One of them, Zahra Sedighi-Hamadani, was described by Amnesty International earlier this year as a gender nonconforming person and LGBTI activist who was detained by authorities “due to her real or perceived
‘I was fearing death’: Bubba Watson share mental health struggles
Two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson opens up to CNN Sport about his mental health struggles, saying, “I was fearing death.”
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The world’s longest-serving death row convict was on Monday granted a retrial by a Japanese court in the latest twist in a legal saga dating back to the 1960s.
Iwao Hakamada, 87, spent nearly five decades waiting for the hangman’s call following his 1968 conviction for quadruple murder before new evidence led to his release seven years ago.
The Tokyo High Court ruled Monday that “Hakamada cannot possibly be identified as the culprit,” given the main evidence presented to finalize his death penalty was unreliable, Kiyomi Tsunagoe, a lawyer on his defense team, told CNN.
She added that the Tokyo court upheld the decision not to return Hakamada to prison, given that he would likely be found not guilty.
“Hakamada’s case is known globally, and there always remained the risk that he could be sent back to prison and face the death penalty again, despite evidence pointing to his innocence,” Tsunagoe said.
Japan’s criminal justice system has a 99.9% conviction rate and is heavily reliant on confessions. The country is the only major developed democracy outside the United States that imposes capital punishment.
In 1966, Hakamada was accused of robbery, arson and the murder of his boss, his boss’ wife and their two children. The family was found stabbed to death in their incinerated home in Shizuoka, central Japan.
The former professional boxer-turned-factory worker initially admitted to all charges before changing his plea at trial. He was sentenced to death in a 2-1 decision by judges, despite repeatedly alleging that police had fabricated evidence and forced him to confess by beating and threatening him. The one dissenting judge stepped down from the bar six months later, demoralized by his inability to stop the sentencing.
A pair of blood-spattered, black trousers and his confession were the evidence against Hakamada. The alleged motive ranged from a murder by request to theft.
But in 2004, a DNA test revealed that blood on the clothing matched neither Hakamada nor the victims’ blood type.
In 2014, the Shizuoka District Court ordered a retrial and freed Hakamada as he awaited his day in court, on the grounds of his age and fragile mental state. But four years later, the Tokyo High Court scrapped the request for a retrial, for reasons it would previously not confirm to CNN.
The decision to grant Hakamada a retrial on Monday came after the Supreme Court in 2020 ordered the Tokyo High Court to reconsider its earlier decision not to reopen the case.
According to Tsunagoe, the court ruled Monday there was a strong possibility that investigators had planted five pieces of clothing allegedly worn by Hakamada during the 1966 murders in a miso paste tank where they were found.
Tsunagoe said the defense team has argued that the evidence used to finalize Hakamada’s death sentence was fabricated. On Monday, the presiding judge supported the defense’s claims that the reddish color of the bloodstains on the clothing allegedly worn by Hakamada would have turned black when immersed in the miso tank over several months, Tsunagoe said.
Prosecutors will decide by next Monday whether to file an appeal against the retrial to the Supreme Court. If the defense can convince them not to, the retrial will be held at the Shizuoka District Court – where Hakamada was initially tried – although the timeline remains uncertain, Tsunagoe said.
“If prosecutors file a retrial after all these decades to the Supreme Court, it will display the extent to which Japanese justice is not functioning,” Tsunagoe said.
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One of them, Zahra Sedighi-Hamadani, was described by Amnesty International earlier this year as a gender nonconforming person and LGBTI activist who was detained by authorities “due to her real or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as her social media posts and statements in defense of LGBTI rights.”
Elham Chobdar was also charged and convicted as part of the same case and sentenced to death, Iranian state media reported.
The two were accused of “trafficking young women” in Iran’s West Azerbaijan province and unnamed other parts of the country, according to the report from IRNA.
Amnesty said Tuesday it was “outraged” by the sentences and called on Iran’s authorities to immediately “quash the convictions and death sentences” and release Sedighi-Hamadani and Chobdar, the statement said. The sentences are being appealed in Iran’s Supreme Court, it added.
Amnesty said in January that Sedighi-Hamadani, who also uses the name Sareh, was first detained in October 2021 in Erbil, Iraq, in connection to an appearance she made in a BBC documentary, speaking about abuses of the LGBTQ community in the region.
