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SINGAPORE - Singapore executed a 25-year-old Australian on Friday for drug trafficking, despite numerous appeals from the Australian government and hours after the condemned man had a "beautiful last visit" with his family. Nguyen Tuong Van was hanged before dawn as a dozen friends and supporters, dressed in black, kept an overnight vigil outside the maximum-security prison. His twin brother, Nguyen Khoa, was dressed in white. Vigils were also held in cities around Australia, with bells and gongs sounding 25 times at the hour of his execution. "The sentence was carried out this morning at Changi Prison," the Home Affairs...

IT was his last wish: to walk unshackled and confidently, rosary beads hidden in his grip, to the gallows. After a day of tears and goodbyes, and a night of prayer, Australian drug-trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van had accepted his fate and was ready to be hanged at 6am (9am AEST) today in Singapore's Changi prison. The former Melbourne salesman, 25, was said yesterday to be frightened by the method of his death but comforted by his newfound Christian faith in going to "somewhere good". It was the final farewell to mother Kim and twin brother, Khoa, that was to dominate...

Vigils, prayers mark Nguyen execution 02dec05 VAN Tuong Nguyen went to the gallows this morning amid silent protests in Australia and a vigil by his twin brother at Singapore's Changi Prison. The Australian drug trafficker was to be hanged at 6am local time (9am AEDT) after the Singapore government ruled out any last-minute reprieve. There was no immediate official notification of the execution, but in Melbourne a church where Nguyen went to school tolled its bell 25 times - once for every year of his life. In Singapore and in cities across Australia, there were protest vigils to mark the...

Time is running out for 25-year-old Australian drug trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van, who is due to be executed at Singapore's Changi prison on Friday. His death sentence has sparked widespread criticism in Australia. The Canberra government has repeatedly pleaded for clemency, as have lawyers, trade unions and church groups. But Singapore remains unmoved, and insists the hanging will go ahead as planned. "People have been praying for a change of heart," said Father Peter Norden, a friend of Kim Nguyen, the condemned man's mother. "They want the Singapore government to change its heart from one of stone to a heart...

(10-27) 10:55 PDT Frederica, Del. (AP) -- The apparent suicide of a woman found hanging from a tree went unreported for hours because passers-by thought the body was a Halloween decoration, authorities said. The 42-year-old woman used rope to hang herself across the street from some homes on a moderately busy road late Tuesday or early Wednesday, state police said. The body, suspended about 15 feet above the ground, could be easily seen from passing vehicles. State police spokesman Cpl. Jeff Oldham and neighbors said people noticed the body at breakfast time Wednesday but dismissed it as a holiday prank....

President Jalal Talabani has paved the way for the first legal execution in Iraq since the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein, the presidential office said Wednesday. The case involves three men sentenced to hang for murdering three policemen.

"A Swedish gay rights group has called on the government to immediately halt all deportations of homosexuals to Iran, saying two young men were hanged there this week for committing a "homosexual act". "There are clear examples that homosexuals are killed in Iran for their sexual orientation. I think the Swedish government is extremely cynical when it sends gays and lesbians back to Iran," Sören Andersson, head of the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights (RFSL), told AFP. The two men, one of whom was under 18 years of age, were hanged on Tuesday, officially for raping...

Nobel laureate condemns hanging of teenagers in Iran Teheran (Iran), July 24 (AP): Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi on Saturday condemned the hanging of two teenagers in northeastern Iran, a punishment that prompted protests by gay rights groups around the world. Ebadi said the hanging last week of a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old on charges of involvement in homosexual acts was a violation of Iran's obligations under the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, which bans such executions. Ebadi said her Center for the Protection of Human Rights will intensify its fight against Iran's executions of minors....

Taliban hang Afghan tribal chief Sat Jul 16, 2005 Taliban guerrillas hanged a pro-government tribal chief in the troubled southern Afghan province of Zabul, accusing him of being an American spy, officials said on Saturday. Malik Agha's killing was the fifth in the past six weeks and came as violence mounts in the run up to the Sept. 18 parliamentary elections that the Taliban have vowed to disrupt. Agha was kidnapped on Friday by Taliban remnants as he came out of a mosque in Atghar district of Zabul and was hanged in a tree, district chief Gul Habib said. Agha...

Unlike capital punishment in the United States, Japan’s death penalty is on the rise. Japanese officials keep state executions out of public view and shrouded in secrecy. Not even the condemned prisoners know the day they will die. Step inside the gallows for a rare look at how Japan takes a life. Tamaki Mitsui was a bit surprised one Friday when his boss gave him his instructions for the following Monday: to serve as a witness at two hangings. Mitsui, an official of the Nagoya High Court Prosecutor’s Office, which handles criminal appeals, had argued for the death penalty in...

