Worldwide Wednesday International Roundup: Belarus, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore

Belarus 

30-year-old German nation­al Rico Krieger, who was sen­tenced to death on six charges relat­ed to ter­ror­ism, espi­onage, and mer­ce­nary activ­i­ty, was par­doned by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on July 30, 2024, there­by con­vert­ing his death sen­tence to a life prison term. On August 1, Mr. Krieger was sub­se­quent­ly released dur­ing the largest pris­on­er exchange since the Cold War, accord­ing to The Guardian. Eight Russian pris­on­ers were released from Western nations, includ­ing Germany’s notable release of Vadim Krasikov, who was serv­ing a life sen­tence for the 2019 assas­si­na­tion of a for­mer Chechen mil­i­tant, in exchange for 15 pris­on­ers (4 Americans, 4 Germans, and 7 Russian oppo­si­tion fig­ures) released from Russia and Mr. Krieger released from Belarus. ​“The German gov­ern­ment did not take this deci­sion light­ly,” said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s spokesper­son, Steffen Hebestreit. ​“The state’s inter­est in car­ry­ing out the prison sen­tence of a con­vict­ed crim­i­nal was weighed against the free­dom, phys­i­cal well­be­ing and – in some cas­es – ulti­mate­ly the lives of inno­cent peo­ple impris­oned in Russia and those unjust­ly politically imprisoned.” 

Mr. Krieger was accused of col­lab­o­rat­ing with Ukrainian secu­ri­ty ser­vices and intel­li­gence to pho­to­graph mil­i­tary sites and plant explo­sives on a train, which result­ed in no loss of life accord­ing to his tele­vised state­ment. Aired on state tele­vi­sion days before receiv­ing a par­don, Mr. Krieger admit­ted guilt, apol­o­gized, plead­ed for inter­ven­tion from the German gov­ern­ment, and request­ed a par­don from President Lukashenko. Belarus is the only European coun­try to retain the death penalty. 

Indonesia 

The Indonesian gov­ern­ment has pub­licly announced that it will not seek the death penal­ty for Gregor Haas, Australian nation­al and father to National Rugby League play­er Payne Haas, were he to be extra­dit­ed from the Philippines to face drug-traf­fick­ing charges. ​“We made an agree­ment [with our Australian coun­ter­parts]. We promised to make sure that it will not go to the death penal­ty,” said Marthinus Hukom, head of Indonesia’s nar­cotics agency. Philippines Bureau of Immigration’s three-mem­ber board of com­mis­sion­ers has yet to decide whether to extra­dite Mr. Haas to Australia or Indonesia, where he is alleged to have tried to import drugs into in con­nec­tion with the Sinaloa drug car­tel. Spokesperson for the Bureau Dana Sandoval said that “[w]e are look­ing into these [diplo­mat­ic] con­sid­er­a­tions before we make a decision.” 

49-year-old Australian tourist Troy Andrew Smith was sen­tenced to six months of med­ical reha­bil­i­ta­tion for pos­sess­ing 3.19 grams of crys­tal metham­phet­a­mine for per­son­al use, after charges of drug-traf­fick­ing, which car­ry a poten­tial death sen­tence, were dropped. Mr. Smith has agreed to for­go an appeal and with time-served will be released in several months. 

Iran 

In line with pre­vi­ous pat­terns, exe­cu­tions have increased fol­low­ing the decline present dur­ing the after­math of Ebrahim Raisi’s death and sub­se­quent pres­i­den­tial elec­tions (May 19-July 5). According to Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO), at least 49 peo­ple were exe­cut­ed in July, bring­ing the sev­en-month total to at least 300 exe­cu­tions — a 30% decrease from the same peri­od in the pri­or year. About 73% of exe­cu­tions in July occurred dur­ing the last 11 days of the month with 36 pris­on­ers exe­cut­ed. In the past sev­en months, there were 172 exe­cu­tions for drug-relat­ed charges (a 20% decrease from 2023), 110 for mur­der charges (or ret­ri­bu­tion-in-kind), 15 for secu­ri­ty-relat­ed charges, and 3 for rape. 42 Baluch pris­on­ers, 20 Kurdish pris­on­ers, and 20 Afghan nation­als were amongst those exe­cut­ed this year. A lack of trans­paren­cy con­tin­ues to per­sist as only 9% of exe­cu­tions were offi­cial­ly report­ed; IHRNGO was respon­si­ble for ver­i­fy­ing 91% of exe­cu­tions via two inde­pen­dent sources. ​“We are par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ried about the new wave of exe­cu­tions of Kurdish civ­il activists and drug death row pris­on­ers in the com­ing weeks and months,” said IHRNGO Director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam. ​“The only way to pre­vent this wave of exe­cu­tions is to raise its polit­i­cal cost through civ­il soci­ety protests and international pressure.” 

