Clues to Obama's Muslim Problem

Maybe the belief that President Obama is a Muslim has not anything to do with him and all to do with us, a new study suggests.

As some traditional groups have continued to propose the president is a Muslim, and polls have shown many agree with the Obama-Muslim belief, scientists are trying to tease not together reason for the erroneous link flanked by the Islamic faith and Barack Obama and what that belief means.

"There's a wide-ranging tendency to think, 'Well, people are ignorant,'" study canvasser Spee Kosloff, visiting assistant professor of psychology at Michigan State University, told LiveScience. "We've had abundance of time to get informed, and our research suggest there's something in addition" to lack of knowledge, he said.

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Bali 9 Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran before court this month

A. Chan and Myuran Sukumaran

An Indonesian court will begin hearing the final appeal of Bali 9 death row inmates Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran later this month.

Officials at the Denpasar District Court on Wednesday confirmed a panel of three judges would begin hearing the appeal, known as a judicial review, on September 21.

The appeal, lodged by the Sydney pair's lawyers last month, seeks to have their death sentences reduced to 20 years' prison.

Chan, 26, and Sukumaran, 29, were 2 of 9 Australians convicted over the 2005 attempt to smuggle more than eight kilograms of heroin from Bali to Australia.

Despite being identified as ringleaders of the plot both maintained their innocence at their initial trial and 2 subsequent appeals.

But in the new appeal both have admitted they were part of the syndicate and express remorse for their actions.

The appeal argues both men have been successfully rehabilitated and are now role models inside Bali's Kerobokan Prison.

It argues previous rulings against the pair erred by finding them guilty of exporting drugs, even though they were caught before exportation actually occurred.

The earlier decisions were also in error because they contravened international laws, adopted by Indonesia, that reject the use of the death penalty against narcotics criminals, it argues.

4 witnesses are expected to testify at the appeal, including Kerobokan Prison head Siswanto and former Indonesian Supreme Court judge Yahya Harahap.

Prominent Australian psychologist Paul Mullen and eminent Ireland-based human rights law expert William Schabas will also be expected take the stand.

Chan and Sukumaran launched their judicial review less than a month after fellow Bali Nine death row inmate Scott Rush launched his own. That appeal returns to court on September 16.

If their judicial reviews fail the 3 men will be left with just one last chance to avoid the firing squad: clemency from Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

5 other members of drug smuggling plot - Martin Stephens, Matthew Norman, Michael Czugaj, Si Yi Chen and Tan Duc Than Nguyen - are serving life sentences.

Stephens' judicial review is currently being considered by Indonesia's Supreme Court.

The final member of the drug ring, courier Renae Lawrence, is serving a 20-year sentence.

Source: GMANews TV, Sept. 1, 2010

Obama, Netanyahu condemn killings as talks open

Aperture Mideast talks just after fresh aggression, President Barack Obama on Wednesday warn militant Hamas that the United States and its allies won't be stopped up in their pursuit of peace by the acts of terrorists.

Status with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, Obama condemned the killings on Tuesday of four Israelis who were shot while traveling near the West Bank city of Hebron. Hamas, which discards Israel's right to exist and oppose peace talks, claimed accountability.

"I want everybody to be very clear," Obama said. "The United States is going to be untiring in its support of Israel's sanctuary. And we are going to push back against these kinds of terrorist attacks. And so the message should go out to Hamas and everyone else who is taking thanks for these heinous crimes that this is not going to stop us."

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Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani subjected to mock execution

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani

August 31, 2010: Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani (left) the Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning, was told on August 28 that she was to be hanged at dawn the day after, but the sentence was not carried out, it emerged tonight.

Mohammadi Ashtiani wrote her will and embraced her cellmates in Tabriz prison just before the call to morning prayer, when she expected to be led to the gallows, her son Sajad told the Guardian.

"Pressure from the international community has so far stopped them from carrying out the sentence but they're killing her every day by any means possible," he said.

The mock execution came days after prison authorities denied family and legal visits to Mohammadi Ashtiani. Her children were told she was unwilling to meet them while she was told, also falsely, that no one had come to visit her.

Sajad, 22, heard the latest evidence of psychological pressure on his mother when he spoke to her by phone yesterday. "They are furious with the international outcry over my mother's case so they are taking revenge on her," he said. "The more the pressure comes from outside Iran, the more they mistreat her."

Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 43-year-old mother of two, was flogged 99 times for having an "illicit relationship outside marriage" in 2006 but another court reviewed her case after her husband was murdered. She was acquitted of murder but found guilty of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning.

Since her case has captured world attention, Iranian officials have claimed she was an accomplice to the murder of her husband although her government-appointed lawyer, Houtan Kian, has accused the government of inventing charges against her.

Sajad said he believes the only reason his mother is still alive is because of the international campaign for her release. "I beg everybody in the world to continue their support for my mother. That is the only way she might be spared from the death sentence," he said.

In a visit to Iran's judiciary office in his home town today, Sajad was told that the file on his father's murder case has been lost. "They are lying about the charges against my mother. She was acquitted of murdering my father but now the government is building up their own story against her."

Last week, Kian's house was ransacked by plain-clothes officials and his documents, including one which shows Sakineh was acquitted of her husband's murder, were confiscated. Since then, they have been unable to find a copy of the sentence."They are destroying all our evidence," Sajad said. "They were not unusual documents and evidence. They were just the official documents of my mother's sentence. They want to destroy them all because they know there are lots of discrepancies and contradictions in them."

Source: Guardian.co.uk, August 31, 2010

India: Presidential pardon for oldest death row inmate

Indian President Pratibha Patil

August 27, 2010: Indian President Pratibha Patil has commuted the death sentence of 75- year- old Shobhit Chamar — the oldest mercy petitioner alive.

For a person who has already spent 22 years of his life behind bars, this had been a long wait. His mercy petition was with the President’s office since 1998.

Chamar was jailed for killing six members of his upper- caste landlord’s family, including two children aged 10 years and eight years.

The ministry of home affairs (MHA) had twice rejected his mercy plea in 2000 and 2005 respectively, recommending to the President’s secretariat that he be hanged.

But the MHA relented the third time around last month when the President again sent Chamar’s file back to home minister P. Chidambaram’s office on June 9, 2010, for reconsideration.

The MHA revised its opinion saying Chamar’s sentence may be commuted given his old age and sent a communication accordingly to the President on July 6, 2010.

Based on the ministry’s suggestion, the President has decided that Chamar will spend the rest of his life in jail without parole.

Sources: Mail Today, Hands Off cain, August 28, 2010

IRAN: Courts confirm two more stoning sentences on adultery charges

Amid the controversy and international outcry sparked by the stoning sentence handed down to a 43-year-old Iranian mother of two, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, Iran's supreme court reportedly has sentenced two more people to stoning on charges of adultery.

The court's decision came just days after the Iranian judiciary revealed fresh details about Ashtiani's case.

According to Iran's Human Rights Activists News Agency, the court approved on Aug. 28 a verdict of stoning to death for Vali Janfeshani and Sariyeh Ebadi, convicted of having an extramarital affair.

Janfeshani and Ebadi have been held in the central prison of Orumiyeh in Iran's West Azarbaijan governorate since 2008, according to HRANA. The group said the sentences came out of a "vague and ambiguous judicial process" and that Janfeshani and Ebadi were not granted the right to choose their own defense lawyers.

The decree of death by stoning for Ashtiani, a sentence that Iran appears uncertain about carrying out, has sparked international anger and drawn widespread criticism of the Islamic Republic. Over the past weeks, human-rights activists have staged demonstrations in dozens of international cities against the sentencing.

Iran lashed back, reportedly telling Western nations not to stick their noses into the matter and that the Islamic Republic would not tolerate interference in the case. A statement by the judiciary that appeared in Iranian newspapers over the weekend said Ashtiani was being executed for the 2005 murder of her husband as well as for having an affair with the killer. Ashtiani's children have insisted she had nothing to do with the slaying.

"Though the judiciary branch is not obliged legally to reveal the content of the dossier prior to the conclusion of the investigation," the statement said, "and each verdict is issued away from any hubbub and any influence from the atmospheric condition ... the human-rights headquarters of the judiciary branch has decided to issue a statement to enlighten the public opinion."

