verbalresistance:

DUBAI: Rights group Amnesty International has described as “deeply shocking” Saudi Arabia’s beheading of a woman convicted on charges of “sorcery and witchcraft”, saying it underlined the urgent need to end executions in the kingdom.

Saudi national Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nasser was executed on Monday in the northern province of al-Jawf after being tried and convicted for practising sorcery, the interior ministry said, without giving details of the charges.

“The citizen… practised acts of witchcraft and sorcery,” Saudi newspaper al-Watan cited the interior ministry as saying. “The death sentence was carried out on the accused yesterday (Monday) in the Qurayyat district in al-Jawf region”.

Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy, has no written criminal code, which is instead based on an uncodified form of Islamic sharia law as interpreted by the country’s judges.

“While we don’t know the details of the acts which the authorities accused Amina of committing, the charge of sorcery has often been used in Saudi Arabia to punish people, generally after unfair trials, for exercising their right to freedom of speech or religion,” Philip Luther, interim director of Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa programme, said in a statement.

Amnesty said the execution was the second of its kind in recent months. A Sudanese national was beheaded in the Saudi city of Medina in September after being convicted on sorcery charges, according to the London-based group.

Amnesty put at 79 the number of executions in Saudi Arabia so far this year, nearly triple the figure in 2010.

Times of India

Funny how this gross lack of respect for human rights, has gotten relatively little coverage in the news so far… I hadn’t heard about it on the news here since this morning, until someone pointed it out on Facebook… as we know, it’s not the first time something like this has happened.

‎…Something tells me if this were Iran, it’d be headline TV news for some days yet. But hey, “Saudi’s are our friends”… global smear efforts, public outrage and propaganda are evidently reserved for those countries, who don’t adhere to a particular geopolitical design…

Saudi Arabia… what a farce of a regime, manipulating religion as necessary and is required for domestic consumption - to utterly regressive and largely totalitarian effect… but I guess as long as you stay on the good side of your powerful western allies, and throw billions at any dissent (be it in propaganda, benefits often tantamount to giving away money, or towards training [courtesy of your western friends] for brutality and suppression), well then I guess you escape international accountability for injustices, by virtue of your friends…

stfuconservatives:bringtheruckuss:

Just like Troy Davis, Hank Skinner is scheduled to die with only days to live. November 9 is his execution date and he has been on death row since 1995. The star witness has recanted her testimony and others have implicated another man as the murderer of Skinner’s girlfriend and her two adult sons. Skinner has requested a DNA test to be conducted on all of the evidence, however, the request has been denied.  Of course, this is in Rick Perry’s ‘hang ‘em high’ Texas.

During his trial, the prosecution conducted DNA tests on the clothes Skinner was wearing, but for some reason decided against testing the rest of the evidence at hand, which includes a rape kit, the murder weapons, several hairs clutched in his girlfriend’s hand and a bloody windbreaker that strongly resembles that of the man accused by others as being the real killer.

The death penalty was established as a crime deterrent but only if the accused is guilty is beyond a reasonable doubt. The justice system has failed previously and will fail again in the future. History is repeating itself and the outcome may be determined after the typical partisan bickering which seems to prevail over our justice system, but time is short and a man’s innocence has yet to be determined through science.

Petition here:

http://www.change.org/petitions/withdraw-execution-warrant-and-grant-dna-testing-to-hank-skinner-2

“The evidence suggests that some of the victims were shot while being held as prisoners, when that part of Sirte was controlled by anti-Gaddafi brigades who appear to act outside the control of the National Transitional Council,” Bouckaert said. “If the NTC fails to investigate this crime it will signal that those who fought against Gaddafi can do anything without fear of prosecution.”

A Cuban man who spent 33 years on death row has been executed in Florida in a case that campaigners say highlights the cruelty of America’s system of capital punishment.

Manuel Valle, 61, was killed with three drugs including an anaesthetic that has not been tested for executions and that medical experts have said could cause extreme suffering. The manufacturer of pentobarbital, the Danish firm Lundbeck, has written to the governor of Florida, Rick Scott, to protest about the misuse of its product.

I can’t believe they went through with using that drug. Fucking inhumane.