international law, and that death sentences should not be mandatory.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE 14 SEPTEMBER 2012 TO:

Leader of the Islamic Republic
Ayatollah Sayed ‘Ali Khamenei
The Office of the Supreme Leader
Islamic Republic Street – End of Shahid Keshvar Doust Street, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
Email: info_leader@leader.ir
Twitter: "#Iran leader @khamenei_ir: halt execution of Saeed Sedeghi”. Use the hashtag: #saeedsedeghi
Salutation: Your Excellency

Head of the Judiciary
Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani
[care of] Public relations Office
Number 4, 2 Azizi Street
Vali Asr Ave, above Pasteur Street intersection
Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
Email: bia.judi@yahoo.com 
(Subject line: FAO Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani) or info_leader@leader.ir
Salutation: Your Excellency

And copies to:

Secretary General, High Council for Human Rights
Mohammad Javad Larijani
High Council for Human Rights
[Care of] Office of the Head of the Judiciary, Pasteur St., Vali Asr Ave. south of Serah-e Jomhouri, Tehran 1316814737, Islamic Republic of Iran
Email: info@humanrights-iran.ir
(subject line: FAO Mohammad Javad Larijani

Also send copies to 
diplomatic representatives accredited to your country.

Please check with your section office 
if sending appeals after the above date. 

This is the first update of UA: 165/12. 

Further information: http://www.amnesty.org/en/ library/info/MDE13/035/ 2011/en

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Saeed Sedeghi was arrested along with three other men in Tehran on 29 November 2011 for possession of the synthetic drug methamphetamine. Until his transfer to Ghezel Hesar Prison, he had been held in Kahrizak detention centre, in southern Tehran. Saeed Sedeghi had told his family that he was tortured or otherwise ill-treated, including having several teeth knocked out while in Kahrizak detention centre.

Iran has one of the highest rates of drug addiction in the world; in May 2011 the Head of the Law Enforcement Force, Esma’il Ahmadi-Moghaddam, said that there were probably more than two million users of illegal drugs in the country. It is also second only to China in the number of executions carried out each year.

In 2011, of some 600 executions recorded by Amnesty International from both official and unofficial sources, 488 were for drugs offences – a staggering 81 per cent.

For more information, see Addicted to death: executions for drugs offences in Iran (MDE 13/090/2011), 15 December 2011, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE13/090/2011/en So far in 2012, at least 121 of the 178 executions acknowledged by the Iranian authorities have been for drug-related offences. Amnesty International has received credible reports of 94 other executions which were not officially acknowledged, mostly of people convicted of drugs offences.

The Interior Minister stated in October 2010 that the campaign against drug trafficking was being intensified, and the Prosecutor-General stated that month that new measures had been taken to speed up the judicial processing of drug-trafficking cases, including referring all such cases to his office. 

Under Article 32 of the Anti-Narcotics Law, those sentenced to death for drugs offences do not have the right to appeal, as their convictions and sentences are merely confirmed by either the President of the Supreme Court or the Prosecutor-General. In practice, it seems that many such death sentences are referred to the Prosecutor-General. 

This contravenes Article 19 of the Law on Appeals, under which all death sentences are open to appeal, as well as Article 14 (5) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which states that “everyone convicted of a crime shall have the right to his conviction and sentence being reviewed by a higher tribunal according to law”.

In December 2010, amendments to the Anti-Narcotics Law extended the scope of the death penalty to include additional categories of illegal drugs (including methamphetamine - “crystal meth”), possession of more than specified amounts of which carries a mandatory death sentence. 

The UN Human Rights Committee has stated that “the automatic and mandatory imposition of the death penalty constitutes an arbitrary deprivation of life, in violation of Article 6(1) of the ICCPR, in circumstances where the death penalty is imposed without any possibility of taking into account the defendant's personal circumstances or the circumstances of the particular offence”.

Under Article 6 (2) of the ICCPR, to which Iran is a state party, “sentence of death may be imposed only for the most serious crimes”. UN human rights mechanisms, including the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions and the Human Rights Committee, have concluded that the death penalty for drug offences fails to meet the condition of "most serious crime". 

