tagged w/ Fair trial
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KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan's Taliban, notorious for summary public executions, urged the United Nations on Thursday to press the Afghan government to stop executing prisoners on death row, citing concern about fair trials.
Afghanistan resumed executions this week after a break of more than a year, with three Taliban sentenced for deadly attacks among nine people put to death in the past few days.
Those executions followed a public outcry over rising crime.
About 120 other people have been sentenced to death and their fate rests with President Hamid Karzai, who has to approve any execution order.
The United Nations and European Union have called on Karzai to halt the executions, citing concern about the standards of judicial fairness.
The United Nations says Afghanistan's law enforcement and judicial systems fall far short of internationally accepted standards.
The Taliban leadership council said it too was worried about fair trials.
"We strongly request the U.N., the EU, the Red Cross and human rights groups to earnestly prevent this barbaric act," the Taliban said in a statement on their website, accusing Karzai's government of corruption.KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan's Taliban, notorious for summary public executions,... more
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Libyan prisoner of conscience Idriss Boufayed was released by the Libyan authorities on Wednesday 8 October.
An outspoken critic of Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi and secretary general of the Libyan organisation National Union of Reform, Idriss Boufayed was arrested on 16 February 2007 for trying to organize a peaceful demonstration against the Libyan government.
He was released on humanitarian grounds after being diagnosed with lung cancer in May 2008. There were concerns that he was not receiving appropriate medical treatment and that he would need to travel abroad for treatment unavailable in Libya.
Amnesty International welcomes the release of Idriss Boufayed but stresses that it must be unconditional and that he should be allowed to travel abroad for medical treatment if he wishes.
Arrested the day before the demonstration was to take place, Idriss Boufayed was detained incommunicado until 24 June 2007. He was then brought before a court and charged with "attempting to overthrow the political system" and "communication with enemy powers." On 10 June 2008, Idriss Boufayed was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment by the State Security Court in a hearing which did not meet standards for fair trial.
Amnesty International is also concerned about the continued detention of the ten other men involved in organizing the demonstration. The organization considers them to be prisoners of conscience who have been sentenced solely for the peaceful exercise of their rights to freedom of expression and assembly.
Jamal el-Haji was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment, while Ahmed Youssef al-Obaidi and the brothers al-Mahdi Saleh Hmeed, Faraj Saleh Hmeed, and al-Sadeq Saleh Hmeed were sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. Farid Mohammed al-Zwai, Alaa al-Drissi and Bashir Qasem al-Hares were sentenced to six years imprisonment each, Ali Saleh Hmeed to six and a half years and al-Sadiq Qeshoot to seven years imprisonment.
Amnesty International also remains seriously concerned about Abdelrahman Al Qateewy, whose whereabouts remain unknown since he was first arrested in connection with the same demonstration in February 2007.Libyan prisoner of conscience Idriss Boufayed was released by the Libyan authorities... more
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Judge Denver D. Dillard was trying to decide whether a slow-witted Iowa man accused of acting as a drug mule was competent to stand trial. But the conclusions of the two psychologists who gave expert testimony in the case, Judge Dillard said, were "polar opposites."
One expert, who had been testifying for defendants for 20 years, said the accused, Timothy M. Wilkins, was mentally retarded and did not understand what was happening to him. Mr. Wilkins’s verbal I.Q. was 58, the defense expert said.
The prosecution expert, who had testified for the state more than 200 times, said that Mr. Wilkins’s verbal I.Q. was 88, far above the usual cutoffs for mental retardation, and that he was perfectly competent to stand trial.
Judge Dillard, of the Johnson County District Court in Iowa City, did what American judges and juries often do after hearing from dueling experts: he threw up his hands. The two experts were biased in favor of the parties who employed them, the judge said, and they had given predictable testimony. "The two sides have canceled each other out," Judge Dillard wrote in 2005, refusing to accept either expert's conclusion and complaining that "no funding mechanism exists for the court to appoint an expert."
In most of the rest of the world, expert witnesses are selected by judges and are meant to be neutral and independent. Many foreign lawyers have long questioned the American practice of allowing the parties to present testimony from experts they have chosen and paid.Judge Denver D. Dillard was trying to decide whether a slow-witted Iowa man accused of... more
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