Former Dictator Jorge Rafael Videla (Photo Courtesy of momento24.com)
By Patrick Vanderpool Impunity Watch Reporter, South America
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina-Jorge Rafael Videla, a former Argentina dictator who helped to overthrow former President Isabel Martinez de Peron, is on trial for human rights abuses. The abuses, which date from 1976-1983, include kidnapping and torture. The trial comes shortly after another former Argentina dictator, Gen. Reynaldo Benito Bignone, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for very similar crimes.
Videla’s reign as dictator, often referred to as the “Dirty War,” was shroud with secret military prisons and torture centers. It was not uncommon for Videla’s regime to capture leftist students, labor leaders or intellectuals and seclude them in one of these secret holding places. Some estimate that as many as 30,000 leftists were abducted.
Just days into the trial, Videla, who has previously been found guilty of unrelated human rights abuses and sentenced to life in prison, took responsibility for the military’s actions under his watch. Speaking to the court, Videla stated “I fully assume my military responsibilities for all the Argentine army’s actions during this internal war.”
Videla is one of about two dozen individuals who face charges stemming from human rights abuses during the “Dirty War” era. Videla and his codefendants are specifically on trial for the murder of 31 political prisoners who were held captive and then shot to death when they tried to escape.
One attorney stated that there are significant differences between the previous cases against Videla and the present case. The 31 political prisoners at the center of this case were jailed under the civilian government before Videla’s coup and were then murdered when Videla took power, before the prisoners had a chance to stand trial.
Miguel Ceballos, an attorney representing the victims, has a more personal connection to this trial than most: Ceballos’ father was killed under Videla’s watch. Ceballos said, “when they came looking for my father at the prison, he knew he would be killed. He said goodbye to his friends and left a photo of our family so they could tell us what had happened.”
Any added jail time from this trial would mean little to Videla because he is already serving a life sentence; however, a conviction would offer relief to the victim’s friends and family members. Ceballos stated, “This trial has been a long time coming. He is having the trial that he denied my father.”
by Warren Popp
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East
TEHRAN, Iran – On the fourth of July, Iranian authorities delivered a notice to the parents of Mohammad Reza Haddadi, informing them that they should plan their final visit to see their son because he is scheduled to be executed by hanging just three days later, on the seventh of July.
Mohammad Rexa Haddadi may be executed by hanging as ealy as tomorrow morning for a crime allegedly commited at the age of fifteen. (Photo Courtesy of Stop Child Executions)
Haddadi was given a death sentence in January 2004 for the 2003 murder of a man who purportedly offered Haddadi and his co-defendants (all above the age of majority) a ride in his car. He reportedly confessed to the commission of the murder, but then retracted his confession during trial, claiming that he had confessed to the killing because his two co-defendants had offered his family money.
His co-defendants later withdrew their testimony, which had initially implicated him in the murder. In spite of these developments, a branch of the Iranian Supreme Court upheld his death sentence. The head of Iran’s Judiciary, Ayatollah Shahroudi, then reaffirmed this decision.
Haddadi was first scheduled to be executed in October 2008, but the execution was stayed by the Head of the Judiciary. His execution was stayed two more times, but only after his family, on each occasion, received notice that they should visit him one final time. The organization, Stop Child Executions, claims that Haddadi’s father told reporters that Haddadi’s sister set herself on fire due to the anguish of knowing that her brother might be executed, and she is now crippled for life and in the hospital. His mother has also been seriously ill.
Haddadi is scheduled to die by hanging tomorrow for a crime he allegedly committed when he was only fifteen years old. His father claims he was even younger at the time—three months shy of his fifteenth birthday. Human Rights Watch says that Iran’s interpretation and use of Sharia law in its Civil Code defines the age of majority as puberty, which is defined as fifteen lunar years (fourteen and five months) for boys and nine lunar years (eight years and eight months) for girls. Judges are thus allowed to sentence children as adults beginning at these ages. While Haddadi’s execution may be legal under Iranian law, Iran is a party to two major international treaties that prohibit the execution of juvenile offenders when the crimes were committed when the alleged offenders were under eighteen years of age: These treaties are the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Other recent executions of minors include the tenth of June hanging of Mohammad Hassanzadeh, age seventeen, who was convicted of an alleged murder when he was only fourteen to fifteen-years-old, and the highly publicized execution last May of a twenty-three-year-old woman, Delara Darabi, who had allegedly committed a murder while she was seventeen years old. While Darabi had confessed to the murder, she retracted her confession, claiming that she made it after her nineteen year-old boyfriend told her that she could not be executed because she was a minor.
Tehran continues to maintain that the death penalty is an effective deterrent, which is carried out only after the completion of an exhaustive judicial process.
According to Human Rights Watch, Iran continues to be the World’s leader in the number of executions of juvenile offenders. Human Rights Watch claims that Iran executed at least four juvenile offenders in 2009, eight in 2008, and that human rights lawyers in Iran believe that more than a hundred juvenile offenders are currently on death row. Moreover, Iran is now only one of four other countries, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Pakistan, and Yemen, that are known to have executed juvenile offenders since 2005.
