Amnesty criticizes Iraq over death sentences News
Amnesty criticizes Iraq over death sentences

Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] criticized [press release] the state of justice in Iraq on Thursday after a court in that country sentenced 40 men to death. The Baghdad court found the men guilty of being Sunni jihadists and allied militants that carried out a massacre of 1,700 military cadets from the Speicher Military camp by the Islamic State in June 2014. The men are sentenced to death by hanging under Iraq’s anti-terrorism law that states [Global Post report] that anyone who “perpetrates, incites, plans, finances or assists acts of terrorism will be sentenced to death”. The 40 death sentences brings the total sentenced to death in 2016 to 92 death sentences in six weeks. The advocacy organization called on Iraqi authorities to halt the ratification of death sentences and to establish a moratorium on executions. AI’s Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director said that, “[t]he vast majority of the trials have been grossly unfair, with many of the defendants claiming to have been tortured into ‘confessing’ the crimes. These allegations must be urgently investigated and a re-trial that meets international fair trial standard should be ordered.”

The use of the death penalty remains controversial worldwide. In 2014 UN officials called on the government of Iraq to impose a moratorium on the death penalty [JURIST report] in response to a significant rise in executions since the country restored capital punishment in 2005. Last month AI reported on the many juvenile offenders [JURIST report] on death row in Iran. The report stated that 73 executions of juvenile offenders took place between 2005 and 2015 and that 160 juvenile offenders are currently on death row. Last year AI said that use of the death penalty in Pakistan [JURIST report] was undergoing a “disturbing and dangerous” escalation after the execution of two men convicted of non-terrorism offenses.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

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On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.