Ashtiani's husband, Ebrahim Qaderzadeh, 44, was found dead on his bathroom floor in a town called Meshkinshahr in northwestern Iran. According to the statement, Ashtiani then confessed to having had an extramarital affair with the killer, Eisa Taheri, and said she had seduced him and tried to convince him to marry her. The judiciary said she also confessed to having planned the murder in collaboration with Taheri.

The court then sentenced Sakineh to stoning on a charge of adultery based on several articles of the Islamic judiciary code, a verdict endorsed by the supreme court and upheld by the human-rights headquarters of the judiciary, led by the well-connected Mohammad-Javad Larijani, whose brothers include Iran's speaker of parliament and judiciary chief.

A separate court also sentenced Ashtiani to death based on the principle of gheisas, which refers to the biblical concept of an eye for an eye. Meanwhile, Taheri was handed a 10-year sentence, according to the statement.

Source: Iran Focus, August 31, 2010

California fights to resume state executions

San Quentin's new execution chamber

SAN FRANCISCO — California officials are moving to resume executing death-row inmates as soon as September, prompting a judge to rule that a 3-year-old death penalty ban remains in effect.

Prosecutors point to new, recently approved procedures for lethal injections, saying the state is ready to execute condemned inmates.

Marin County Superior Court Judge Verna Adams had put lethal injections on hold in 2007 while the regulations were being drafted and adopted.

Adams said Tuesday the ban remains in effect until she rules otherwise.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown says the governor has asked him to appeal the judge's order. The state argues that the prohibition was automatically lifted when the regulations became official policy Monday.

Source: The Associated Press, Sept. 1, 2010

Judge again puts state efforts to resume executions on hold

California officials are trying to press forward with resuming executions after a hiatus of more than four years, but the state's lethal injection procedures continue to remain stuck in legal limbo.

A Marin County judge on Tuesday put up the latest roadblock to the state's effort to execute its condemned killers, issuing a brief ruling that for now bars prison officials from moving forward immediately with executions.

The order came the same day that state lawyers argued in federal court that nothing should stand in the way of setting execution dates soon for six death row inmates, including David Allen Raley, condemned to die in Santa Clara County for the 1985 murder of a Peninsula high school student and the attempted murder of her friend.

The new legal developments signal that the state is trying to kick-start the death penalty in California, despite repeated setbacks in the state and federal courts that have effectively shuttered San Quentin's death chamber since the January 2006 execution of Clarence Ray Allen.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation adopted new lethal injection procedures this summer, hoping to resolve state court orders that found the previous rules had been put in place in violation of state regulations, as well as a San Jose federal judge's concerns that the prior lethal injection method risked cruel and unusual executions.

But the new regulations now face new legal challenges.

Lawyers for death row inmates filed a lawsuit in Marin County Superior Court, saying they still don't comply with California rules for enacting new regulations. And U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel is now evaluating whether he is free to consider if the new lethal injection procedures, and San Quentin's new death chamber, address concerns that inmates may suffer inhumane deaths from the state's three-drug cocktail of lethal drugs.

Fogel first put California executions on hold in February 2006, when he delayed the execution of condemned Central Valley murderer Michael Morales to consider a challenge to lethal injection. Fogel has been unable to fully resolve the case while the state crafted new lethal injection procedures, and the U.S. Supreme Court considered the issue in a case out of Kentucky. But he recently issued an order asking whether he can get the Morales case moving again.

In court papers filed Tuesday, Attorney General Jerry Brown's lawyers argued that the state "now has presumptively valid regulations for carrying out lethal injections," and is prepared to defend them if they are challenged in the case being heard by Fogel. State lawyers also disclosed plans to ask a judge to set an execution date later this week for Morales, as well as imminent requests for execution dates for five other inmates who have exhausted their legal appeals. That includes Raley, who would be the first inmate from Santa Clara County executed since the state restored the death penalty in 1978.

But with the Marin judge's order, the federal case and those executions may be put back on hold.

A spokeswoman for Brown said the office plans to appeal the order immediately to permit the state to resume lethal injections, but lawyers for death row inmates say the various legal challenges must proceed first.

"I don't see how they can proceed at this time," said Sara Eisenberg, a San Francisco lawyer who represents death row inmate Mitchell Sims in the lawsuit challenging the most recent version of the lethal injection procedures.

Source: MercuryNews.com, Sept. 1, 2010