Yemen: Mother executed with her children’s approval

Islamic Sharia Laws

25 Apr 2009, NewAgeIslam.Com

Yemen: Mother executed with her children's approval

Fouad Dahaba, an MP and Islamic speaker, said that he was willing to intervene to help for conciliation. He stressed that, although the concept of claiming execution is present in Islam, pardon is urged. "The Holy Quran says, 'The recompense for an injury is an injury equal thereto (in degree): but if a person forgives and makes reconciliation, his reward is due from Allah.'" Dahaba added that Yemeni society tends to make women responsible for all the mistakes in the country: "Calling for death to women when men are pardoned is an indication of foolish traditions." Barman said there is gender-based discrimination when it comes to dispensing the death penalty in Yemen. He cited a number of cases in which the family forced the children to ask for their mother's death, when the total opposite would have happened, had it come to the father. Tribal pressure in seeking the death penalty for women can limit the chances of pardon. Barman added: "I am sure that, if Aisha were the father, she would have been pardoned." -- Kawkab Al-Thaibani Photo: Aisha Al-Hamz URL of this article: http://newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1356 ----------------------------     Mother executed with her children's approval By: Kawkab Al-Thaibani For the Yemen Times   SANA'A, April 22 — Seven children went with their grandfather on Sunday to the Central Prison in Sana'a where their mother Aisha Al-Hamzi had been held for seven years. They went to give their approval for her execution by firing squad.   Aisha Al-Hamzi was charged with killing her husband, Yahya Al-Sharif, in 2002. She said she did it because he was abusing their daughter.   Two of her children watched the execution while the rest stayed in the car, in the prison's yard. She had four girls and three boys aged between eight and 25. Her little girls put their fingers in their ears as the four bullets were shot into their mother's body ending her life.   Yemen Times called the number of Abdullah al-Sharif, her eldest son. He was angry at the media. "We insist on her death because of the press who ruined our reputation," he said. "If our demands were not just, the execution would not have taken place."   Despite pleas by international organizations including Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International to Yemen's officials to stop the execution, it was carried out. A letter was sent from HRW to President Ali Abdullah Saleh urging him to stop Aisha's execution a few days before it happened. The letter indicated that the legal proceedings in Aisha's trial were seriously flawed.   Al-Hamzi had been awaiting her death since 2003 when the Primary Court of the South East of Sana'a passed the verdict of death sentence in 2003. The verdict was ratified by the Appellate Court in 2007. The Supreme Court approved the previous sentences.   Aisha alleged that the murder was in self-defence that whereas her children and her husband's family claimed that she killed their father because he intended to marry another woman.   Her seven children are the plaintiffs, and they refused to drop the case or to pardon their mother. They insisted on her death because she "ruined their reputation" when she claimed that their father was an abuser. In her will, Aisha donated a quarter of her wealth for charitable acts, and some cash to her cousins because they tried to help her in her case.   Aisha claimed that the father was abusing the daughter at the time of the crime. They argued and, in the heat of the moment, Aisha picked up a rifle which was ready to shoot, and killed the father. Her daughter confessed to being abused by her father, according to the preliminary investigation, but she later withdrew her statements.   According to the defence team from HOOD, a Yemeni human rights organization, the legal procedures questioned whether there had been sufficient legal defence at the beginning of the case, as the dead body of the husband was buried immediately the next day without being subject to autopsy to verify Aisha's allegations. Furthermore, she received poor defence, as the lawyer was appointed by the court at the primary stage and reported to be absent during the court sessions.   Legally, no one has the right to pardon Al-Hamzi except her children and her father in law. Even the President of Yemen is not entitled to issue pardon in personal cases.   In Islamic Sharia, and thus the Yemeni law, the murderer should be killed when the relatives of the murdered demand it, although it is urged and preferable to give pardon. The people who are entitled to seek the death penalty are the children and parents of the murderer, and it is enough if one of them pardons the killer for the death sentence to be dropped.   