Tag Archives: 2000s

2005: A gay couple in Saudi Arabia

Posted on by

Stay classy, Saudi Arabia.

RIYADH—A gay couple was beaded in a public execution Sunday [March 13, 2005] in Saudi Arabia after being convicted of killing a blackmailer. If they had been exposed as gay they could have been executed anyway.

Homosexuality is punishable by flogging, lengthy prison terms or death under Sharia Islamic law.

The Saudi Interior Ministry issued a statement Sunday announcing the execution. It said that Ahmed al-Enezi and Shahir al-Roubli, both Saudis, ran over Malik Khan in their car, beat him on the head with stones and set fire to his corpse “fearing they would be exposed after the victim witnessed them in a shameful situation”.

The term “shameful situation” is regularly used by the government to refer to homosexual acts.

The ministry said the two men were executed in the northern town of Arar, near the Iraq border.

The Saudi government routinely rounds up people suspected of being gay. All that is needed is a complaint from someone. In some instances men who are not gay who have been arrested were picked up on the complaint of a neighbor following a dispute.

The kingdom also, on a number of occasions, has blocked access to the only gay Arab news and information site on the internet.

On this day..

2006: Two al-Qaeda militants for the murder of a U.S. diplomat

Posted on by

On this date in 2006, Jordan hanged Salem bin Suweid, a Libyan, and Yasser Freihat, a Jordanian, for the murder of an American diplomat.

USAID representative Laurence Foley was gunned down leaving for work at the American embassy in October of 2002.

Jordan, generally a staunch U.S. ally, was quick to downplay any wider significance. “We are fairly certain that we will catch the perpetrators and will [bring] them to justice,” said government spokesman Mohammed al-Adwan.

Bin Suweid and Freihat were convicted of the assassination as part of a cell allegedly run by Jordanian-born al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who would himself be assassinated in an American bombing later in 2006.

Jordan was no more eager to stir emotions over this day’s hangings than over the perpetrators’ crime. But one analyst noted to the Associated Press that it was an unusual foray into executing al-Qaeda operatives as against less augustly credentialed Islamic militants. Jordan’s Hashemite dynasty knows how to keep its head down in dangerous times.

“It shows that Jordan doesn’t want its territory to be a playground for terrorists and sets out a deterrent for the future that Jordanian society, as tolerant as it can be, is very strict regarding the rash wanton murder of innocent civilians.”

On this day..

2004: Former vice-governor Wang Huaizhong

Posted on by

On this date in 2004, the former deputy governor of China’s Anhui province was executed for official corruption.

It was just weeks after Wang’s conviction for grifting some 100 million yuan in real estate transactions dating back to the mid 1990’s.

We suppose Wang did his appeals no favors by steadfastly denying guilt — although he might have reckoned that the national “determination … to fight corruption” thwarted any such plan.

Instead of confessing to his crimes, Wang had stood against the public prosecutors and even continued to seek bribes during the investigation from some private business owners, said Wang Huanhai, head of the investigation team.

According to the prosecutor, Wang attempted to use the bribe to buy over more relations, hoping the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Chinese Communist Party would spare him from being inquisited.

During the first trial on Dec. 29, 2003, Wang denied all the allegations, but in the latest trial confessed to most of the crimes and argued for a light penalty on the grounds that the bribes he had taken were not big enough to justify a death penalty.

His request was turned down, given the amount involved in the case as well as his resistance to investigation.

Wang’s prosecutors said he was an orphan and had climbed up the social ladder with an inferiority complex. “That’s why he was dictatorial and could not stand anyone questioning him,” said Wang Huanhai, “Nor did he ever confess to his wrongdoing in public.”

On this day..

2000: Kasongo, child soldier

Posted on by

(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.)

On this day in 2000, a 14-year-old boy from the Democratic Republic of the Congo was executed by firing squad only thirty minutes after his conviction by the Congolese Cour D’ordre Militaire, or Military Order Court. The teen, a child soldier known only as Kasongo, was found guilty with four other soldiers for the murder of a driver.

Amnesty International noted (pdf) that the DRC imposed the sentence in spite of the fact that it signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, both of which prohibit the death penalty for persons under the age of 18, and in spite of the fact that the DRC’s Minister for Human Rights had in 1999 promised a moratorium on executions.

Under Congolese law, those convicted by the Cour D’ordre Militaire can appeal to the President for clemency. Since Kasongo’s sentence was carried out so quickly, however, it’s doubtful the President heard his appeal.

In 2001, the DRC told the United Nations that all other child soldiers sentenced to death have been pardoned. Why Kasongo was excepted from this rule, no one knows. The military courts that convicted him were abolished in 2003.

On this day..

2006: Two Egyptians who just wanted to watch the game

Posted on by

Nineteen-year-old shoe-shiner Hosni Ramadan Mahmoud Ahmed and his friend Ramadan Abu Al-Magd Azab were hanged in Qena, Egypt on this date in 2006 for murdering Ahmed’s two-year-old stepdaughter.

