Tag Archives: 2006

2006: Rocky Barton, suicidal

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On this date in 2006, Ohio murderer Rocky Barton died by lethal injection for murdering his wife.

Say this for Barton: the experience of failed marriages had not jaded him on the institution. When his fourth wife, Kimbirli Jo, proposed to leave him, he was distraught enough to shoot her dead in a fit of passion, and then turn the gun on himself, too. “I couldn’t stand the thought of living without her,” he explained.

And say this, too: he wasn’t one for any special pleading.

“”It was an act of anger. Evidently it was not too thought out or I wouldn’t be where I am today,” he told a reporter just days before his execution. “I strongly believe in the death penalty. And for the ruthless, cold-blooded act that I committed, if I was sitting over there [in the jury box], I’d hold out for the death penalty.”

Voluntarily dropping his appeals, he spent less than three years on the “greased lightning” track to the Ohio gurney, only some 42 months overall from murder to execution. Kimbirli’s daughter, and Rocky’s stepdaughter, got a special release from a county jail where she was serving a drug sentence to witness the execution.

His suicide attempt, though unsuccessful, required “four surgeries to insert pins, wires and screws to hold his eyes in their sockets and the cadaver’s jaw to replace his shattered one,” and hundreds of thousands in public expenses to post special guard details for said reconstructive surgeries.

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

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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.”

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2006: Two Egyptians who just wanted to watch the game

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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.

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2006: Three Sulawesi Christians

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On this date in 2006, Catholics Fabianus Tibo, Marianus Riwu and Dominggus da Silva were shot in the Central Sulawesi capital of Palu for inciting murderous anti-Muslim riots six years before.

The riots in question occurred in Poso, a hotspot of Christian-Muslim conflict that over 1,000 lives from 1999-2001. According to the Jakarta Post (September 25, 2006),

Tibo, Marinus and Dominggus were convicted of leading a Christian militia that carried out a series of attacks in May 2000 in Sulawesi, including a machete and gun assault on an Islamic school where dozens of men were seeking shelter.

Though a 2001 treaty stabilized the situation, tension remained, occasionally flaring into violence.

The 2001 death sentences of Christian activists also remained, a legacy of the open conflict. Small wonder that their execution triggered further unrest, not only in Poso but in Silva’s hometown in predominantly-Christian West Timor. And aftershocks for months to come — the murder a month later of a prominent Christian cleric, for instance — quelled by security forces sweetened with a bit of goodwill rebuilding.

Jakarta ignored international as well as domestic clemency appeals in carrying out the executions, including from the European Union and the the Vatican. The latter’s argument may have been somewhat compromised under the circumstances by Pope Benedict XVI’s impolitic citation just days before of a 14th-century Muslim-bashing text.

Apart from the humanitarian objections, others more specific to the case were raised in vain: that the trio executed had not been witnessed killing anyone personally, and that the sentences were disproportionate to that received by anyone else convicted in that era’s violence.

But such contentions were easily outweighed by the simultaneous progress of the Bali Bombers case, with the imminent likelihood of a triple-execution of Muslim militants … and the prospect of political fallout if only one faith’s martyrs were let off the hook.

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2006: 27 at Abu Ghraib Prison

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On this date in 2006, 27 hanged in Baghdad’s notorious Abu Ghraib Prison.

It was just days after the American occupation forces handed back to the Iraqi government control of Abu Ghraib, scene of such iconic contributions to the annals of human rights abuse as this:

Iraqi prisoners would soon miss the old boss.

In the first (known) mass execution since the reign of Saddam Hussein — whose own turn at the gallows was just a few months away — 26 men and one woman were hanged on a variety of terrorism, murder and kidnapping charges.

“This is the message I have for the terrorists,” Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said in announcing the executions. “We will see that you get great punishment wherever you are. There is nothing for you but prison and punishment.”

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2006: Yuan Baojing, gangster capitalist

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On this date in 2006, one of Beijing’s wealthiest plutocrats (along with two of his relatives) caught a lethal injection for the shady side of his business.

Yuan Baojing, “stock market whizzkid”, had risen from the nameless masses of China’s countryside to prosper in “Red” China’s authoritarian capitalism.

Though worth billions (or at least hundreds of millions), Yuan went down over the trivial sum of $9 million — the amount he reckoned a business associate had taken by fraud.

But then, it’s always impolite to count the corpses stuffed into the pillars of capital. The surprise here is that Yuan got caught: he’d hired a dirty cop to kill that business partner, but after the plot failed the cop started blackmailing the tycoon. Yuan responded by hiring his brother and cousin to pop the cop.

Yuan survived a scheduled execution the preceding October by transferring billions in assets to the Chinese government — understandably triggering some complaints about fair play.

Those billions bought him five months.*

On this date, he and his hirelings were given a public trial in Liaoyang, followed by an immediate lethal injection in one of China’s mobile execution vans.

* The mogul’s wife, Tibetan dancer Zhou Ma, was herself swindled during this period as she spread around cash trying to save her husband’s life.

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2006: A female spy by al Qaeda

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On this date three years ago — or at least, so says the date in the camera’s viewfinder — a female spy was “tried” and “executed” in Iraq by al Qaeda affiliated terrorists for spying.

Warning: This is (by design) a graphic and chilling video. I have little information beyond the assertion of the video posters as to its veracity. Whether or not it may be relied upon factually or dated reliably, it’s a gut-twisting video of a woman being shot in the head.