LONDON - If there is one man who can testify to the dangers of challenging Iran's clerical rulers, it is Hashem Aghajari -- the dissident who dared to say Muslims were not "monkeys" and nearly paid the ultimate price. "I had been in prison for four months when the intelligence men came to take me to the judge. Then he read the verdict," Aghajari recounted. His crime was a speech to students, saying do not "blindly follow" religious leaders like monkeys. For regime hardliners it was blasphemous. The court delivered the sentence: Death by hanging. The assistant judge even took...

A Chicago woman was charged today with first-degree murder in the weekend hanging death of her 4-year-old son in their Northwest Side home, CLTV reported. The Cook County medical examiner's office initially declared accidental the Saturday afternoon death of Jaqueir Dancy, but police this morning reclassified the incident as a homicide and charged the youth's mother, authorities said. Nicole Harris, 23, of the 2000 block of North LaPorte Avenue, is in custody pending a bond hearing in Cook County Criminal Court, police said. The boy's parents found Jaqueir on the floor next to a bunk bed shortly after 4:30 p.m....

RALEIGH, N.C. - Harley-Davidson enthusiast Richard Woodworth has an unusual piece of art in his back yard, and it's causing him quite a headache with the city of Raleigh. It's the gnarled metal of a wrecked motorcycle hanging in a tree. In February, a city inspector walked on Woodworth's wooded property and decided the dangling metal fell under Raleigh's code definition of a nuisance motor vehicle. But even though Woodworth lives a mile outside the city limits and has posted no-trespassing signs, he falls under some city code enforcement. For Woodworth, that meant receiving a city inspections letter telling him...

Israel Says Never Again With New Holocaust Museum By Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyJerusalem----March 13....It is not the Eurovision TV song festival or the Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team entering the finals of the European championship. There are no ads or promos on Israel television. It is an event which entered my email box as hundreds do from the Israel Government Press Office. But this event was quite different. It talked about a new holocaust museum opening in Jerusalem. At first I questioned if this was a new wing or an extension dedicated by a wealthy contributor in the US...

In September of 1862, President Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation, which would take effect January 1, 1863, and free slaves in those states or regions still in rebellion against the Union. If any southern state returned to the Union between September and January, whites in that state theoretically would not lose ownership of their slaves. Despite its limits, free blacks, slaves, and abolitionists across the country hailed it as one of the most important actions on behalf of freedom in the nation's history. The Emancipation Proclamation brought formal recognition that the war was being fought, at least in part,...

NEWARK, N.J. -- A man arriving from Portugal apparently committed suicide in a janitor's closet at Newark Liberty International Airport. Authorities said the 39-year-old Maryland man was found by a cleaner Sunday afternoon. The man's name was being withheld while authorities tried to reach relatives. The man apparently hanged himself between his walk from the plane and the customs checkpoint to re-enter the United States. Authorities said the man, a U.S. citizen, was scheduled to make a connecting flight to Washington, D.C. The Essex County Medical Examiner's Office planned to perform an autopsy.

An effigy of a soldier hanging from a house in Sacramento's Land Park neighborhood that sparked controversy over freedom of expression is now gone.

Tehran, Feb. 04 – A Tehran court has sentenced a couple to death by stoning and hanging, according to the state-run daily Etemad. Iran's Supreme Court has reportedly upheld the verdicts and has confirmed that the woman only identified by her first name Massoumeh will be stoned to death and her husband identified by his first name Ismaeil will be hanged to death. The couple were accused of murder. Another unnamed individual also charged with murder separately was handed down an execution sentence in Pakdasht (west of Tehran). Stoning to death is a barbaric punishment used by the Iranian regime,...

TEHRAN, Iran (AP)- Iran confirmed Wednesday that a court has sentenced a young woman to death for prostitution but denied reports by rights watchdog Amnesty International that she was mentally disabled. Leyla Mafi, 21, was sentenced to death more than a year ago by a court in Arak, central Iran, for having illegal sex, judiciary official Mohammad Hossein Pourianmehr said. The verdict is now being reviewed by the Supreme Court, as is customary in Iran in capital cases, Hanging is the usual form of execution in Iran. Mafi's case had been little noted here but was brought to international attention...

Communique (petition)The Islamic Republic of Iran once again demonstrates its contempt for human rights by sentencing three more teenagers to death. Not content with the merciless recent execution of the sixteen year old Atefeh Rajabi , the Iranian authorities plan to execute Ali M, Morteza F and Milad B – all of whom are under the age of eighteen and are currently in detention. Execution of children is prohibited by Article 37 of the International Human Rights (Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989). We, the undersigned, express our unreserved condemnation of these executions, and call upon human rights...