“Apparently infuriated that the crying baby was disrupting their viewing of a football match on television,” read the crime blotter. “Ahmed smashed the two year old’s head against a wall and electrocuted her.

“The two men then dumped her body in a nearby school.”


Egypt football fans would like to enjoy the game in peace. (cc) image from blogdroed.

On this day..

2008: One man pardoned during hanging

Posted on by

There were two hangings reported this date at the prison in the southern Iranian city of Kazeroun (or Kazerun).

One Kourosh was executed for murdering a 52-year-old in 2004.

And someone named Abolfazl — well, he was much, much luckier. The parents of his victim availed their right to pardon him, although they waited until after the hanging had commenced to do so.

I believe (because how often can this happen in one town?) that this is the failed/survived execution attributed by Amnesty International to 2 December — which Amnesty argues “illustrates the inherent cruelty of the death penalty.”

The original link given by the Amnesty press release is now dead, but this source links the same article and says it cites 7 December; this Persian news story positively attributes the event to dawn on 17 Azar on the Iranian calendar, which corresponds to 7 December.

Not seven seconds had passed when the murder victim’s mother gave her pardon. Moments later, the victim’s father gave consent. Thus, immediately the accused was brought down from the gallows and given CPR while he was transferred to hospital.

Abolfazl survived. This story sported the headline “the sweet end of an execution.”

On this day..

2009: Zhang Yujun and Geng Jinping, for tainted milk

Posted on by

(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.)

On this day in 2009, Chinese citizens Zhang Yujun and Geng Jinping were shot to death in connection with China’s tainted milk scandal.

The affair caused some 300,000 infants to became sick, six of them fatally. They were killed by powdered milk tainted with melamine, an industrial chemical used in plastics and fertilizer. Zhang, a dairy farmer from the province of Hebei, sold hundreds of tons of tainted milk powder in 2007 and 2008; he was the largest supplier. Geng supplied toxic milk to dairy companies.

The scandal was stupendous and made headlines all over the world. According to Time magazine, the tainted milk found its way to Taiwan, Singapore and Japan. China’s $232 million dairy export industry cratered as the European Union and a dozen nations in Asia and Africa banned Chinese milk and milk products. The farmers who depended on milk sales for their livelihood were reduced to simply pouring their surplus stock down the drain, and since nobody wanted to buy dairy cows under these conditions, some farmers just slaughtered their animals.

Top: Chinese farmers destroy tainted milk. Bottom: Zhang Yujun (left) and a supplicating Geng Jinping (right).

Nor was milk wasn’t the only export product with this problem; Wikipedia’s timeline of the scandal states melamine was subsequently discovered in Chinese eggs, egg powder, baking ammonia, chicken, crackers and animal food.

Melamine was added to the milk to fool government protein tests, which would show whether the milk had been diluted or not. (Watered-down milk had been a problem in the past; in 2004 thirteen Chinese babies died of malnutrition after being fed milk that was so watery it had almost zero nutritional value.) Melamine, like protein, is high in nitrogen, so the presence of melamine in food would cause the protein content to appear higher than it really was.

It isn’t clear whether the people who altered the milk knew — or cared — that it was poisonous. Very poisonous. Melamine is never supposed to be used in food; it causes kidney stones and in some cases complete renal failure, especially in young children. A child can take over six months to recover from exposure.

Some blame must be attached to the (suspect) Chinese food safety administration, which in May 2008 reported that over 99% of baby milk powders had been deemed safe. (In fact, one major dairy company had begun hearing complaints about its baby milk as far back as the previous December.) The Ministry of Health was informed about the sick infants in July. There are strong suspicions that the government tried to suppress the reports to avoid embarrassment; the Olympics were in Beijing that summer and the world’s eye was on China. The scandal was only made public in September, after the Games.

Twenty-one people involved in the scandal were brought to trial on various charges in December 2008, and convicted in January.

Tian Wenhua, the general manager of the Chinese dairy giant Sanlu, pleaded guilty to producing substandard goods and was sentenced to life in prison. She admitted she’d known the milk was bad for four months before she reported this fact to the authorities. Sanlu tried to keep complaining parents quiet by giving them free milk, which was also tainted. Tien was widely perceived as being the person most responsible for the scandal, and many were disappointed that she didn’t get the death sentence.

Other defendants received various prison terms. One of them was given a suspended death sentence, but only Zhang (guilty of endangering public safety) and Geng (guilty of producing and selling toxic food) were actually executed.

On this day..

2009: Danielle Simpson, “If I can’t be free – Kill me!!”

Posted on by

Last year on this date, Danielle Simpson was executed in Texas for murder.

Simpson, his wife, his brother, and another accomplice kidnapped an octogenarian church organist from her home, trussing her up and throwing her into the Nueces River to drown.

