The Return of Judical Corporal Punishment

JEDDAH (By Saqr Al-Amri, Arab News Staff) - The summary court in Jeddah has handed down a three-year jail term and 75 lashes in 10 installments to a Saudi woman who allegedly practiced witchcraft. The woman was arrested while receiving SR1,000 from a young woman who sought her magical help in winning the heart of the man she wanted to marry.

In fact, the woman was part of a trap laid by the police. They impounded several books on witchcraft found at the woman’s home.

RIYADH (AFP) - An Islamic court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a Filipino man and wife to three months in jail and 90 lashes each for prostitution, a newspaper reported Saturday. Police arrested the couple, identified only as Robin and Nora, a nurse and female fashion designer, after receiving a tip-off from the Saudi owner of the building where they were living, Arab News said.

They will be deported from the kingdom, home to Islam's holiest sites, after serving their jail terms in the northern Jouf region, it added.

TEHRAN (AFP) - Three young Iranians have been publicly whipped in the north-eastern suburbs of Tehran for conducting "illegitimate sexual relations," the Kayhan newspaper reported Saturday.

The three -- men aged 23 and 21, and a girl, 19 -- received 30 strokes of the lash each in Bomehen to the north-east of the capital, the paper added, saying the punishment was carried out before a crowd and the town court.

The courts and the police have recently tightened up measures against young people. The government-run Iran paper Wednesday reported Wednesday that some 50 young Iranians arrested recently during a "depraved" party in Tehran had been whipped. It said the arrested party-goers, aged between 18 and 25, each received between 30 and 99 lashes after their trial, following a party to mark the birthday of one of the girls.

TEHRAN (Iranian News Agency IRNA) - The 50 youths, aged between 18 and 25, who were rounded up earlier in a swoop on a "depraved" party in Tehran were flogged after a court found them guilty of depravity, the government-run daily `Iran' said Wednesday.

It said the young boys and girls, among them foreign nationals of Iranian origin, received 30 to 99 lashes of a whip after they were arrested in an apartment in a well-off district in northern Tehran in a so-called "depraved" party "under the pretext" of marking the birthday of the daughter of the landlord which, the paper said, did not coincide with the night of the incident whose date is still unknown. The daily quoted the judge as saying that the party-goers were not "family members", as it was mentioned earlier, and were "mixedly" dancing "half-naked".

Under Iran's Islamic sharia law dancing with opposite sex is forbidden. He said that the youths did not raise any objection to the ruling against them which, he said, "proves them guilty." "The daughter of the landlord is still under detention," he added. "One of the defendants who was a foreign national of Iranian origin admitted that the organizers of the party intended to propagate the depraved Western culture," the judge said. An unnamed judicial source had earlier said that the birthdate of the daughter of the landlord did not fall on the night they had gathered.

TEHRAN (The Times) - A COURT in Iran has sentenced a woman to be stoned to death for adultery and helping her lover to murder her husband in Tehran.

The lover, who is the woman’s cousin, is to be hanged. Both will receive 100 lashes first, the government daily Iran newspaper reported.

If the woman manages to survive being stoned, she will have to serve 15 years in jail. Survival is unlikely because she will be buried up to her neck.

Stoning is rare in Iran, where drug-smugglers and murderers are regularly hanged under strict Islamic Sharia. The last time two Iranians were stoned to death for adultery was in June 1996. A woman was stoned to death last month at a Tehran prison eight years after she was charged with acting in pornographic films. The sentence was carried out after the verdict was upheld by the Supreme Court.

Men sentenced to be stoned to death are buried waist-deep in the ground. If they have confessed to their crimes and manage to escape, they can go free.

Human rights groups fear that hardliners who control the judiciary are using stonings to embarrass President Khatami, a reformist.

Iran’s penal code relating to adultery carefully regulates the size of the stones. They must be neither too big nor too small, so that death is neither mercifully quick nor prolonged.

Yekaterinburg/Russia (Sunday Times) - THE teenage heroin addict knew what would happen when his mother brought him to the City Without Drugs rehabilitation centre. He had heard about the beatings given to new arrivals. It was just after midnight when his turn came.

Accompanied by another young addict, he was taken in silence from a damp, overcrowded cellar where he had briefly been held and escorted to a derelict house nearby.

He was strapped face down to a narrow bed and his trousers were pulled down. Moments later the screaming began.

