Entries by Nina Motazedi

On June 21, 2024, China announced that courts, pros­e­cu­tors, pub­lic, and state bod­ies should use the death penal­ty against Taiwan sep­a­ratists. The state-run Xinhua news agency report­ed that the new guidelines recommend ​“severe­ly punish[ing] Taiwan inde­pen­dence diehards for split­ting the coun­try and incit­ing seces­sion crimes in accor­dance with the law, and res­olute­ly defend nation­al sov­er­eign­ty, uni­ty and ter­ri­to­r­i­al integri­ty.” Critics say that the vague­ness of the legal lan­guage in the new…

On May 7, 2024, Harm Reduction International (HRI) released a spe­cial glob­al overview report on the use of the death penal­ty for drug offens­es, which is a vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law because drug offens­es do not meet the ​“most seri­ous” crimes thresh­old. HRI found that by the end of 2023, there were 34 coun­tries which still retained the death penal­ty for drug-relat­ed offens­es; Pakistan was the only coun­try to recent­ly elim­i­nate the death penal­ty for such offens­es – the first coun­try in more…

According to Amnesty International’s annu­al death penal­ty report for 2023, 16 coun­tries car­ried out the 1,153 known exe­cu­tions last year, con­sti­tut­ing the low­est num­ber of exe­cut­ing coun­tries on record with the orga­ni­za­tion but the high­est record­ed exe­cu­tion num­bers since 2015. The 31% glob­al increase in record­ed exe­cu­tions is attrib­ut­able to the 48% rise in exe­cu­tions in Iran (at least 853 exe­cu­tions), which account­ed for 74% of record­ed exe­cu­tions world­wide. Saudi Arabia came in second with…

Missouri’s April 9^th exe­cu­tion of Brian Dorsey, despite wide­spread sup­port for his clemen­cy, once again gar­nered con­dem­na­tion from the European Union, which described it as a ​“inhu­man and degrad­ing prac­tice.” The EU​’s state­ment high­light­ed the lack of the death penal­ty as a deter­rent and the irre­versibil­i­ty of the pun­ish­ment, not­ing that 197 death-sen­­tenced pris­on­ers have been exonerated. ​“The EU con­tin­ues to call for the uni­ver­sal abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty and for States, that maintain…

On April 16, 2024, the Biden Administration pro­vid­ed assur­ances to the United Kingdom that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is fac­ing extra­di­tion to the United States on espi­onage charges, would not face the death penal­ty. A hear­ing is now sched­uled in London on May 20 to eval­u­ate the assur­ances and decide whether Mr. Assange has any remain­ing legal recourse. A few weeks ear­li­er, the High Court in London grant­ed Mr. Assange a reprieve from extra­di­tion, agree­ing to grant him an appeal if…

Georgia’s exe­cu­tion of Willie Pye – the state’s first in more than four years – gar­nered crit­i­cism from the European Union. ​“Although the European Union and its 27 Member States oppose cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in all cir­cum­stances, we are espe­cial­ly con­cerned about the sched­uled exe­cu­tion of Mr. Pye giv­en his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty and issues regard­ing the qual­i­ty of his legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion,” said the EU​’s let­ter to the state’s Board of Pardons and Parole in sup­port of Mr. Pye’s clemency…

In the after­math of Idaho’s failed exe­cu­tion of Thomas Creech and Texas’ exe­cu­tion of Ivan Cantu on February 28, the European Union released a state­ment express­ing its regret and reit­er­at­ing its unequiv­o­cal oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty.. “[The death penal­ty] is a vio­la­tion of the right to life and fails to act as a deter­rent to crime. It rep­re­sents the ulti­mate pun­ish­ment that makes mis­car­riages of jus­tice irre­versible,” said the state­ment. “[W]e are con­cerned by the fact that the number…

The January 25, 2024 exe­cu­tion of Kenneth Smith in the state of Alabama with nitro­gen gas received wide­spread inter­na­tion­al con­dem­na­tion. The European Union reit­er­at­ed its com­mit­ment to abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty and called the exe­cu­tion method a ​“par­tic­u­lar­ly cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment.” The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, stated: ​“I deeply regret the exe­cu­tion of Kenneth Eugene Smith in Alabama despite seri­ous con­cerns that this nov­el and untest­ed method of…

The University of Oxford Death Penalty Research Unit, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with sev­er­al human rights non­prof­its, recent­ly launched a data­base of for­eign nation­als sen­tenced to death or exe­cut­ed from January 1, 2016 to December 31, 2021 in Asia and the Middle East. They found that Saudi Arabia leads the Middle East in sen­tenc­ing for­eign nation­als to death (385 peo­ple) and drug-traf­­fick­­ing (283), close­ly fol­lowed by mur­der (257), are the top crimes for which for­eign nation­als in the region are…

On November 7, Chinese media report­ed that for­mer pri­ma­ry school prin­ci­pal Zhang Longji was exe­cut­ed via lethal injec­tion for rap­ing five girls, age 8 – 12, and sex­u­al­ly molest­ing 17 girls, age 8 – 14. Sun Deshun, for­mer pres­i­dent of China CITIC Bank Corporation Limited, who was con­vict­ed of accept­ing $1 bil­lion yuan ($137 mil­lion) in bribes, was giv­en a sus­pend­ed death sen­tence by the Intermediate People’s Court in Jinan on November 10. If no new crimes are com­mit­ted dur­ing the two-year…