34-year-old Kurdish pro­test­er Reza Rasaei, who was arrest­ed in rela­tion to the 2022 ​“Woman, Life, Freedom” protests, was secret­ly exe­cut­ed on August 6, 2024. He was charged in a group tri­al of 11 defen­dants accused of par­tic­i­pat­ing in the killing of a mem­ber of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. According to Amnesty International, Mr. Rasaei marks the 10^th ​“Woman, Life, Freedom” pro­test­er to be exe­cut­ed. He was sen­tenced to death in October 2023 fol­low­ing unfair tri­al pro­ceed­ings that depend­ed large­ly on con­fes­sions obtained from tor­ture, includ­ing ​“beat­ings, elec­tric shocks, suf­fo­ca­tion and sex­u­al vio­lence.” Authorities for­bade the fam­i­ly from bury­ing his body in his home­town, forc­ing them to bury it in a remote area. ​“This exe­cu­tion lays bare once again how Iran’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is rot­ten to the core and high­lights the Iranian author­i­ties resolve to use the death penal­ty as a tool of polit­i­cal repres­sion to instil [sic] fear among the pop­u­la­tion,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa. ​“It also dis­pels any illu­sions of human rights progress with a new pres­i­dent assum­ing pow­er last week. 

After spend­ing 15 years on death row, Kurdish-Sunni polit­i­cal pris­on­er, Kamran Sheikheh was exe­cut­ed on July 25, 2024. Mr. Sheikheh was pros­e­cut­ed along­side six oth­ers for ​“enmi­ty against god” and ​“cor­rup­tion on earth” and is the last to be exe­cut­ed. ​“Kamran’s exe­cu­tion, like that of his six co-defen­dants, was unlaw­ful accord­ing to inter­na­tion­al law and the Islamic Republic’s own laws, amount­ing to an extra­ju­di­cial killing,” said Director Amiry-Moghaddam. 

On July 23, 2024, lawyers for Kurdish civ­il rights activist Pakhshan Azizi were noti­fied of her sen­tence of death and four years impris­on­ment on charges of armed rebel­lion through mem­ber­ship of armed oppo­si­tion groups. Upon return­ing to Iran after 10 years abroad, she was arrest­ed on August 4, 2023 and held at Evin prison where her vis­i­ta­tion priv­i­leges, includ­ing from lawyers, were with­held for the dura­tion of her five month stay. Ms. Azizi, who worked as a jour­nal­ist and social work­er in human­i­tar­i­an con­texts, denies asso­ci­a­tion to armed oppo­si­tion groups, writ­ing in a let­ter from prison: ​“Working in refugee camps could be the great­est moral-con­science ser­vice in a soci­ety that has been under oppres­sion for years. Is every­one there a mem­ber of the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party]?” She is the sec­ond female activist to be sen­tenced to death in July — worker’s rights activist Sharifeh Mohammadi was sen­tenced ear­li­er this month. 

In an unprece­dent­ed move, more than 20 men, includ­ing four Afghan nation­als, were trans­ferred to pre-exe­cu­tion cells in Ghezelhesar Prison on August 5 and 6 and are at immi­nent risk of exe­cu­tion. ​“They’ve closed the doors in the wards. They’re sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed tomor­row. All the cells are full, we don’t know exact­ly how many of them there are,” a Ghezelhesar pris­on­er told IHRNGO. [UPDATE August 7, 1:14pm ET: 26 men at Ghezelhesar Prison and three men at Karaj Prison were exe­cut­ed in a group exe­cu­tion for mur­der, rape, and drug-relat­ed offens­es. According to IHRNGO, group exe­cu­tions this large are unprece­dent­ed in the last two decades. The most recent group exe­cu­tion pri­or to this was the exe­cu­tion of 20 for drug-relat­ed offens­es in 2009.]

Iraq 

On July 10, 2024, the Supreme Judicial Council in Iraq sen­tenced to death an unnamed wid­ow of the ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was known to have four wives, for her involve­ment with the armed group, includ­ing detain­ing kid­napped Yazidi women in her Mosul home. An anony­mous court offi­cial told Reuters: ​“The crim­i­nal court today sen­tenced Baghdadi’s wife to death by hang­ing for crimes against human­i­ty and geno­cide against the Yazidi peo­ple and also for con­tribut­ing to ter­ror­ism actions.” The sen­tence must now be rat­i­fied by an appeals court.