The "treatment" he received is meted out by City Without Drugs, a group that has declared war on narcotics in the industrial city of Yekaterinburg, 900 miles east of Moscow. The group's founders, three wealthy businessmen, claim remarkable success in curing addiction - but the cure is intimidating in the extreme.

Cold turkey: young addicts in Yekaterinburg are beaten with leather belts then chained to their beds while they detoxify. Some claim it is a regime based on sadism
Photograph: Y Kondakov

Standing in darkness on either side of the teenager's bed, the guards pulled out leather belts and folded them for extra thickness. They then beat his buttocks, taking it in turns to strike while his cries grew louder and more desperate with each passing minute. One of the assailants used a cigarette lighter to inspect red buckle marks on raw flesh. Satisfied, he barked a few threats and called for his next victim.

The second addict, who had been lying terrified on an adjacent bed, was beaten without delay. At one point the pain was so great that he passed out. His tormentors hit him in the face to bring him round and resumed the thrashing. By the end of the session each had received 300 lashes; both had to be helped back to the cellar, where they were to spend the rest of their first week at the centre.

"On the first day we beat them with belts until their buttocks turn blue," boasted Igor Varov, one of the three businessmen behind City Without Drugs. "Every week we have to buy a new belt because they go too soft, but we have been impressed with the quality of Gucci belts."

"Drug addicts are animals who have lost all sense of values. This way, the next time they think about getting a fix they remember the pain of the thrashing rather than the rush of the drugs. It's very effective. You cannot solve this with mild manners - you need tough measures."

It was two years ago that Varov, one of the richest men in Yekaterinburg, and his partners launched their campaign against the drug menace. They said they had been forced to take matters into their own hands because the local authorities had failed to address a level of addiction that is among the worst in Russia.

Their followers mounted ferocious punitive raids on drug dealers. One suspected dealer was tied to a tree with a sign saying he was poisoning the city's youth. Others had their legs broken or their homes set on fire. But such was the demand for places at the rehabilitation centre that a second one has opened.

After their initial beating, addicts spend their first few weeks handcuffed to a bed, left to face their withdrawal symptoms with nothing stronger than bread and water. Later the inmates are put to work chopping down trees or labouring.

Nobody is allowed to leave during the treatment, which lasts a year. The few who have tried to escape have been brought back and punished. Former inmates who test positive for drugs are also subjected to beatings.

Before handing over their children, parents are required to sign a form absolving the managers of responsibility for any harm that might be done. Some 200 young addicts are under their supervision. Varov claims his methods have cured 50 former addicts in less than 18 months, several of whom have stayed on to work at the centre. Drug consumption and trafficking in the city have also dropped sharply, he says.

Many condemn the methods. Police officers have gathered evidence of inmates being beaten with batons and sticks. They have also recorded testimony from addicts who claim to have been handcuffed to iron bars and left dangling. Such allegations are denied by the centres.

Andrei, 20, who was treated at the centre and is too afraid of reprisals to give his full name, described how he tried to escape from one centre but was beaten so badly that he spent three weeks in hospital and was scarred for life.

"I was made to lie on the floor. Then two guys, one with a rubber baton and another with a wooden handle from a spade, beat me until I was unconscious," he said. "I was then left to hang handcuffed for three days from a wall. They are sadists. They love the power - that's what it is all about. You can hardly call it therapy."

TEHRAN (IRNA - Iran news agency) - Three Iranian men have been flogged in public in the holy city of Qom for "having illicit sex" with the same woman who also received lashes, the evening daily Kayhan said Thursday.

It said each received 100 lashes of the whip after they were identified by the woman who, Kayhan said, was married with two children.

It quoted the woman as saying she had opted for illicit sex because of "poverty and inability to pay rentals." The sentences were issued by Branch 7 of Qom's criminal court with summary jurisdiction.

The whippings were in line with the sharia or Islamic law which forbids extra-marital sexual relationships. Punishments can vary from jail terms to lashes, although rarely in public, and even death by stoning for adultery.

Dubai (AFP) - An Islamic court in the Gulf emirate of Ajman has sentenced a woman to three months in jail and 50 lashes for adultery and trying to sell the baby born as a result, a newspaper reported Friday.

The woman, whose nationality was not given but who will be deported after serving her sentence, was caught in a police sting trying to sell her one-month-old baby boy for 20,000 dirhams (5,450 dollars), Gulf News said.

She told police she could not afford to feed and raise the baby, the paper said, adding that the father of the baby was unknown because the accused had committed adultery with two men.

