21 April 201420 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Iranian killer’s execution halted by victim’s parents

source: The Guardian
published: 16 April 2014

When he felt the noose around his neck, Balal must have thought he was about to take his last breath. Minutes earlier, crowds had watched as guards pushed him towards the gallows for what was meant to be yet another public execution in the Islamic republic of Iran.

Seven years ago Balal, who is in his 20s, stabbed 18-year-old Abdollah Hosseinzadeh during a street brawl in the small town of Royan, in the northern province of Mazandaran. In a literal application of qisas, the sharia law of retribution, the victim’s family were to participate in Balal’s punishment by pushing the chair on which he stood.

3 April 201420 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Another preventable death in immigration detention

source: IRR News
punlished: 1 April 2014

On Sunday 30 March, Christine Case a 40-year-old Jamaican woman died at Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre near Bedford.

According to reports in the press, Christine Case was heard calling for help and had complained of chest pains shortly before she suffered a heart attack. The emergency services were called around 8am but she was pronounced dead at Yarl’s Wood at 8.47am. The centre, run by Serco on behalf of the UK Border Agency holds up to 405 women and their families and its healthcare is contracted out to Serco Healthcare.

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30 March 201420 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Soul-searching as Japan ends a man’s decades on death row

source: New York Times
published: 27 March 2014

Iwao Hakamada was a wiry former boxer in his 30s when he was thrown in jail for the killing of a family of four that shocked 1960s Japan. On Thursday, he limped from his cell on death row, a bewildered-looking 78-year-old who, his family fears, may have lost his mind in prison.

It took the courts nearly half a century to conclude that the evidence against him may have been fabricated by police investigators, and to order the retrial he sought.

The decision on Thursday to release Mr. Hakamada, thought to be the world’s longest serving death row inmate, underscored the dark side of a criminal justice system that boasts a near-100 percent conviction rate and immediately led to calls for reform.