URGENT ACTION:
Abdelrhman Zakaria Mohamed (male – 16): SUDAN
Ahmed Abdullah Suleiman (male – 16): SUDAN
According to a recent Amnesty International report Abdelrhman Zakaria Mohamed and Ahmed Abdullah Suleiman, both aged 16, were sentenced to death by the Criminal Court in Nyala the capital of South Darfur on 3 May.
The two boys have since been transferred to Shalla Prison in North Darfur. This transfer is likely to affect their ability to communicate with their lawyer who is based in South Darfur. The boys’ lawyer will submit an appeal against the sentence to the court of appeal in Nyala on 15 May… read more…
URGENT ACTION:
Sultan Kohail (male – 16): SAUDI ARABIA
Two Canadian brothers held in Saudi Arabia in connection to a schoolyard brawl that left one youth dead fear they could be executed for a crime they say they didn’t commit, according to a newspaper report.
Mohamed Kohail, 22, and his 16-year-old brother Sultan — both of Palestinian origin — say they were coerced into confessing their guilt for the murder of a Syrian youth last January.
Further exerpt: “16 year old Sultan, who was attending a school popular among non-Saudi Arabs in Jeddah, had been threatened by a group of school peers”…”including kidnapping”.
…read more (includes video footage at the end of the story)
URGENT ACTION:
Rizana Nafeek (female – 17): SAUDI ARABIA
Domestic worker and Sri Lankan national Rizana Nafeek was sentenced to death on 16 June for a murder committed while she reportedly was 17 years old. She was arrested in May 2005 in Jeddah on charges of murdering an infant in her care. She had no access to lawyers either during interrogation or at her trial and was believed to have confessed to the murder during police questioning. She has since retracted her confession.
She apparently told the authorities that she was born in February 1988, but they seem to have ignored this on the basis that her passport indicated that she was born in February 1982. According to information available to Amnesty International no medical examination is believed to have been carried out to ascertain her age, nor was she given the opportunity to present her birth certificate, which reportedly shows that she was born in 1988.
The latest news came in August 2008, when a court in Saudi Arabia was considering the appeal against her death sentence. Rizana Nafeek had been appointed a lawyer, who reportedly challenged the accuracy of the translations of her initial statements to the police. If the sentence is upheld, she could be at imminent risk of execution.
Saudi Arabia is a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which expressly prohibits the execution of offenders for crimes committed when they were under 18 years old…. Read more…
NIGERIA
There are currently 40 minors on death row in Nigeria as of November 2008.
(List of names pending)