Sharia courts throughout the seven city-states that make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE) hand down severe punishment that usually includes the lash, a jail term and deportation for men and women who have affairs outside wedlock.

Two loving young people punsihed:
onehundred Lashes, then wedding

May 23, 2001

KABUL (La Stampa) - Two young afghani, a boy and a girl, are guilty to have made the love without being married, yesterday have received one hundred blows of whip eachone before legally beeing joined in wedding in a stadium of Kabul in front of thousand of persons assembled for this manifestation of the justice of the Taleban.

The original: "La Stampa", May 23, 2001

Three judges with a venerable white beard lashed, one after the other, Fazal Rahman that, with the naked upper part of the body and with the beard all ruffled, has fallen three times under the blows of the wide und thick whip of leather, flagellating his body in the silent stage.

Then was the turn of Nadia, thin figure wrapped in an long blue burka. The judges have made her to seat on the grass of the stadium before beginning the lashing, even if with less violence then her boyfriend. Then, from executioners the judges have transformed themselves in civil employees of the marital status.

And, on the same field of soccer has married Fazal and Nadia, 20 and 17 years. They had known themselves in Kabul - has reported radio "Sharia", of the military service Muslim - and they were themselves in love, but their families opposed to the wedding. Now it has been made.

540 lashes for adultery

DUBAI (AFP) - An Islamic court in the Gulf emirate of Fujairah has sentenced three Sri Lankan women, a Bangladeshi man and an Indian man to jail and to a total of 540 lashes for adultery, a newspaper said Monday.

Bimala Duaji was sentenced to 120 lashes and 15 months in jail, while her Bangladeshi lover, Farouq Miah, received 90 lashes and a 11-month jail sentence, the Gulf News reported.

The court also sentenced Jenny Farmelha Abdeen to 120 lashes and 15 months in jail, while her Indian lover, Faswa Mubaharan Bijoy, received 90 lashes and a 11-month jail term to be followed by deportation.
In a third case, Sulinda Chandra also received 120 lashes and 15 months in prison, while her lover, an Emirati identified only as S.M.S., was acquitted.

Sharia courts throughout the seven city-states that make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE) hand down severe punishment that usually include the lash, a jail term and deportation for men and women who have affairs outside wedlock.

Asians account for around 40 percent of the total UAE population of three million.

Mayor wants prostitutes to get 'a damn good spanking'

TARGU MURES / Romania (Ananova) - A town's mayor in Romania is proposing to punish prostitutes by giving them a "damn good spanking."

Dorin Florea, mayor of Targu Mures in Transylvania, wants police to have new powers to take prostitutes in hand - literally.

Mr Florea says he's shocked at the increasing number of prostitutes on the town's streets.

He said spanking on the bottom was no different to floggings that happened in the middle east for far less serious crimes.

He says people did not want to see the girls hanging around scantily dressed on street corners.

Mr Florea says if prostitution is legalised he would still not want to see the prostitutes on the streets and would open a council-sponsored brothel.

Women publicly lashed in Afghanistan

KANDAHAR Afghanistan (Associated Press) -- More than 1,000 people watched as two women convicted of prostitution were hanged Friday in southern Kandahar, the headquarters of Afghanistan's hard-line Islamic Taliban rulers.

The women, also convicted of 'corrupting society', were hanged in the sports stadium, their faces hidden behind the all-encompassing burqa that women are required to wear, the Taliban-run Radio Shariat said.

Two other women were publicly lashed for adultery. One also was sentenced to 10 years in prison, the other to two years, according to the radio report, monitored in the Afghan capital of Kabul.

The Taliban, who rule about 95 percent of Afghanistan, have imposed a harsh brand of Islamic law, enforced with public punishment. Murder, adultery and blasphemy can carry the death penalty, and the limbs of thieves are amputated.

Strict rules have been imposed governing the behavior of women, who are required to travel with a male relative and use the burqa to keep themselves hidden from view. Women are not allowed to work, and schools for girls older than 8 years old have been closed.

Many Islamic scholars say the Taliban's version of Islamic law reflects tribal traditions rather than Islamic tenets.

KABUL Afghanistan (AFP) -- Afghanistan's ultra-orthodox Taliban regime publicly executed two women and flogged a dozen others convicted of adultery in the southern city of Kandahar, the official Radio Shariat said on Saturday.

