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Tuesday, December 29, 2009

CHiNA EXECUTES BRITON FOR DRUG SMUGGLING


REVIEW

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By Patti Waldmeir in Shanghai
Published: December 29 2009 05:35 | Last updated: December 29 2009 05:35


China has executed a British national despite pleas from the UK government, which claimed he was mentally ill and unfit to stand trial.
Tuesday’s execution of Akmal Shaikh, a British citizen caught smuggling heroin to China, prompted immediate condemnation by Gordon Brown, Britain’s prime minister.
“I condemn the execution of Akmal Shaikh in the strongest terms, and am appalled and disappointed that our persistent requests for clemency have not been granted,” Mr Brown said in a statement issued by the British Foreign Office. ”I am particularly concerned that no mental health assessment was undertaken.”

A father of five, Mr Shaikh, was killed on Tuesday in Urumqi, the capital of China’s westernmost province of Xinjiang.


Mr Shaikh’s execution is the first of a European Union national in China in 50 years, according to the charity Reprieve, which campaigns for death row prisoners globally. China carried out more executions than the rest of the world put together last year, Amnesty International said.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Chinese Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Mr Shaikh. The official Xinhua news agency said the UK government failed to provide sufficient proof that Mr Shaikh was suffering from mental illness.
According to family members, Mr Shaikh – who said he did not know that drugs were in the suitcase – travelled to China in the belief that he was going to be helped to begin a career as a singer.
A few years earlier, he left the UK for Poland with the aim of starting an airline. A preliminary psychological report prepared by Reprieve concluded that he suffered from “delusional psychosis”.

The execution could worsen relations between the two countries but early signs of Chinese public opinion showed widespread approval for the move.
On the website Sohu.com, all respondents commenting on news of the impending execution approved of it. One commented that ”during the (19th century) Opium Wars, illegal drugs came from the UK to China, bringing shame to China. Now we should fight against heroin from overseas, and whoever has broken the law should be sentenced to death.”

“This is not about how much we hate the drug trade. Britain as well as China are completely committed to take it on,” the British foreign secretary, David Milliband, said in a statement emailed to reporters. “The issue is whether Mr Shaikh has become an additional victim of it.”

Earlier this year, Beijing caused a diplomatic rift with the Australian government by detaining four employees of miner Rio Tinto, including on Australian passport holder, on charges of spying. The men were accused of using confidential commercial information to give the Australian miner the upper hand in annual iron ore price negotiations.


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By Geoff Dyer in Beijing
Published: December 28 2009 15:09 | Last updated: December 28 2009 15:09


A British man is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday in China for heroin smuggling, in a case which has drawn international condemnation of China’s criminal justice system and death penalty procedures.

Two relatives of Akmal Shaikh pleaded for clemency on Monday in Urumqi, capital of China’s north-western Xinjiang province where he is due to be executed after the Supreme Court rejected his appeal last week. Appeals for leniency from Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, have also been rejected.

Mr Shaikh, 53, was arrested in September 2007 after being detained in Urumqi with 4kg of heroin in his suitcase. His family and lawyers claim that he suffers from mental illness and that he was duped into bringing the drugs into China.

“We strongly feel he is not rational and he needs medication,” his cousin Soohail Shaikh told Associated Press on Monday. According to human rights groups, he would be the first European to be executed in China for more than half a century.

Although China does not publish figures on the death penalty, Amnesty International estimates there were at least 1700 executions last year – the highest number in the world – and other human rights groups believe the real figures could be much higher. Legal experts say that in the 1980s and 1990s, China significantly expanded the numbers of non-violent crimes that could receive a death penalty.

The death penalty has been the subject in recent years of a concerted reform effort, including a 2006 decision that all death sentences would be reviewed by the Supreme Court. State media reported that the Supreme Court overturned 10 per cent of all death sentences last year. In July, a senior official at the Supreme Court said that in the future the death penalty should be reserved for a much smaller list of serious crimes and said that lower courts would be encouraged to issue more suspended sentences.

Although China’s legal system does allow for mental illness to be taken into account in criminal cases, Mr Shaikh’s family say that his mental condition has never been evaluated during the trial process and appeals. Reprieve, the UK prisoner advocacy group, arranged for a psychiatrist to attend the trial in Urumqi last year. However, he was not allowed to interview Mr Shaikh or attend the judicial hearing.

According to family members, Mr Shaikh – who says he did not know drugs were in the suitcase – travelled to China in the belief that he was going to be helped to begin a career as a singer. A few years earlier, he left the UK and moved to Poland with the objective of starting an airline. A preliminary psychological report prepared by Reprieve concluded that he suffered from “delusional psychosis”.

China has defended the conviction, arguing that Mr Shaikh’s legal rights were protected. “This case has been dealt with according to law. Drug smuggling is a grave crime in international practice,” said Jiang Yu, a spokeswoman for the Chinese foreign ministry. “During the trial, the litigation rights and lawful interest of the defendant have been fully guaranteed.”

Jerome Cohen, an expert on the Chinese legal system at New York University, said in some past cases Chinese courts had reduced death sentences to life imprisonment after allowing a mental examination of the defendant. Given Mr Shaikh’s condition, “one might have expected the Supreme People’s Court to comply with Chinese law and international legal standards by requiring a thorough mental evaluation”, he said.

Earlier this year, state media reported that as many as two-thirds of organ donors in China could come from executed prisoners. Huang Jiefu, vice minister for health, said the government was establishing a nationwide organ-donation system to try to clamp down on the black market in organs from executed prisoners, although he admitted that hospitals sometimes bent the rules because of the large potential profits.



Death data
●China does not publish figures for executions, because they are considered a state secret. However, Amnesty International estimates at least 1,700 people were executed in 2008, although the “real figure is undoubtedly higher”.

●The number of executions has dropped sharply in recent years from as many 15,000 a year a decade ago.

●Zhang Jun, vice-president of the Supreme People’s Court, said in July the number of capital crimes should be significantly reduced and more suspended sentences issued. More than 60 crimes can draw the death penalty.



Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

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