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First Third Of 2024 In Saudi Arabia: Executions Rise By 189% And Portend Another Bloody Year. At Least 71 Currently Facing Execution.

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Since the beginning of 2024 until the end of April, the Ministry of Interior in Saudi Arabia announced the execution of 55 individuals. This figure constitutes a 189% increase compared to the executions in the first third of 2023, which witnessed 19 executions. The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights views these numbers as a clear indication of the Saudi government's continued approach towards executing and issuing death sentences, and that the promises made in recent years have become elusive.

China to review murder case 19 years after execution

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Execution in China (file photo)
BEIJING, Dec. 12 (Xinhua) -- China's Supreme People's Court (SPC) has decided to review a rape-murder case 19 years after the convict was executed, as another man insists he is is guilty.

Shandong Higher People's Court will review the case of Nie Shubin and Wang Shujin. Nie was executed in 1995 at the age of 21 for the 1994 rape and murder of a woman in Hebei's provincial capital, Shijiazhuang.

Wang Shujin, 47, was apprehended by police in 2005 for three unconnected rape and murder cases, and confessed to the rape and murder of the same woman in Nie's case.

Wang, sentenced to death in March 2007, claimed that he raped and murdered a woman in a cornfield on the outskirts of Shijiazhuang in 1994 and Nie was innocent. 

Hebei Higher People's Court, which approved the death penalty on Nie in 1995, did not believe his claim in a retrial last year and Nie's verdict still stands.

Wang's claims have raised public questions of judicial impartiality.

The review of Nie's case is aimed at "ensuring judicial fairness and responding to public concerns," according to the SPC's announcement.

Source: Xinhua, December 13, 2014
Location: China
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