[flv:http://www.nothingtoxic.com/mediar.php?552d90ab9f59a971705f6bf3300da297.flv 440 330]

A longer version is on a very not-safe-for-work site here.

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2006: Three old men and a taxi driver

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Two years ago today, Japan resumed executions after a break of more than a year with four hangings.

Septuagenarians Yoshio Fujinami (wheelchair-bound) and Yoshimitsu Akiyama (partially blind) both needed the guards’ assistance to reach the trap at Tokyo Detention Center, a mere hour after they were informed of their imminent demise.

Two other prisoners, 64-year-old Michio Fukuoka and 44-year-old Hiroaki Hidaka, were simultaneously hanged in Osaka and Hiroshima, respectively.

Hidaka, a serial killer, had dropped his appeals and thus died a mere 12 years after his crimes. Fukouka died maintaining his innocence of three murders from 1978-81 he said police torture had forced him to confess. The oldest men were on the hook for killings dating to 1975 and 1981. (Much more from The Japan Times.)

Talk about justice delayed.

In Japan’s strange death penalty system, the condemned might await death for decades only to be hanged, as these were, with next to no warning. Their families and supporters did not hear about it until after the deed was done.

These hangings, though protested, were not altogether unexpected, for a break in the Japanese Diet around the end of the year often heralds an appearance on the public stage by the gallows. (Look for them in 2008 as the Diet goes out of session starting today.) And a turnover at the top of the Justice Ministry had replaced a pol disinclined to authorize any hangings, the source of the long break between executions during a decade when Japan’s use of the death penalty has generally been intensifying.

Although at least one particularly pressing motivation for this date’s hanging will not be present this year. After the long hiatus, an anonymous official told a newspaper,

We absolutely wanted to avoid ending the year with zero executions.

But in 2008, Japan has already carried out more hangings than in any year since 1975.


A panel from former prison guard Toshio Sakamato’s “How the death penalty is carried out”. More here.

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2006: Mohamed Amin Mohamed Razali, mystical Malaysian militant

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Two years ago today, the strange leader of a mystical Islamic fight club was hanged at Malaysia’s Sungai Buloh prison for waging war on the king.

Caption Contest?: The Headsman could be mistaken, but based on an altogether amateur comparison to the Razali shot on this BBC story, I believe that’s him in the white. Photo from the sect website.

The heretofore obscure Al Ma’unah — just a couple dozen guys — had descended on an army camp in July 2000 and made off with a handsome cache of weapons and a few hostages, apparently the opening gambit in a bid to launch an Islamic fundamentalist revolution in Malaysia.

What actually happened was the army hunted them down and engulfed them a couple of days later.

You’d never know the ambitious designs of this clique from its web site (still online as of this writing), whose English “about us” page rings harmlessly loopy (all grammatical manglings [sic]):

Al-Ma’unah … is a Non-Govermental Organisation (NGO) … involved in the teaching of martial arts particularly the development of one’s inner power and the practice of Islamic traditional medicine.

Literary, the term “Ma’unah” is an Arabic word which means, something extraordinary that happens to an ordinary Muslim individual, for example extra sensory perception or the ability to see “things” in another dimension (paranormal).

“Al-Ma’unah Inner Power” can be defined as “something extraordinary bestowed to a righteous Muslim (in the form of assistance from Allah) in accordance with specific adherence to tradition and proper sequence emphasising on the Islamic principles and Allah’s commandments as stipulated in the holy Quran”.

In teaching the martial art and traditional medicine, the brotherhood placed more emphasis on spiritual development and enlightenment of its members or “ikhwan” as it is known in Al-Maunah, in order to achieve the highest level of proficiency in the art and to attain great healing powers.

… although a section entitled “The Usage of the Inner Power” suggests the training achieves the sorts of useful martial superpowers more commonly found on a Dungeons & Dragons treasure table:

Among the benefit of Al-Ma’unah Inner Power can be listed as follows:

o For health and vitality, both physically and spiritually.
o Making an enemy/attacker to freeze on the spot and to be hurled sprawling backwards without being touch.
o Invincible from sharp objects, weapons, boiling water, fire etc.
o To transfer temporarily the inner energy to another object.
o Able to attain healing powers.
o Able to tie enemies without using rope.
o Able to hypnotise a violent aggressor to sleep or forget his intention.
o Able to pull back a fleeing snatch thief or robber from great distance (without physical body contact).
o Able to make attackers to drop to their knees or fall down with the blink of an eye.
o For marital bliss.
o Able to increase influence over others.

Too bad it didn’t protect against hemp.

Most of the 19 who survived the manhunt and went on trial eagerly cut deals, groveled (“Please don’t send us to the gallows!” one said during the hearing), and pointed the finger at the former army private. Razali didn’t say boo at trial and died stoically at about 6 a.m. this morning.

Although there were 359 executions in Malaysia from 1970 to 2001, the practice has dropped into disuse in this decade; Razali appears to be the last person executed in Malaysia as of this post’s publication. Amnesty International has suggested that Malaysia’s zero figure might conceal some secret (presumably extrajudicial) executions. While the government angrily denied that suggestion, the death penalty has come under growing scrutiny in Malaysia.

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2006: Saddam Hussein

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One year ago today, Saddam Hussein was hanged in “the hell that is Iraq” — his riposte to the mob scene at his gallows, transmitted worldwide by way of illicit footage shot with a cell phone.

Caution: This video contains graphic footage. You knew that already.

How it was then:

Who could follow in his footsteps?

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