This deci­sion comes 10 years after the Yazidi geno­cide and near­ly five years after U.S. Special Forces killed al-Baghdadi. Since 2017, when ISIL was dri­ven out of Iraq, courts have sen­tenced hun­dreds to death and life prison terms, accord­ing to Al Jazeera. Rights groups, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and United Nations experts, have crit­i­cized the nation for their lack of trans­paren­cy, vague coun­tert­er­ror­ism law, and unfair tri­al pro­ceed­ings. In April, at least 13 men were exe­cut­ed, mark­ing the country’s first mass exe­cu­tion of 2024 and sec­ond since December 2023 — the first mass exe­cu­tion since November 2020 — rais­ing wide­spread inter­na­tion­al con­cern and prompt­ing calls for a mora­to­ri­um. In their June 27 press release, UN Special Rapporteurs high­light­ed unlaw­ful appli­ca­tions of the death penal­ty, stat­ing: ​“We are alarmed by the high num­ber of exe­cu­tions pub­licly report­ed since 2016, near­ly four hun­dred, includ­ing 30 this year, and the explic­it polit­i­cal com­mit­ment to con­tin­ue imple­ment­ing death sen­tences, in total dis­re­gard to the report­ed irreg­u­lar­i­ties in the admin­is­tra­tion of jus­tice, cas­es of enforced dis­ap­pear­ances, and tor­ture-taint­ed con­fes­sions, which led to these unfair sen­tences.” With offi­cial fig­ures plac­ing the death row pop­u­la­tion at 8,000, experts warned ​“that when arbi­trary exe­cu­tions are on a wide­spread and sys­tem­at­ic basis, they may amount to crimes against humanity.” 

On July 4, 2024, Sweden’s Foreign Ministry announced plans to sum­mon the Iraqi chargé d’affaires over the recent death sen­tences of three Swedes for their involve­ment in the shoot­ing of anoth­er Swedish cit­i­zen in January. ​“The infor­ma­tion we have received on the death penal­ties is extreme­ly seri­ous and we are work­ing to ensure the sen­tences will not be car­ried out,” the for­eign min­istry said in an emailed state­ment to Reuters. According to report­ing by the Associated Press, Swedish media believe the inci­dent to be relat­ed to a war between the Swedish gangs, the Foxtrot and Rumba. A fourth Swedish cit­i­zen is thought to have received a death sen­tence for a sep­a­rate drug-relat­ed inci­dent, although con­fir­ma­tion from Sweden’s Foreign Ministry is pending. 

Saudi Arabia 

According to the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR), there were 15 drug-relat­ed exe­cu­tions car­ried out in July, com­pris­ing 83% of all drug-relat­ed exe­cu­tions this year. Drug-relat­ed crimes make up 14% of all exe­cu­tions this year (126) and July exe­cu­tions account for 31% of all exe­cu­tions this year. 

Singapore 

In the span of a week, two men were hanged for drug-traf­fick­ing, which fail to meet the inter­na­tion­al thresh­old of a ​“most seri­ous” crime, bring­ing the total num­ber of exe­cu­tions this year to three. On August 7, 2024, a 59-year-old man was exe­cut­ed for traf­fick­ing ​“not less than 35.85” grams (1.3 ounces) of pure hero­in fol­low­ing the president’s denial of his clemen­cy peti­tion and the Court of Appeal’s ear­li­er rejec­tion of his appeal on May 11, 2022. On August 2, a 45-year-old man, who was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in February 2019, was exe­cut­ed for traf­fick­ing 36.93 grams (1.3 ounces) of pure hero­in. ​“He was accord­ed full due process under the law, and was rep­re­sent­ed by legal coun­sel through­out the process,” said the Central Narcotics Bureau in a state­ment fol­low­ing both exe­cu­tions. According to the Agence France-Presse, there have been 19 exe­cu­tions since exe­cu­tions resumed in March 2022. 

Following a tip from the Hong Kong nar­cotics bureau, a 25-year-old Hong Kong man was arrest­ed on July 18, 2024 for import­ing 4.15kg [9lbs] with an esti­mat­ed val­ue of $384,260, of crys­tal meth into Singapore and could face the death penal­ty; the meth was hid­den in the base of two stone fig­urines of a Chinese myth­i­cal crea­ture. ​“If a per­son is found guilty of traf­fick­ing more than 250g of metham­phet­a­mine, he or she may face the manda­to­ry death penal­ty,” said the Singapore’s Central Narcotics Bureau. This is the third instance in less than four weeks in which Hong Kong aid­ed for­eign gov­ern­ments in crack­ing down on drug-traf­fick­ing in the region. 

On July 16, 2024, the Court of Appeal acquit­ted a 63-year-old man, Mohamed Mubin Abdul Rahman, who was con­vict­ed of traf­fick­ing hero­in and sen­tenced to death in 2020 due to an incon­sis­tent time­line in the prosecution’s case. The pros­e­cu­tion rec­om­mend­ed that Mr. Mubin be acquit­ted and sug­gest­ed two amend­ed charges for pos­ses­sion of metham­phet­a­mines, which Mr. Mubin sub­se­quent­ly plead guilty to. The court sen­tenced him to time-served and ordered his release.