OTHER
COUNTRIES - THE ROW
URGENT
ACTION:
Abdelrhman Zakaria Mohamed (male - 16): SUDAN
Ahmed Abdullah Suleiman (male - 16): SUDAN
According to a recent Amnesty International report Abdelrhman Zakaria Mohamed and Ahmed Abdullah Suleiman, both aged 16, were sentenced to death by the Criminal Court in Nyala the capital of South Darfur on 3 May.
The two boys have since
been transferred to Shalla Prison in North Darfur.
This transfer is likely to affect their ability to
communicate with their lawyer who is based in South
Darfur. The boys' lawyer will submit an appeal against
the sentence to the court of appeal in Nyala on 15
May... read
more...
URGENT
ACTION:
Sultan Kohail (male - 16): SAUDI ARABIA
Two Canadian brothers
held in Saudi Arabia in connection to a schoolyard
brawl that left one youth dead fear they could be
executed for a crime they say they didn't commit,
according to a newspaper report.
Mohamed Kohail, 22,
and his 16-year-old brother Sultan -- both of Palestinian
origin -- say they were coerced into confessing their
guilt for the murder of a Syrian youth last January.
Further exerpt: "16 year old Sultan, who was
attending a school popular among non-Saudi Arabs in
Jeddah, had been threatened by a group of school peers"..."including
kidnapping".
...read more (includes video footage at the end
of the story)
URGENT
ACTION:
Rizana Nafeek (female - 17): SAUDI ARABIA
Domestic worker and Sri Lankan national Rizana Nafeek was sentenced to death
on 16 June for a murder committed while she reportedly was 17 years old.
She was arrested in May 2005 in Jeddah on charges of murdering an infant in her
care. She had no access to lawyers either during interrogation or at her trial
and was believed to have confessed to the murder during police questioning. She
has since retracted her confession.
She apparently told the authorities that she was born in February 1988, but
they seem to have ignored this on the basis that her passport indicated that
she was born in February 1982. According to information available to Amnesty
International no medical examination is believed to have been carried out to
ascertain her age, nor was she given the opportunity to present her birth
certificate, which reportedly shows that she was born in 1988.
The latest news came in August 2008, when a court in Saudi Arabia was considering the appeal against her death sentence. Rizana Nafeek had been appointed a lawyer, who reportedly challenged the accuracy of the translations of her initial statements to the police. If the sentence is upheld, she
could be at imminent risk of execution.
Saudi Arabia is a state party to the
Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which expressly prohibits the
execution of offenders for crimes committed when they were under 18 years old....
Read more...
Amnesty International case sheet (PDF)
NIGERIA
There are currently 40 minors on death row in Nigeria as of November 2008.
(List of names pending)
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