They have said over and over that each and every person killed had been
given a fair and impartial trial and have been convicted by their courts of acts of terrorism. The courts have upheld the death sentences and the King has signed off on each killing.
I shake my head in disbelief that these people can say the word fairness when their idea of fairness is tortured confessions by the police, trials without proper defense, secret dealings between prosecutors and the courts. and every other corruption.
They say fairness a week ago when to end the year they had the
Filipino, Mr. Zapanta beheaded. Fair because his family could not raise the blood money to save his life. We have seen their fairness when woman are sentenced
to death by stoning for adultery while the man in the tryst is sentenced to a public flogging.
Does that sound like fairness and justice? The Saudi's said
they were all terrorists, but the fact is some were political prisoners who had been involved in protests against the Sunni led government's treatment of the Shiite citizens.
Thailand can talk all day about fairness in their system but everyone knows it has one of the most corrupt judicial system in the world.
Two young men now sit on death row after being accused, arrested, imprisoned, tortured, tried, convicted and sentence by a regime that railroaded them to this end to try and protect their image which would damage their tourist industry. Fairness? Not even close.
Indonesia's
AG Prasetyo has defended the killings that he and Joko have been the key figures in getting accomplished as all convicts that have had a fair trial and all their judicial options have been honored and completed.
Joko's denial of clemency was their last option and with his cold heart he would not even read about the cases. He cared not for rehabilitation. He cared not that the good that Andrew Chan, and Myuran Sukumaran were responsible for in the prisons of Indonesia and the fact that it made them the best tools Joko had to combat the drug problem the prison.
The death sentence and the horrendous life sentences of the other Bali Boys are representative of a judicial system out of control. Joko has no room to protest the killings in Saudi Arabia,yet
he has helped save Indonesian workers from the executioners sword by paying blood money to the Saudis at the very same time he was refusing to take phone calls from Tony Abbot of Australia who was trying to save the boys. Fairness?
The United States reaction to Saudi's butchery has been as tepid and limp as a dishrag. What room do we have to talk about fairness or the barbarity of foreign powers killing according to their laws. Here in the US we have men spending years on death row and then exonerated when further evidence surfaces, and most of it is because of ambitious prosecutors who are not above deceit and corruption to get a conviction.
Confessions gained by threats and torture have later been found to be false when DNA testing blow up in the face of the prosecutors. 66% of the DNA exonerated young people from convictions and sentences for heinous crimes are found to have confessed to the crimes because of police and prosecutor tactics. Fairness? Justice? I think not.
The death penalty is not about justice, It is not about fairness. It is not about protecting the public. It is all about politics, It is all about vengeance. It is all about POWER! It is all about CORRUPTION! It is all about proud, egotistical bastards acting as God and making a MOCKERY out of every person's God given Right to Life.
Bless the memory of the Pastor and the Painter!
Source: Death Penalty News, Op-ed by Bob Turner, January 7, 2016