It said the women, Wasila and Shogufa, were executed on Friday at a sports ground in Kandahar, the headquarters of the ruling militia, charged with committing the "heinous act of adultery corrupting the society."

The radio did not say how the women were executed but the Taliban have in the past punished people convicted of adultery by stoning them to death.

The broadcast said the Taliban supreme leader Mulla Mohammad Omar approved the sentences awarded earlier by local courts. It said 12 others, including two women - Ghotai and Aiesha - received 39 lashes each.

The lashes were administered all over their bodies in the dusty soccer ground packed with thousands of residents and Taliban officials, it said. The 12 convicts will undergo jail terms ranging from six months to 10 years.

Ghotai and Aiesha have also been sentenced two and 10 years respectively. Three local men were given five years imprisonment each.

The Taliban militia which sprang from Koranic schools in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan in 1994, has enforced its strict interpretation of the Islamic Sharia law.

The Taliban, holding 90 per cent of the country, execute murderers, chop off limbs of thieves and stone married adulterers to death.

Women in the Taliban-held areas have been barred from attending schools or outdoor jobs and ordered to be fully covered from head to toe while in public.

Australian Aboriginal Tribal Justice

PERTH, Australia (AFP) - An Aboriginal woman faces the prospect of tribal punishment after admitting in court she killed her male partner.

The woman was determined she should face her community and be punished by customary law, judge Len Roberts-Smith said Tuesday in the Supreme Court in Kalgoorlie, 650km (400 miles ) east of here.

The judge imposed a 15-month suspended jail term, meaning the court sentence will not be carried out as long as the customary law is observed.

Tribal law provides for Pamela Thompson, 37, of the Coonana community, near Kalgoorlie, in Western Australia's Eastern Goldfields region, to be beaten with fighting sticks when she returns to the community.

Under the tribal system, her mother may also be beaten and her three brothers can be speared in their thighs.

Thompson pleaded guilty to manslaughter after she stabbed her partner in the thigh in July, 2000. His femoral artery was severed and he later died in her arms from blood loss.

Commenting on the court ruling, the director of legal services at the Aboriginal Legal Service in Perth, Mark Cuomo, said it was becoming more common for the state justice system to consider tribal punishment before imposing conventional sentences.

The Western Australian Attorney-General, Jim McGinty, has publicly supported tribal punishment as an alternative to existing penalties.

Flogging of a 17-year-old girl in Nigeria

ABUJA, Nigeria (Associated Press) -- Overriding international condemnation, Nigerian authorities lashed a 17-year-old Muslim girl 100 times with a cane after convicting her of having premarital sex, the government said Monday.

The flogging of Bariya Ibrahim Magazu - who said she was pressured by her father to have sex with three men - was carried out Friday in the northern state of Zamfara, according to a brief statement. She was in pain afterward but appeared to suffer no major injuries, local reporters said.

The flogging had been scheduled for Jan. 27, the first anniversary of the imposition of Islamic law, or sharia, in Zamfara, but it was indefinitely postponed last week.

Explaining why they went ahead with the flogging, government spokesman Bashir Sanda said local authorities wanted to bring an early end to a storm of international controversy created by an Islamic court's guilty verdict and sentence in September.

``The governor felt he ought to act immediately to put the matter to rest,'' Bashir said.

The girl was charged after it was discovered she was pregnant. According to the London-based rights group Amnesty International, she had no representation at her trial.

A sentence of 180 lashes was initially delayed until she delivered a baby boy on Dec. 4. The sentence was reduced to 100 lashes earlier this month amid outcries from human rights groups and the Canadian High Commission, which delivered a diplomatic rebuke to the Nigerian government.

Sharia's introduction in several northern states last year sparked bloody clashes between Christians and Muslims. Hundreds were killed.

Lashes for Adultery

DUBAI, Jan 12 (AFP) - An Islamic court in the Gulf emirate of Fujairah has jailed an Indonesian woman and her Emirati lover for adultery, as well as ordering them to receive 200 lashes between them, a newspaper said Friday.

Kusherini Sudiran was sentenced to 120 lashes and 14 months in jail, and one of her lovers received 80 lashes and a 10-month jail sentence, while another, also Emirati, was acquitted of all charges, the Gulf News reported.

The court also sentenced an Emirati woman, identified only as A.S.A., to 120 lashes and 15 months in jail, while her Pakistani lover, Bukh Bidar, received 90 lashes and a 10-month jail term to be followed by deportation.

