Reprieve Spring Newsletter 2010: News in Brief

•  In March the British government asked two high court judges to allow them to cover up evidence of  UK complicity in torture even more thoroughly than they did in the case of Binyam Mohamed. Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni was rendered through the UK territory of Diego Garcia and tortured in Egypt before going to Bagram and Guantánamo. He has since been released without charge. The government has requested that no evidence from the security services be seen by Mohammed or his lawyers.

• Bianca Jagger, Council of Europe Goodwill Ambassador, has spoken out in support of Linda Carty. Jagger says, “Linda wasn’t convicted because she was guilty. She wasconvicted because she is poor, she is a member of a minority and she couldn’t afford an adequate legal counsel, like many peopleI have met on death row.”

• A judge in Texas has spoken out against the death penalty, declaring it unconstitutional. Houston District Judge Kevin Fine said, “It can only be concluded that innocent people have been executed… Are you willing to have your brother, your father, your mother be the sacrificial lamb, to be the innocent person executed so that we can have a death penalty so that we can execute those who deserve the death penalty?”

• As the UK government decides whether to extend the marine-life conservation area around the island of Diego Garcia, Reprieve has asked foreign secretary David Miliband to consider allowing rights to people on the island. In our letter we refer to the Chagossian people of Diego Garcia, deported 40 years ago by the UK government, and to prisoners, including Binyam Mohamed, who were rendered through the military base there and tortured.

• Folk legends and lifetime supporters of human rights Billy Bragg and The Proclaimers played a sold-out gig in aid of Reprieve at The Electric Palace in Bridport, Dorset, on 26 March.

• A new short film collaboration between Massive Attack, former Guantánamo prisoner Ruhal Ahmed and artists Oliver Chanarin and Adam Broomberg is now online. Massive Attack are long-term supporters of Reprieve and our zero dB campaign against music torture. The film, Saturday Come Slow, takes a song from Massive Attack’s new album, Heligoland, and mixes it with a powerful interview from Ruhal and beautiful visuals filmed in the anechoic chamber at Cambridge University, where sound is absorbed by the walls. You can watch the film at massiveattack.com

• In February, New Yorker Freddie Peacock became the 250th person to be exonerated by DNA testing in the US since 1989 – 17 of those were on death row.

• California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is working to find a new combination of drugs for the lethal injection so that the state judiciary can be persuaded to resume executions. Four years ago a California judge ruled that lethal injection is unconstitutional because the pain inflicted constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Schwarz-enegger is also working to build a new $400 million death row in the state.

• The parents of Reprieve client and former British soldier Daniel Fitzsimons have appealed to the UK government to help with his case. Daniel is on trial for murder after shooting two colleagues in Baghdad last August; if found guilty Daniel faces execution.

• In January it was revealed that judges in China ignored advice from their own expert panel in the case of Akmal Shaikh. Two legal experts and three mental health professionals advised the People’s Supreme Court that the mentally ill Londoner should have a full mental health evaluation. In similar cases such evaluations have prevented death sentences being handed down. Akmal Shaikh was killed by lethal injection on 29 December.

• On  24 February the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the death sentence of Charles Dean Hood because the jury was improperly instructed about potentially mitigating evidence at his trial. The trial judge on Hood’s case had had an affair with the prosecuting attorney.

• On 14 January the president of Mongolia, Tsakhia Elbegdor, commuted all death sentences to 30-year prison terms and called for a moratorium on the death penalty with a view to it being abolished. He said, “It is a punishment of the highest and most serious nature which degrades a human dignity… I want to be a president who can tell his citizens, I will not deprive you of your life under any circumstances, knowingly, on behalf of the state.”

• Guantánamo prisoner Ahmed Belbacha has submitted a plea to DC’s Federal District Court to prevent his forcible repatriation to Algeria. Belbacha lived in Bournemouth for two years, and has reason to fear unjust imprisonment and persecution if he returns to Algeria. He was cleared for release from Guantánamo in 2007 but so far no government has agreed to give him a home. Reprieve has appealed worldwide – to the governments of Britain, Ireland and Luxembourg – for help.

• Reprieve has launched a new project – Engaging Europe in the Fight for US Abolition. We aim to identify foreign nationals on death row in the US, and to help capital defence lawyers with their obligations, under American Bar Association guidelines and the Vienna Convention, to make “appropriate efforts to determine whether any foreign country might consider the client to be one of its nationals.”

.

• British national Shabbir Zaib (above left, with Reprieve lawyer Marc Callcutt) was freed in March, after 18 months in prison in Pakistan. Shabbir was arrested and tortured following the death of his wife while on holiday in June 2008. He confessed to her murder under great duress. His Reprieve legal team won Shabbir’s release, thanks to the investigative and legal work of Sultana Noon, Sarah Belal and Marc Callcutt. Reprieve opened an office in Pakistan in March, and now has investigators based there.