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  1. Emmanuelle Purdon 2009 BW

    The bungled pursuit of Brian Dugan

    Emmanuelle Purdon on 13 November 2009

     The Brian Dugan case in the US is probably one of the best examples of the absurdity of the death penalty.

    It took over twenty five years to find him guilty and sentence him to death. Meanwhile, two innocents were each convicted twice and sent to their death before being exonerated. It led to the landmark malfeasance indictments of seven law-enforcement officials, which also led in turn to the death-penalty reform in Illinois. A third man was also charged, but fortunately never got convicted.

    Rolondo Cruz, one of the two men who spent more than 10 years of his life ...

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  2. Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable

    The Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable

    Philippe Sands on 12 November 2009

    The shocking secret memos used to justify CIA torture tactics are revealed in an extraordinary new book, writes Philippe Sands QC.

    The world is watching the United States’ efforts to come to terms with the abuse unleashed in the aftermath of 9/11. On the heels of a potentially far-reaching Spanish criminal investigation, in April 2009 the Barack Obama administration declassified more legal memos. this important volume brings together the newly released documents, together with some released in the summer of 2004, in the aftermath of the publication of the Abu Ghraib photographs.Whether these new documents allow the country ...

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  3. Generic Front page - Hands through bars colour

    Will Russia bring back the death penalty?

    Alex Harpe on 11 November 2009

    Russia has changed a great deal over the last two decades. One of the welcome changes was the introduction in 1996 of a moratorium on the death penalty.

    In 1999 the anti-death penalty movement in Russia gained a further boost when the Constitutional Court ruled that no Russian Court could sentence an individual to death until all courts in Russia had switched to jury trials. This objective will be met on 1 January 2010 when Chechnya becomes the final Russian Republic to introduce trial by jury.

    Once this happens there will no longer be any legal bars to resuming executions ...

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  4. Andrew Wander BW

    Guantanamo conditions deteriorate under Obama

    Andrew Wander on 11 November 2009

    On the night that Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, 21-year-old Mohammed el Gharani was sitting in a segregation cell in Guantanamo Bay's high security Echo Block.

    He remembers the excitement among his fellow prisoners at the prospect of an Obama presidency. "Everyone was very hopeful; people were saying he was going to change things, that he would close the prison," Gharani, who was released in June, says.

    "Even the guards were telling us that if he won, things would improve for us."

    They were to be disappointed. A year after Obama's election win, Al Jazeera has ...

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  5. Clare Algar BW

    Italian court convicts 23 CIA agents for extraordinary rendition

    Clare Algar on 10 November 2009

    The Italian court this week (4 November) convicted 21 CIA operatives and a US air force officer in the first successful European prosecution relating to the practice of “extraordinary rendition” or in plain English, kidnap.

    The operatives were each sentenced to 5 years in prison and the former head of the CIA in Milan, Robert Seldon Lady, was given an 8 year sentence for the CIA’s role in the kidnapping of Abu Omar in 2003. All the Americans were tried in absentia and are now considered fugitives. The New York Times reports that Armando Spataro, the prosecutor, said he ...

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  6. Sophie Walker BW by Emmanuelle Purdon

    Watching The Execution of Gary Glitter

    Sophie Walker on 09 November 2009

    Channel 4's latest faux documentary intends to shock. And it succeeds, despite a weak script and lack of any meaningful insight into failures of every legal system that executes its criminals. 

    At the beginning we are told that the death penalty was reinstated in a fictional Britain in 2005 after a vote in Westminster Palace where 316 voted in favour and 311 against it. Gary Glitter is been extradited from Vietnam to England for raping two young girls. Glitter, or Paul Gadd as we come to know him, is portrayed as malicious and having little remorse for his actions ...

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  7. Ahmed Belbacha

    A letter to Amherst from Reprieve on behalf of Ahmed Belbacha

    Clive Stafford Smith on 09 November 2009

    Reprieve attorneys Cori Crider, Ahmed Ghappour and Clive Stafford Smith write to the Massachusetts town of Amherst, in support of their offer to defy Congress and welcome Ahmed Belbacha, a Guantanamo prisoner with no safe place to go.

    Hearty greetings from Britain! We write as attorneys at Reprieve, a U.K. charity that strives to bring the light of justice to the dark corners of the "war on terror."

    Reprieve has represented dozens of Guantanamo prisoners over the years. One of the men we assist is Ahmed Belbacha (right).

    We have followed your lively discussion about bringing Ahmed to Amherst ...

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  8. Ricky Langley

    The Execution of Gary Glitter: why do we love to hate paedophiles?

    Clive Stafford Smith on 09 November 2009

    Which group of people is most consistently hated by virtually the entire British population? Would they be murderers? Muslim extremists? No, there is one group that comes top every time I ask the question: paedophiles.

    The degree of hatred for is consistent and venomous. The vilification runs so rampant that when one tabloid newspaper ran a campaign against ‘paedos’, some poor paediatrician had her house vandalized.

    Now Channel Four has entered the fray, reintroducing the possibility of the death penalty into British society, and staging the televisual hanging of Gary Glitter, convicted as the paedophile we love to hate. While ...

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  9. Clara Gutteridge BW

    Prosecuting the CIA: criminal justice rendered impotent

    Clara Gutteridge on 09 November 2009

    Milan prosecutor Armando Spataro has announced that 23 CIA agents have been found guilty in absentia for their role in the illegal kidnapping and rendition of Abu Omar from a Milan street to an Egyptian secret prison in 2003.

    People facilitating torture should be prosecuted, but the most fascinating thing about this prosecution is the two central characters. Spataro, who is not particularly left wing, was originally engaged in a criminal investigation of an alleged al-Qaida cell in Milan.

    Omar is an Egyptian cleric who, if we are to believe the prosecutor, would have been the one in the dock ...

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  10. Emmanuelle Purdon 2009 BW

    Man executed in Texas after jurors turned to the Bible to determine whether he should die

    Emmanuelle Purdon on 09 November 2009

    When Khristian Oliver stood trial for murder in Texas 10 years ago, several jurors consulted the Bible extensively during their deliberations.  Despite the court of appeals ruling that an 'important line' had been 'crossed', Oliver's appeal was dismissed and he was executed last week.

    One of the jurors testified that about 4 Bibles were in the jury room. Key passages were highlighted and handed around among fellow believers. At one point, a juror reportedly read aloud from a copy, including the passage: "And if he smite him with an instrument of iron, so that he die, he is a ...

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