Malaysia: Nine custodial deaths in less than four months

Ethnic police source: Malaysiakini
published: 29 April 2014

The counter is rising for cases of death in custody in Malaysia – now averaging more than two deaths a month!

This time, a 56 year old drug addict who was arrested on April 22 and detained at the Bayan Baru lock-up was pronounced dead when he was on the way to the Penang Hospital to seek treatment.

This is the second death in custody taking place in the Bayan Baru lock-up, which is a newly-built centralised lockup facility and the sixth case which happened directly or indirectly under the custody of the Penang police.

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.

9 February 201419 December 2022 4WardEverUK

The truth about the criminal bloodbath in Iraq can’t be ‘countered’ indefinitely

by: The Guardian
published: 7 February 2014

BBC’s Today programme is enjoying high ratings, and the Mail and Telegraph are, as usual, attacking the corporation as leftwing. Last month a single edition of the Radio 4 show was edited by the artist and musician PJ Harvey. What happened was illuminating.

Harvey’s guests caused panic from the moment she proposed the likes of Mark Curtis, a historian rarely heard on the BBC who chronicles the crimes of the British state; the lawyer Phil Shiner and the Guardian journalist Ian Cobain, who reveal how the British kidnap and torture; the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange; and myself.