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime have likewise expressed grave concerns about the application of the death penalty for drug offences.

Names: Saeed Sedeghi
Gender m/f: m

urther information on 
UA: 165/12 Index: MDE 13/056/2012 Issue Date: 3 August 2012

SOURCE : Amnesty International 

Australia's unknown Schapelle - August 5, 2012 REPORTER: Mike Willesee PRODUCER: Mick O’Donnell In a crowded prison in Peru, a young Australian sits singing songs about freedom.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/sunday-night/features/article/-/14437155/australias-unknown-schapelle/

 

Australia's unknown Schapelle

Enlarge photo

 

August 5, 2012

REPORTER: Mike Willesee

PRODUCER: Mick O’Donnell

In a crowded prison in Peru, a young Australian sits singing songs about freedom.

27-year-old Bronwyn Kay Atheron is four years into a 14-year sentence for drug trafficking after she was busted at Lima airport with a suitcase full of cocaine.

Peru has overtaken Colombia as the number one exporter of cocaine worldwide. Much of the cocaine that comes into the United States, Europe and now Australia is being directly attributed to the mountains of Peru.

Sunday Night travelled to Lima’s Santa Monica Prison to meet this young Australian woman whose troubled life drew her into the deadly international drug trade.

Unlike Schapelle Corby’s much publicised plight, Bronwyn’s story has never been told. In interviews in prison with Sunday Night’s Mike Willesee, Bronwyn told of the cartel who hired her, set her up, then betrayed her. She was a drug mule sacrificed so a more lucrative shipment could be smuggled through safely.

Born in Cowra, Central NSW, Bronwyn said she suffered sexual abuse as a child and left home at the age of 16. A year later she gave birth to a baby boy called Shamaya.

”He really was an angel. I breast fed him two and a half years and I woke up every morning to his beautiful smile and his shiny eyes,” she said.

While in the care of his father, Bronwyn’s then-three-year-old son suffered a constricted bowel and died suddenly.

 

 

“I’m not saying that everyone that has bad things happen to them are going to end up in jail, but it’s like I was on the path of destruction because I was messed up and I was broken and because I needed love,” she told Willesee.

A few months later Bronwyn was raped. Six months after that she was diagnosed with HIV.

“I lost hope in my life…What more bad can actually happen to me? I was all messed up.”

In a bid to escape her problems, Bronwyn left Australia, and in a café in Pretoria, South Africa, she was befriended by members of a Nigerian drug syndicate.

“In under a year my son had died, I got raped and found out I had HIV. That’s the most full-on stuff that can happen to you; of course I could easily make the worst decision of my life.”

In the overcrowded prison Bronwyn shares a tiny cell measuring three metres square with three other women. During one of Sunday Night’s visits, we watched her sing as part of a choir in the courtyard, alongside best friend Deidre – a Canadian also jailed for cocaine smuggling.

Bronwyn looked well enough and put on a brave front, but her 14-year jail term may be a death sentence because of difficulties getting access to the HIV medications she needs to stay healthy.

Sunday Night put Bronwyn in touch with Dr Emilia Fishman, a highly regarded lawyer who’s now appealing for clemency and is confident she can at least secure a reduction of her sentence.

 

 

Sadly, Bronwyn’s story is not unique. Each year, hundreds of foreigners are arrested in Peru for drug offences. In January this year an Australian man died at Lima Airport when cocaine leaked in his stomach.

Supporters of Bronwyn's plight have set up a website and a Facebook group for those who'd like to write to her or offer help.