Abdul-Rahman Barman, one of her defence lawyers and a member of HOOD, said that Aisha's case is not the first in which a mother is sentenced to death by their own children. He knew of four similar cases in which children had demanded the death of their mother.   He said he supported her case both because she had poor legal defence and to advocate for the concept of pardon for a woman. Usually, only men are pardoned.   Fouad Dahaba, an MP and Islamic speaker, said that he was willing to intervene to help for conciliation.   He stressed that, although the concept of claiming execution is present in Islam, pardon is urged. "The Holy Quran says, 'The recompense for an injury is an injury equal thereto (in degree): but if a person forgives and makes reconciliation, his reward is due from Allah.'"   Dahaba added that Yemeni society tends to make women responsible for all the mistakes in the country: "Calling for death to women when men are pardoned is an indication of foolish traditions."   Barman said there is gender-based discrimination when it comes to dispensing the death penalty in Yemen. He cited a number of cases in which the family forced the children to ask for their mother's death, when the total opposite would have happened, had it come to the father.   Tribal pressure in seeking the death penalty for women can limit the chances of pardon. Barman added: "I am sure that, if Aisha were the father, she would have been pardoned." Source: Yemen Times URL of this article: http://newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1356 Radical Islamism & Jihad 25 Apr 2009, NewAgeIslam.Com Militant Islam winning in Pakistan Jinnah Must Be Turning In His Grave M EANWHILE, two disquieting facts cry out for redress. The first relates to the lawyers and civil society movement which heroically defended the cause of the chief justice and Supreme Court for two years. Where are its articulate spokesmen and its agitated young cheerleaders today when the lawyers of Swat are being sidelined from their profession and the law and constitution and democracy and women and minority rights are being trampled upon by the TSNM and TTP? Indeed, where is the chief justice, Mr Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, whose suo motu actions in defence of law and liberty have given him a legendary status but who is now silent in the face of the Taliban threat to the very law and constitution that he has vowed to defend and uphold? The second, is the role of the Pakistan Army and the PML( N). After having created and nurtured the Taliban for so long, the Army has now blithely handed over the ownership of the war against the same Taliban to the civilian order of the day. It supported the Swat deal and stood by while the Taliban liquidated civilian officials and landlords allied to the ANP during their peaceful conquest of Swat and then Buner. But it swung into action unilaterally with helicopter gunships and jets when its own soldiers were attacked by the Taliban in violation of the same deal. -- Najam Sethi URL of this page: http://newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1354  ---------------------   Jinnah Must Be Turning In His Grave By Najam Sethi   A NEW anthology of writings on, and sayings of, the Qaid- e- Azam, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was launched in Karachi last week before a distinguished gathering of the city's intellectual and media elite. In its preface, the authors, Liaquat Merchant ( President of the Jinnah Society) and Professor Sharif al Mujahid, wrote that the book " includes thematic essays on some critical aspects of Jinnah's politics and leadership— such as the sort of constitutional set- up visualized by him… his role in institutionalizing civil liberties, and in emancipating and empowering women…." In his presentation, Mr Merchant dwelt at length, amidst applause, on the sort of democratic, constitutional, just and secular Pakistan envisioned by Mr Jinnah in which all sects and minorities would be equal citizens of the new state of Pakistan.   The same day, every newspaper carried headlines from the sayings of Sufi Mohammad, the self- proclaimed leader of the Tehreek- e- Nifaz- e- Shariat- e- Mohammadi ( TNSM), and Muslim Khan, the spokesmen of the Tehreek- e- Taliban Pakistan, the conqueror of Swat, that the constitution of Pakistan, signed and approved by every political party of the country, was un- Islamic and unacceptable; that the Supreme Court, for whose supremacy and independence the country has recently witnessed nothing less than a revolutionary upsurge, was un- Islamic and unacceptable; that democracy, for which tens of millions of Pakistanis have fought and voted for over the last sixty years, was un- Islamic and unacceptable; that women, whose heroic struggle for emancipation and representation which has been backed by all mainstream political leaders across the spectrum, are mere chattel who deserve no education and have no human rights.   