Though it would be another decade before his execution, the brutality of life on death row (and the usual appellate losing streak where the Fifth Circuit reigns) eventually ground him down into volunteering to expedite his execution.

I’m tired of being in an institution that’s unjust, degrading, and corrupted … I’m ready to die!! If I can’t be free – Kill Me!!

Simpson reversed himself shortly before the execution actually went down, but the further appeals on the matter of his “debilitating mental illness” and “diminished intellectual functioning” were equally unavailing.

It may not rise to a legal threshold, but the high school dropout’s thinking was clearly a bit scrambled. Death row has been known to have that effect.

One of Simpson’s attorneys at the Texas Defender Service, David R. Dow, recently wrote a well-received meditation on his life of representing defendants like Simpson who have virtually no prospect of success in the courts. The Autobiography of an Execution, blessedly un-tendentious despite the author’s unabashed death penalty opposition, makes a compelling stocking stuffer for the family member whose tastes run a bit grim.

On this day..

2008: Greg Wright, still fighting for exoneration

Posted on by

Two years on from his execution in Texas this date in 2008, the website FreeGregWright.com still bears its namesake’s now-hopeless case for exoneration.


Wright’s wife Connie (the woman on the right) and their friend Bente Hjortshøj released this photo of Greg Wright 15 minutes after execution “to show the world the cruel and unusual punishment and its horrible consequences.”

Wright and another homeless man, John Adams, were taken in by a generous 52-year-old widow named Donna Vick. Vick paid for her charity with her life … but who was the killer?

Adams fingered Wright, but Wright always insisted that Adams killed her. Late-arriving DNA evidence appeared to back Wright. So did too-late-to-matter confessions by Adams. (Adams, for his part, was also convicted for capital murder; each man was separately tried on the theory that he was the murderer and the other the bystander.)

The disputed facts of this case are a muddier affair that don’t readily admit a slam-dunk exoneration. An episode of the Dallas DNA television series looked at Wright’s case and disappointed Wright’s supporters with its unfavorable view of the subject’s case.

Wright, nevertheless, maintained his innocence from the execution gurney.

John Adams lied. He went to the police and told them a story. He made deals and sold stuff to keep from going to prison. I left the house, and I left him there. My only act or involvement was not telling on him. John Adams is the one that killed Donna Vick. I took a polygraph and passed. John Adams never volunteered to take one. … I was in the bathroom when [Adams] attacked [Vick]. I am deaf in one ear and I thought the T.V. was up too loud. I ran in to the bedroom. By the time I came in, when I tried to help her, with first aid, it was too late. The veins were cut on her throat. He stabbed her in her heart, and that’s what killed her. I told John Adams, “turn yourself in or hit the high road.” I owed him a favor because he pulled someone off my back. I was in a fight downtown. Two or three days later he turned on me. I have done everything to prove my innocence. Before you is an innocent man.

The victim’s son — for whom little ice was cut by Wright’s admitted failure to summon medical help for the victim, or to turn in the alleged killer Adams — complained that the statement was “the same thing we’ve got since day one, each of them blaming it on the other one.”

Former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney witnessed the execution, taking a break from her Green Party presidential bid.

One of the crime scene investigators in this case, Eric George Rosenstrom, is now himself wanted for murder.

On this day..

2008: Wang Zhendong, ant profiteer

Posted on by

The two timeless pursuits of man — a bigger boodle, and a better boner — brought Wang Zhendong to execution in Liaoning province this date in 2008 for a nine-figure ant-farming scam. True story.

With the sort of screw-thy-neighbor entrepreneurial spirit of the times, the aptly-named Wang engorged himself to the tune of 3 billion yuan — around $400 million, give or take — running a pyramid scheme based on the reputed herbal aphrodisiac polyrhachis vicina roger. (Seriously, “roger”.)

From 2002 to 2005,* ten thousand Chinese investors fantasizing of 40 and 60% returns ponied up $1,300 a pop for ant-breeding kits with a street value of twenty-five bucks.

Sex: it makes men stupid.

The buyers were supposed to return the formicids after a few months so the company could process them into aphrodisiacs and miscellaneous other remedies … then watch the money gush. Some early investors were paid off by those who got sloppy seconds, but eventually the ponzi scheme collapsed and the pigeons realized that the ants they’d sprung for were really a pig in a poke.

By the time investigators cockblocked the company in 2005, less than 1% of the proceeds could be recovered. At least one sucker committed suicide realizing he had shot his life’s wad.

“He should just die,” one non-suicidal investor told the western press. “He hurt so many people. Some people even sold their house, their cars. People don’t have money, and they don’t have work. What can they do?” What, no bailout?


A “beware of ant scam artists” poster put up in Shanghai. Image (c) MFinChina and used with permission.

Besides Wang’s petite morte this day, fifteen of his company’s former managers drew prison sentences ranging from five to ten years.

* Everybody was doing it.

On this day..