Pussy Riot trial 'worse than Soviet era' Judge refuses to allow 10 defence witnesses while lawyer claims women are being tortured with lack of food and sleep Miriam Elder in Moscow guardian.co.uk, Friday 3 August 2012 19.29 BST

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/03/pussy-riot-trial-russia

 

Pussy Riot trial 'worse than Soviet era'

Judge refuses to allow 10 defence witnesses while lawyer claims women are being tortured with lack of food and sleep

• Miriam Elder in Moscow
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 3 August 2012 19.29 BST

Pussy Riot band members: from left, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alyokhina in court. Photograph: Aleshkovsky Mitya/Corbis

By the end of the first week of Pussy Riot's trial, everyone in the shabby Moscow courthouse was tired. Guards, armed with submachine guns, grabbed journalists and threw them out of the room at will. The judge, perched in front of a shabby Russian flag, refused to look at the defence. And the police dog – a 100lb black Rottweiler – no longer sat in the corner she had occupied since the start of Russia's trial of the year, but barked and foamed at the mouth as if she were in search of blood.

The trial of the three band members, jailed since March after performing a "punk prayer" against Vladimir Putin in Moscow's main cathedral, has been about more than the charges brought against them – formally, hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. In five days of testimony, lawyers and witnesses have laid bare the stark divide that has emerged in Russian society: one deeply conservative and accepting of a state that uses vague laws and bureaucracy to control its citizens, the other liberal bordering on anarchist and beginning to fight against that state with any means it can.

The court is dominated by a glass cage that holds the three women – Maria Alyokhina, who has emerged as their unofficial spokeswoman; Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, whose chiselled features have made her the band's unofficial face; and Yekaterina Samutsevich, who sits in a corner of the cage looking every bit the disgruntled punk.

After five days' sitting in the cage, some days for 10 hours at a time, the women appear exhausted. Violetta Volkova, one of their lawyers, said they were being tortured – denied food and adequate sleep. After a week of being dismissed and lectured by the judge, she could no longer hide her anger. On Friday, as the judge, Marina Syrova, denied yet another defence objection, Volkova began to shout.

Syrova, her glasses forever perched perfectly in the middle of her nose, answered tartly: "You're losing the frames of dignity."

"Those frames long haven't existed here," Volkova replied, seething.

According to Pussy Riot's lawyers, Russia has revived the Soviet-era tradition of the show trial with its case against the group. "Even in Soviet times, in Stalin's times, the courts were more honest than this one," lawyer Nikolai Polozov shouted in court. Outside, during a rare break, he explained: "This is one of the most shameful trials in modern Russia. In Soviet times, at least they followed some sort of procedure."

In one week, Syrova has refused to hear nearly all the objections brought by the defence. One objection claimed that exactly the same spelling errors were found in several witness statements, implying they were falsified.

The prosecution was allowed to call all its witnesses, mainly people who were inside the church at the time of the performance or who had viewed a video of it on YouTube. They answered questions like: "What does your Orthodox faith mean to you?", "Was the women's clothing tight?" and "What offended you about their balaclavas?"

One witness said she heard music during the band's performance in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, although footage shown in court showed the women singing with no live instruments. The music was added later to their viral video clip, "Virgin Mary, Chase Putin Out!"

"What kind of music did you hear?" asked the defence. "It wasn't classical – and it wasn't Orthodox," the witness replied.

The defence, meanwhile, tried to call 13 witness, including opposition leader Alexey Navalny and celebrated novelist Lyudmila Ulitskaya. Syrova only allowed them to call three. The prosecution launched the questioning of all its witnesses with the same question: Are you an Orthodox believer? When the defence tried to ask the same question of one of its three witnesses, Syrova shouted: "Question stricken."

The defence knows they are fighting a losing battle in a judicial system that is notoriously politicised. But the media battle remains. Pyotr Verzilov, Tolokonnikova's husband, has spent the trial perched in the seat closest to his wife's cage. He tweets furiously, and constantly checks how often his message is spread.

On Friday, three men climbed on to a ledge across from the courtroom windows, wearing white, purple and green balaclavas and shouted "Freedom to Pussy Riot!". There have been reports of imitation stunts carried out in other cities in Russia.

"At first, after the [anti-Putin] protests started in December, the authorities got scared that they had lost control," Polozov said. "Now they've recovered and have started to react – and the trial against Pussy Riot is the clear first step."

Every day as the trial begins, dozens of journalists gather on the stairs outside the court, repeating a tradition launched with the second trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oil tycoon and Putin foe, which was held in the same room.