“Regardless of guilt or innocence, no one should be executed for a crime committed as a child,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The Iranian judiciary should show Haddadi mercy and abide by Iran’s international obligations banning executions for crimes committed by children.”
PARIS, France – The French parliament begins their debate today on a controversial bill to ban full-face veils, such as the burqa and the niqab, worn by some Muslim women in public. The proposed bill is the focus of the ongoing conflict between Islam and France’s secular system, which rigorously separates the church and the state.
France has the largest Muslim community in Europe, with an estimated five to six million Muslims residing in the nation. The interior ministry estimates that the bill will only affect about 2,000 women who wear the burqa, which is a full-body cover that includes a mesh over the face, or the niqab, which is a full-face veil that has an opening for the eyes. France already bans religious symbols and Muslim headscarves from being worn in schools.
The French Council of Ministers, who stated that veils that cover the face “cannot be tolerated in any public place,” approved the bill in May, and following their approval, the bill was sent to parliament. A parliamentary vote is not expected until next week and if approved, the French Senate will vote on the bill in the fall.
Photo: France proposes a bill that will fine women who wear full-face veils. [Source: CNN]
The proposed bill will make it illegal for anyone to wear an “item of clothing that hides their face” in public, and will impose a fine of 150 euro ($190) and/or mandatory enrollment in a “citizenship course” as punishment.
Additionally, forcing a woman to wear a full-face veil will be punishable by a year in prison and/or a 15,000 euro ($19,000) fine. The French government believes that forcing someone to wear a burqa or niqab is “a new form of enslavement that the republic cannot accept on its soil.”
French President Nicolas Sarkozy initiated the bill, and stated during his first state of the nation address that the full-face veil is “not welcome” in France, because it is “not a religious symbol, but a sign of subservience and debasement.”
Amnesty International urged lawmakers not to approve the bill back in May. Amnesty International’s expert on discrimination in Europe, John Dalhuisen, stated that “a complete ban on the covering of the face would violate the rights of freedom of expression and religion of those women who wear the burqa or the niqab in public as an expression of their identity or beliefs.” Additionally, the French Council of State warns that the ban would violate international human rights laws and the French constitution.
Those who support the ban argue that wearing garments that hide women’s faces violates France’s secular system and gender equality, while opponents say only a small minority of Muslim women wears a burqa or a niqab and the bill will restrict individual freedom. Some opponents believe Sarkozy is utilizing this controversy as a way to distract attention from his political problems and low approval ratings. Critics of the bill believe a ban of the burqa and the niqab could further strain relations with Muslim communities in France, and could increase tensions between France and Muslim nations.
If parliament and the Senate pass the bill and it is signed into law, it will be the first national ban in Europe on the burqa and the niqab. Similarly, other European Union nations have initiated their bans on veils worn in public. Belgium’s parliament passed a similar ban in April and Spain’s Senate approved a motion to ban the full-face veil in June.
By Elizabeth A. Conger
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East Desk
Photo: Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the forty three-year-old mother of two who has been sentenced to death by stoning. (Photo Courtesy of The Daily Mail)
TABRIZ, Iran – A forty three-year-old Iranian woman faces a sentence of death by stoning unless an international campaign, launched by her children, is successful in persuading Iranian authorities to overturn her conviction or commute her sentence.
In May 2006 Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani was convicted of conducting an “illicit relationship outside marriage.” This conviction resulted in a sentence of ninety-nine lashes, which was carried out in 2006.
Sakineh’s case was later reopened when a court in Tabriz suspected her of murdering her husband. Although she was acquitted of the murder charges, the court reopened and reviewed the adultery case, and handed down the stoning sentence on the basis of a “judge’s knowledge.” This legal loophole in Iran allows judges to hand down subjective rulings where they do no have sufficient conclusive evidence.
Sakineh’s children, son Sajad, twenty-two, and daughter Farideh, seventeen, assert that their mother has been unjustly accused, and has already received punishment for a crime which she did not commit. Sajad said:
“She’s innocent, she’s been there for five years doing nothing . . . Imagining her, bound inside a deep hole in the ground, stoned to death, has been a nightmare for me and my sister all these years.”
When Sakineh received ninety-nine lashes in 2006, Sajad was present in the punishment room. “They lashed her just in front of my eyes, this has been carved in my mind since then.”
Sakineh was forced to confess after the lashings. She later retracted her confession, and has claimed no wrongdoing.
The sentence, which emanates from Iranian sharia law, calls for women to be buried up to their neck, and men to be buried up to their waist. Those attending the execution are then called upon to throw stones at the convicted person. The stones used in the execution are selected to be large enough to cause the convicted person pain, but not so large that she would be killed immediately. If the convicted person manages to wrestle free, her death sentence will then be commuted.