Iran arrests 262 in crackdown on indecent New Year's parties

January 3, 2001

TEHRAN, Iran (Reuters) -- Iranian police arrested more than 250 people, including two Arab diplomats, in a crackdown on New Year's Eve celebrations, witnesses said on Wednesday.

A clutch of well-dressed Iranians, many sporting luxury cars and mobile telephones, gathered outside the Guidance Judicial Complex searching for news of loved ones nabbed in New Year raids by members of the Islamic Basij militia.

An unidentified woman, left, leaves the
Irshad iciary Compound Wednesday
after receiving 70 lashes for taking part
in a New Year's party wearing "indecent" clothing.

A police official said those arrested, mostly young Iranians from the well-off districts of north Tehran, had been charged with mingling with the opposite sex and consuming alcohol -- both barred in the Islamic Republic.

He said the judge had gone to the main Evin prison to hear the cases in an effort to speed up the proceedings.

ALSO Iran's Khatami proposes new ministers to parliament Family members and some of those detained said the accused from two separate parties had either paid hefty fines or received lashes before being released. Some had been forced to sign pledges to avoid future parties. Many others, however, were still being held.

Some of those released said two Arab diplomats, a Bahraini and a Kuwaiti, were among those detained. The Doran-e Emrouz newspaper put the total at 262, including the diplomats, two Britons and two Indian nationals. One young woman, who evaded police by hiding for more than four hours under the kitchen sink of an uptown villa, said the authorities had arrived at 12:30 a.m., just as the party was getting into full swing. "The host turned off the music and announced there were two police buses outside. He told everyone to try to escape," the woman, who declined to give her name, told Reuters. "They haven't done this for such a long time that everyone thought it was OK. Now, everyone is scared. If this carries on, most of these people will leave the country." A man in his 30s, who was released after paying a fine worth about $125, said about half the guests at the big New Year party had escaped. He said his sister remained in Evin prison, awaiting her hearing. Illicit activities Doran-e Emrouz said the arrests had been made because the guests at a party were dressed in an "inappropriate" manner. Iran's Sharia law obliges women to cover their heads, arms and legs in Islamic fashion. Of the 262 arrested, 140 were men. Drinking alcohol is forbidden for Muslims and men and women not from the same family are not allowed to dance together. The newspaper said none of those arrested were Christians.

The British embassy in Tehran said it had no knowledge of any of its citizens being held in custody. Despite the strict rules, Western-style parties in wealthy Tehran neighborhoods are a nightly occurrence but in recent years they have rarely been raided by police or Basij volunteers. Police dispersed a crowd of around 200 people who gathered outside their headquarters late on Tuesday to demand the release of their relatives held inside.

One hardline conservative newspaper denounced New Year celebrations elsewhere in the world as illustrating the "tragedy of Western society." Kayhan International, an English-language daily, said the festivities were "ushered in with a variety of entertainment programmes in most Western capitals with revellers dancing until the early morning hours to the music of disc jockeys and free flow of wine." For most Westerners the New Year, far from being a time of spiritual contemplation, was "a time to commit the oldest vices in the newest style without any inhibitions."

Corporal Punishment still alive

Lusaka (LRF News*)) - Some magistrates have continued passing corporal punishment against the order of the High Court.

But Judiciary Chief Administrator Philip Musonda has urged all such magistrates across the country to respect the High Court’s decision to ban corporal punishment in Zambia.

A magistrate in Lusaka a couple of months ago ordered a man he convicted to receive strikes of the cane thereby disregarding Judge Esau Chulu’s ruling to ban corporal punishment in Zambia which he said was unconstitutional and demeaning on the part of the convicts.

He said the Zambian constitution did not support torture and that corporal punishment amounted to torture.

Musonda in an interview last month said magistrate’s were obliged to obey the High Court ruling on corporal punishment.

“This is not optional, they just have to obey whether they like it or not,” Musonda said. “In fact we had a meeting with the prison department and it was agreed that corporal punishment was banned in line with the High Court’s ruling. One magistrate in Mazabuka wanted to pass corporal punishment but it was not allowed because the High Court ruling is binding. It’s only the Supreme Court that can overturn that ruling, not any other lower court.”

“If there are magistrates doing this let them stop because they cannot disobey the High Court just like the High Court cannot disobey the Supreme court or the local court cannot disobey the magistrate’s court,” Musonda said.

Rob Miller

Part 2:

ACTUAL 2001