Amid the crush stands Samutsevich's father and Alyokhina's mother, Natalya.

"My daughter and I had very different views about politics," Alyokhina said. "But this trial is bringing them closer."

Putin said this week that the women should not be judged "too harshly". They face up to seven years in jail if convicted but their lawyers took Putin's comments as a signal that they would not receive the full sentence. A verdict is expected next week.

New push to free convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby CLEMENTINE CUNEO The Daily Telegraph August 04, 201212:00AM

http://www.news.com.au/national/new-push-to-free-convicted-drug-smuggler-schapelle-corby/story-fndo4bst-1226442532955

 

New push to free convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby

• CLEMENTINE CUNEO
• The Daily Telegraph
• August 04, 201212:00AM

Australian drug smuggler Schapelle Corby. Picture: AFP Source:AFP

Nervous wait for Corby parole news

Schapelle is 'no longer afraid'

Corby seeks government help

CONVICTED drug smuggler Schapelle Corby could be released on parole in just two weeks, if a letter from the federal government supporting her bid is viewed favourably in Indonesia.

Corby's family has welcomed the letter from the Australian government as "great and exciting news".

The government yesterday confirmed a letter supporting Corby's parole application was being prepared. If it is met favourably by Indonesian authorities, Corby could be eligible to apply for release in just two weeks.

The Department of Foreign Affairs refused to say whether the letter would provide a guarantee that Corby will adhere to a strict set of conditions that would likely be imposed for her parole.

"It would be premature and inappropriate to discuss the details," a DFAT spokesman said. A Corby family spokeswoman said: "This is great and exciting news which we are thankful for." It is understood Corby, 35, would live with her sister Mercedes in Bali to serve her parole time.

Corby, who was caught in 2004 attempting to import 4.1kg of marijuana into Bali in her bodyboard bag, will be eligible to apply for parole if a recommendation that another six months be shaved from her sentence is approved.

Her 20-year sentence was slashed by five years in May after she won an appeal for clemency from Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. A fresh recommendation for another six-month cut, if approved as expected, and combined with more than two years in remissions she has already received, will mean Corby would have served two-thirds of that sentence. Under Indonesian law, prisoners who have served two-thirds of their sentence are eligible to apply for parole.

Gusti Ngurah Wiratna, the governor of Bali's notorious Kerobokan jail where Corby has been imprisoned for eight years, said a guarantee would be crucial to a successful parole application.

"There are stages that must be gone through like hearing by correctional observer . . . guarantee from the family, and if she has undergone two-thirds of sentence or not, as well as a guarantee from the (Australian) embassy," Mr Wiratna said.

If she fails to win parole, the earliest Corby could walk free from Kerobokan jail is mid-2015, so long as she continues to win the maximum remissions each year.

The development comes amid resentment in some quarters in Indonesia after a clemency decision in May.

JOHNNIE LEE SAVORY Coalition Seeks DNA Testing For Man Who Insists He's Innocent of Murders That Occurred When He Was 14

http://www.law.northwestern.edu/cwc/newsandevents/Savory.html

 

JOHNNIE LEE SAVORY

Coalition Seeks DNA Testing For Man Who Insists He's Innocent of Murders That Occurred When He Was 14

Johnnie Lee Savory (Photo: Jennifer Linzer)

CHICAGO - Johnnie Lee Savory, 45, spent two-thirds of his life behind bars for a double murder that he says DNA testing can prove he did not commit.

The trouble is that, even though Illinois law guarantees the right to DNA testing when it is relevant to a claim of actual innocence, the courts have denied that right in Savory's case.

As a result, Savory is asking Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to order the testing, which would be paid for privately, at no cost to the taxpayers.

And today Savory was joined in his quest for DNA testing by a broadly based coalition of supporters — including five former U.S. Attorneys, 30 former prisoners who were exonerated by DNA, authors John Grisham and Studs Terkel, and arrays of business, religious, and civil rights leaders, academics, defense lawyers, and past and present and public officials.

Letters signed by the supporters — 212 in all — were released today at a press conference in the offices of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law.