BOTH gentlemen proclaimed their determination to extend their "Islamic system and views" to the rest of Pakistan by force. The same day, Buner, a neighbouring district of Swat in the NWFP, fell to the TTP. As on the fateful day in 1971 when General A. A. K. Niazi signed the surrender document in Dacca dismembering Pakistan, Mr Jinnah must have turned in his grave the day Pakistan's supine parliament approved the Nizame-Nizame- Adl Regulation giving legitimacy to an unholy peace deal signed between Sufi Mohammad and the NWFP government at the point of a Taliban gun. The tragic irony is that President Asif Zardari did not want to sign that document into law, and dragged his feet over it for months, because he believed it was inimical to Pakistan's national interest.   But a chorus of aggressive voices, from the Awami National Party that won the vote in Swat but succumbed to the fear instilled by the Taliban, to a hoard of " media- mujahideen" whose rightful hatred of American imperialism has wrongly blinded them to the folly of sympathizing with and accommodating the Taliban and Al- Qaeda, coupled with the stunning refusal of the Pakistan Army and the Pakistan Muslim League( Nawaz) to condemn and resist the Taliban onslaught, compelled Mr Zardari to turn to Parliament for cover.   Only the Muttahida Qaumi Movement ( MQM) that rules Karachi, and a clutch of liberal journalists and papers ( including the writer) has had the consistent courage and imagination to stand up and be counted among Pakistan's foot soldiers against the TTP. Thankfully, however, the tide is beginning to turn. It began after the TV channels plucked up the courage to show the outrageous flogging of a young Swati girl in public by the Taliban. The supporters of the Swat deal in the state and media desperately tried to stop the transmission, then they tried to rubbish the episode by turning on the NGO that took the film and accused it of being an "American agent". But Sufi Mohammad and the Taliban spokesman have alienated all of Pakistan by their recent outbursts against the constitution, Supreme Court, women, democracy and rule of law.   Worse, by acts of omission and commission, they have repudiated the core elements of the "Swat deal" (to lay down their arms and not to use force to seize other territories) and the Nizam- i- Adl (to accept the Qazis appointed by the NWFP government, to allow the right to appeal by the yardstick of the constitution, etc) even before the ink on it was dry.   The TTP's armed seizure of Buner district and encroachments into Dir, coupled with continuing attacks on security forces in Hangu and elsewhere, have all but exposed the capitulation deal of the ANP and Army. So it is a relief to find even some "media mujahideen" ruing the Taliban's folly in breaking their word and exposing their true aims and objectives.   M EANWHILE, two disquieting facts cry out for redress. The first relates to the lawyers and civil society movement which heroically defended the cause of the chief justice and Supreme Court for two years. Where are its articulate spokesmen and its agitated young cheerleaders today when the lawyers of Swat are being sidelined from their profession and the law and constitution and democracy and women and minority rights are being trampled upon by the TSNM and TTP? Indeed, where is the chief justice, Mr Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, whose suo motu actions in defence of law and liberty have given him a legendary status but who is now silent in the face of the Taliban threat to the very law and constitution that he has vowed to defend and uphold? The second, is the role of the Pakistan Army and the PML( N). After having created and nurtured the Taliban for so long, the Army has now blithely handed over the ownership of the war against the same Taliban to the civilian order of the day. It supported the Swat deal and stood by while the Taliban liquidated civilian officials and landlords allied to the ANP during their peaceful conquest of Swat and then Buner. But it swung into action unilaterally with helicopter gunships and jets when its own soldiers were attacked by the Taliban in violation of the same deal.   Mr Nawaz Sharif's attitude to the TTP and TNSM has been no less equivocal.   He supported the Swat deal and urged the Zardari government to desist from military action " against its own people". Now he has the gall to tell a foreign newspaper that the Taliban are a menace and must be resisted "if they try to export their brand of Shariah to other parts of the country". He has not once said the same thing on Pakistani television and thrives on opportunist ambiguity on this issue. Source: mailtoday.in The writer is the Editor, Friday Times and Daily Times (Lahore) URL of this page:  http://newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1354