Sakineh’s lawyer, Mohammed Mostafaei, who is an acclaimed Iranian lawyer, wrote a public letter regarding her conviction shortly after her stoning sentence was announced a few months ago. He said:
“This is an absolutely illegal sentence . . . Two of five judges who investigated Sakineh’s case in Tabriz prison concluded that there’s no forensic evidence of adultery. He added: “According to the law, death sentence and especially stoning, needs explicit evidences and witnesses while in her case, surprisingly, the judge’s knowledge was considered enough.”
Mostafaei also believes that a language barrier prevented Sakineh from fully understanding the court proceedings, as she is of Azerbaijani descent and speaks Turkish, while court proceedings in Iran are conducted in Farsi.
Sakineh’s children have received aid from human rights activist Mina Ahadi, who is based in Germany. Ahadi helped to launch the international campaign to free Sakineh last week. She said that shortly after the campaign was launched, she received phone calls from the families of two other women who are also being held in Tabriz prison. These two women, Azar Bagheri, aged nineteen, and Marian Ghorbanzadeh, aged twenty five, have also been sentenced to death by stoning under adultery convictions.
Ahadi told The Guardian: “Azar was arrested when she was just fifteen. They couldn’t punish her before she became eighteen years old according to the law, so they waited until now . . . and want to stone her to death. Ahadi also reports that Azar has been subjected to mock stoning in preparation for the real execution, with partial burial in the ground.
Ahadi stated that she is currently aware of twelve other women in Iran who are sentenced to death by stoning, but estimates that the figure is closer to forty or fifty.
As for Sakineh’s sentence, Ahadi said, “Legally it’s all over … it’s a done deal. Sakineh can be stoned at any minute … That is why we have decided to start a very broad, international public movement. Only that can help.”
She added, “Stoning to death is not simply just a judicial punishment, it’s a political means in the hand of the Iranian regime to threaten people. It has more function than just a simple punishment for them.”
Stoning sentences were widely carried out after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. However, in recent years, Iran has sought to reduce the number of stoning sentences due to the international embarrassment involved, and most people are now executed by hanging. Nonetheless, stoning sentences are still handed down each year – overwhelmingly to women.
Iranian activists have repeatedly spoken out against stoning saying that it is not prescribed in the Koran.
According to Amnesty International, Iran executed 388 people last year, which is more than any other country except China. Over 100 people have already been executed in Iran this year.
By Ricardo Zamora
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America Desk
GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala – The International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), set up as a joint venture panel between Guatemala and the United Nations to prosecute corrupt officials, could be in jeopardy. The last few weeks reveal that not even the well-intentioned are completely free from political pressures. Escalating pressures within the panel have led its chief, Carlos Castresana, to resign and have resulted in the removal from office of the attorney general, Conrado Reyes.
Problems began in May when the then-new attorney general, Reyes, began to remove prosecutors and investigators working with the CICIG. On June 7, Castresana objected to Reyes’ actions, asserting that Reyes was tied to organized crime — assertions which Reyes denies. Nevertheless, Castresana resigned immediately.
Less than one week later, the Guatemalan high court removed Reyes from office, albeit on the basis that the procedures followed by President Alvaro Colom in selecting Reyes for office had not followed the law. As it turned out, both positions are crucial for the CICIG to work but were both empty.
The UN provided some hope for the project by quickly appointing Francisco Dall’Anese of Costa Rica as the new director of the Panel. Mr. Dall’Anese, as attorney general in Costa Rica, led corruption investigations of two former presidents.
Many Guatemalans believe that the commission is the only bulwark against entrenched power. For this reason, the government remains worried as it continues to struggle to find a replacement attorney general and is concerned as to who will ultimately be picked. The CICIG is clearly having an impact against corruption but the internal strife shows how vulnerable it, itself, is to the same.
Guatemalans believe that no place or person in Guatemala is safe from entrenched power. Two years ago when Vinicio Gomez, the Guatemalan Interior Minister, began investigating drug trafficking, he started receiving death threats. A short time later, his helicopter crashed, killing him. Alba Trejo, Gomez’s widow, has appealed to the CICIG to hear his case. Although in an unofficial capacity, Mr. Castresana nevertheless attended the news conference to support Ms. Trejo and to support Mr. Gomez’s case.
Several similar deaths and killing await investigation but any enquiries remain in limbo as the CICIC muscles its way back onto its feet. Its casework includes other cases of government corruption going back years in Guatemala’s history.
Several former officials, from Defense Ministry officials to ex-President Alfonso Portillo, are accused of embezzlement. Others, such as former police chiefs, are in jail facing drug-related charges whilst still another is charged with running and extortion and hit squad.
Castresana reported that in 2009, only 230 of 6,451 killings were resolved. The fight against impunity in Guatemala remains an enormous job for the CICIG and people like Carlos Castresana.
Nineth Montenegro, an influential congresswoman, stated that “we have a police force that is penetrated… a prosecutor general’s office that is penetrated [and] a president who appears not to see anything.” She added, “In Guatemala, we never know who we are talking to. I have to believe in someone, and I believe in him, in Carlos.”
