The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is an international convention to protect human rights and political freedoms in Europe. Drafted in 1950 by the then newly formed Council of Europe, the convention entered into force on 3 September 1953. All Council of Europe member states are party to the Convention and new members are expected to ratify the convention at the earliest opportunity.
Extradition is an action wherein one jurisdiction delivers a person accused or convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, over to the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforcement procedure between the two jurisdictions and depends on the arrangements made between them. In addition to legal aspects of the process, extradition also involves the physical transfer of custody of the person being extradited to the legal authority of the requesting jurisdiction.
The concept of justifiable homicide in criminal law is a defense to culpable homicide. Generally, there is a burden of production of exculpatory evidence in the legal defense of justification. In most countries, a homicide is justified when there is sufficient evidence to disprove the alleged criminal act or wrongdoing. The key to this legal defense is that it was reasonable for the subject to believe that there was an imminent and otherwise unavoidable danger of death or grave bodily harm to the innocent by the deceased when he committed the homicide. A homicide in this instance is blameless. Although it does not constitute homicide, charges and claims of assaults, batteries, and other similar criminal charges and claims of wrongdoing are similarly defensible under the legal defense of self defense.
Richard Joseph Goldstone is a South African former judge. After working for 17 years as a commercial lawyer, he was appointed by the South African government to serve on the Transvaal Supreme Court from 1980 to 1989 and the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of South Africa from 1990 to 1994.
Arthur Chaskalson SCOB, was President of the Constitutional Court of South Africa from 1994 to 2001 and Chief Justice of South Africa from 2001 to 2005. Chaskalson was a member of the defence team in the Rivonia Trial of 1963.
The Constitutional Court of South Africa is a supreme constitutional court established by the Constitution of South Africa, and is the apex court in the South African judicial system, with general jurisdiction.
Binyam Ahmed Mohamed, also referred to as Benjamin Mohammed, Benyam Mohammed or Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi, is an Ethiopian national and United Kingdom resident, who was detained as a suspected enemy combatant by the US Government in Guantanamo Bay prison between 2004 and 2009 without charges. He was arrested in Pakistan and transported first to Morocco under the US's extraordinary rendition program, where he claimed to have been interrogated under torture.
Clive Adrian Stafford Smith is a British attorney who specialises in the areas of civil rights and working against the death penalty in the United States of America. He worked to overturn death sentences for convicts, and helped found the not-for-profit Louisiana Capital Assistance Center in New Orleans. By 2002 this was the "largest capital defence organisation in the South." He was a founding board member of the Gulf Region Advocacy Center, based in Houston, Texas.
Reprieve is a nonprofit organization of international lawyers and investigators whose stated goal is to "fight for the victims of extreme human rights abuses with legal action and public education". Their main focus is on the death penalty, indefinite detention without trial, extraordinary rendition and extrajudicial killing. The founding Reprieve organization is in the UK, and there are also organizations in the United States, Australia and the Netherlands, with additional supporters and volunteers worldwide.
United States v Burns [2001] 1 S.C.R. 283, 2001 SCC 7, was a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada in which it was found that extradition of individuals to places where they may face the death penalty is a breach of fundamental justice under section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The decision reached this conclusion through a discussion of evidence regarding the arbitrary nature of execution, although the Court did not go so far as to say execution was also unconstitutional under section 12 of the Charter, which forbids cruel and unusual punishments.
Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, a Tanzanian national, is one of numerous al-Qaeda suspects who were indicted in 1998, and one of the four who were convicted and sentenced to life without parole in 2001, for their parts in the 1998 United States embassy bombings. Convicted along with Mohamed were Wadih el Hage, Mohammed Saddiq Odeh, and Mohamed Rashid al-Owhali.
Christopher John Robert Dugard, known as John Dugard, is a South African professor of international law. His main academic specializations are in Roman-Dutch law, public international law, jurisprudence, human rights, criminal procedure and international criminal law. He has served on the International Law Commission, the primary UN institution for the development of international law, and has been active in reporting on human-rights violations by Israel in the Palestinian territories.
Soering v United Kingdom 161 Eur. Ct. H.R. (1989) is a landmark judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) which established that extradition of a young German national to the United States to face charges of capital murder violated Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) guaranteeing the right against inhuman and degrading treatment. In addition to the precedence established by the judgment, the judgment specifically resulted in the United States committing to not seek the death penalty against the German national involved in the case, and he was eventually extradited to the United States.
National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality and Another v Minister of Justice and Others is a decision of the Constitutional Court of South Africa which struck down the laws prohibiting consensual sexual activities between men. Basing its decision on the Bill of Rights in the Constitution – and in particular its explicit prohibition of discrimination based on sexual orientation – the court unanimously ruled that the crime of sodomy, as well as various other related provisions of the criminal law, were unconstitutional and therefore invalid.
Human rights in the United States comprise a series of rights which are legally protected by the Constitution of the United States, state constitutions, treaty and customary international law, legislation enacted by Congress and state legislatures, and state referenda and citizen's initiatives. The Federal Government has, through a ratified constitution, guaranteed unalienable rights to its citizens and non-citizens. These rights have evolved over time through constitutional amendments, legislation, and judicial precedent. Along with the rights themselves, the portion of the population granted these rights has expanded over time. Within the United States, federal courts have jurisdiction over international human rights laws.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the East African nation of Somalia. Most of executions in Somalia are through shooting, but Sharia courts also use beheading and stoning. In 2011 three soldiers were executed for murder by the Transitional Federal Government. The activist NGO Human Rights Watch noted in 2014 that summary executions were on the rise in the nation. At least 14 executions were carried out in 2016, and the rate of executions rose in 2017, which human rights groups mainly attributed to military courts and the militant jihadist group Al-Shabaab. The European Union requested that Somalia enact a moratorium on the death penalty as a result. Most executions by firing squad occur publicly and persons sentenced to death are usually executed by armed guards.
S v Makwanyane and Another was a landmark 1995 judgement of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. It established that capital punishment was inconsistent with the commitment to human rights expressed in the Interim Constitution. The court's ruling invalidated section 277(1)(a) of the Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977, which had provided for use of the death penalty, along with any similar provisions in any other law in force in South Africa. The court also forbade the government from carrying out the death sentence on any prisoners awaiting execution, ruling that they should remain in prison until new sentences were imposed. Delivered on 6 June, this was the newly established court's "first politically important and publicly controversial holding."
Capital punishment in South Africa was abolished on 6 June 1995 by the ruling of the Constitutional Court in the case of S v Makwanyane, following a five-year and four-month moratorium since February 1990.
Section Eleven of the Constitution of South Africa, part of the Bill of Rights, guarantees the right to life. This section has been interpreted to prohibit the death penalty, but not to prohibit abortion. It also has important implications for euthanasia, self-defence, the use of force by law enforcement, and the provision of life-saving healthcare.
Mariëtte Sonjaleen Bosch was a South African woman who was executed in Botswana on 31 March 2001. Bosch was convicted for the murder of Maria Magdalene "Ria" Wolmarans, both members of the white expatriate community in Gaborone, in June 1996. She was the first white woman to be executed in Botswana, and was the fourth woman to be hanged since the country's independence. Due to these two factors, the murder case received significant attention outside the country and was referred to as "Botswana's White Mischief".