Lawyers from the Center and the Chicago law firm of Jenner & Block took on the Savory case five years ago at the behest of the late U.S. District Court Judge Prentice H. Marshall, who in retirement had taken an interest in the case and had come to believe that Savory was innocent.

Although the lawyers succeeded in obtaining Savory's release on parole on December 19, 2006, on-going efforts to obtain DNA testing through the courts have not succeeded. With those remedies exhausted, Savory's only hope of proving his innocence lies with Governor Blagojevich before whom a petition for executive clemency based on innocence is pending.

It is in that context that Savory's supporters are asking the governor to order the testing. There is precedent for that — Governor James R. Thompson did it in 1988 in the case of Gary Dotson, who as a result became the first person ever to be exonerated by DNA. Since that case, DNA has exonerated 209 additional wrongfully convicted prisoners nationally, including 25 more in Illinois.

Johnnie Savory, an African-American, was twice convicted by all-white juries of the murders of teenagers James Robinson, Jr. and Connie Cooper, who were found stabbed to death in their Peoria home on January 18, 1977. The second conviction, which is the only one that matters now, rested primarily on the testimony of three informants who claimed that Savory had talked about committing the crime in their presence. Two of the informants eventually recanted, stating that the conversations in fact had not occurred.

The physical evidence in the case — a bloody pair of pants seized from Savory's home, fingernail scrapings from both victims, head hairs found in the victims' hands and bathroom sink, and a pocket knife with a blood-like stain on it that the prosecution theorized was the murder weapon.

The blood on the pants was of the ABO type shared by Johnnie, one of the victims, and, importantly, Savory's father, who testified that the pants were his. The pants were several sizes too big for Johnnie, and his father had suffered an injury at work consistent with the positioning of the blood. (Actually, the father was treated at a hospital, where there were records that would have corroborated his testimony, but that the defense did not present.)

The fingernail scrapings were said to be of no evidentiary value, and nothing regarding them was presented at the trial. Nor was anything presented regarding the hairs. The knife was entered into evidence, but the stain on it was so minute that it could not be determined whether it was blood. Most if not all of these items should be amenable to DNA testing with today's state-of-the-art technology.

Not only could the requested DNA testing exonerate Savory but it also could identify the real killer of James Robinson and Connie Cooper.

The five former U.S. Attorneys who support Johnnie's request for DNA testing are Samuel K. Skinner, Thomas P. Sullivan, Dan K. Webb, Anton Valukas, and Scott Lassar. They were represented at the press conference by Sullivan, a Jenner & Block partner and chairman of the Advisory Committee of the Center on Wrongful Convictions.

The broad range of the group is perhaps best illustrated by the names of Skinner, who was Secretary of Transportation and White House Chief of Staff under President George H.W. Bush, and Abner J. Mikva, White House Counsel under President Bill Clinton. Among other names indicative of the diversity are those of Noam Chomsky, a retired MIT professor who has characterized his personal visions as "fairly traditional anarchist ones," and Richard A. Epstein, a Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago known for libertarian views. Religious leaders among the signatories include Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and Greek Orthodox. Among business leaders on the list is Lester Crown, president of Henry Crown & Co.

The 30 former prisoners exonerated by DNA were represented at the press conference by Kenneth Adams, one of the defendants in the Ford Heights Four case. They languished a total of 434 years behind bars for crimes they did not commit. Four of them were on death row — Kirk Bloodsworth, in Maryland, Rolando Cruz, in Illinois, Ray Krone, in Arizona, and Curtis Edward McCarty, in Oklahoma.

The letter to which the exonerated lent their names notes that many of them would still be in prison and some of them might have been executed if they had been denied DNA testing, and ends with a simple plea to the governor on Savory's behalf — "We beseech you to do the right thing."

Chicago Sun-Times Story

Chicago Tribune Story

Chicago Daily Law Bulletin

Letter to Governor Rod Blagojevich

Letter from Exonerated to Governor Rod Blagojevich

Excerpts from Johnnie L. Savory's Clemency Petition