After her release in Iraq, Sedighi-Hamadani attempted to cross into Turkey from Iran to seek asylum, Amnesty said, but in November, the Intelligence Organization of the Revolutionary Guards said that a “leader” of a human trafficking network “involved in smuggling Iranian girls and women” to neighboring countries and directing them to homosexual groups under “protection of [foreign] intelligence agencies” had been caught.
Amnesty believes the statement by the Revolutionary Guards referred to Sedighi-Hamadani and called the allegations “spurious and baseless.”
Before allegedly attempting to cross into Turkey, Sedighi-Hamadani said she was “journeying toward freedom” in a video released by the Iranian Lesbian and Transgender Network, also known as 6Rang, in December of 2021 and referenced by Amnesty the following month.
“If I make it, I will continue to look after LGBT people. I will be standing behind them and raising my voice. If I don’t make it, I will have given my life for this cause,” she said in the video.
In a letter sent to the Chief Justice of Iran, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, Amnesty said Sedighi-Hamadani was accused in January by the prosecutor in Urumieh of “spreading corruption on earth” including through “promoting homosexuality,” “communication with anti-Islamic Republic media channels,” and “promoting Christianity.”
Iranian state media said that Sedighi-Hamadani and Chobdar’s sentences were related to trafficking, without referring to Sedighi-Hamadani’s charges or her activism, or further details on Chobdar.
“Contrary to reports published on social media, the area of charges against these individuals is related to the trafficking of women and young girls with the hope of education and promise of employment to a regional country and they were also abused and that led to the suicide of a number of these girls,” IRNA said, without providing details.
QT has reached out to the Iranian government about the allegation that Sedighi-Hamadani’s sexual minority status was the reason for her conviction. It was not immediately clear whether Sedighi-Hamadani and Chobdar had attorneys.
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CONYERS, Ga. — A man was shot to death over what Rockdale County investigators say was a misplaced DoorDash order.
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Deputies responded to a shooting call at Tall Oaks Apartments around 1:11 a.m.
The sheriff’s office says 20-year-old Fernando Solomon had an order from DoorDash, but it was mistakenly delivered to the home next door. When Soloman went to retrieve the food, investigators say he was shot.
Zaire Cortell Watson, 22, is facing charges of murder, aggravated assault and felony murder in connection with the shooting.
The home at 347 Tall Oaks Drive has a Ring camera. The incident report says Watson’s father saw the victim on video at the door and then called his son, who was inside.
The police report says Watson admitted to shooting Soloman after he saw the victim reach into his pocket. It goes on to say Watson’s father came to the scene “trying to understand why we detained his son.”
The victim’s father was also on the scene, according to the report, and said he came home to find his son had been shot.
Channel 2′s Bryan Mims knocked on both doors Wednesday, but nobody answered.
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Sandra Jackson-Lett, who works across the street, called the shooting shameful and described it as “a delivery gone bad.”
“I’m like, ‘Oh, my gosh!’ That was horrible for someone to lose their life simply by ordering food, so it was very shocking,” she said. “And I just give my condolences to the young man that lost his life.”
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Britain’s capital city expects hundreds of thousands of people to visit Queen Elizabeth II as she lies in state in Westminster Hall ahead her funeral on Monday, the mayor of London Sadiq Khan told QT, adding that the situation was “unprecedented.”
The world has not seen a funeral like this,” he said, adding, “She was loved, revered, our monarch for more than 70 years.”
“We expect to see over the course of the next few days hundreds of thousands of people personally pay their respects to her majesty the Queen, but also we expect to see prime ministers, presidents, members of the royal family, and others from across the globe,” he continued.
“The really reassuring thing is our King, King Charles III, had the best possible mentor, and the best possible apprenticeship and that’s why I’m so confident he will be a wonderful king,” he added.
As world leaders and their teams arrive in London for the Queen’s funeral, Khan said the city has never before seen such crowd and this presence.
“In just a couple of days, we will have almost 300 world leaders and their teams and entourages coming to London. I don’t think our city’s ever seen the sort of presence we’re going to see over the next few days,” Khan told Sky News.
The number of mourners far exceeds the scale of other events, such as the London Olympics and other Royal events, he said, suggesting that the crowds for the Queen’s passing are larger than all those events combined.
“If you think about the London marathon, the carnival, previous royal weddings, the Olympics — it’s all that, in one,” Khan said.
“This is a massive operation and we’re working really hard together to make sure that we can do her, we can do King Charles, we can do the Royal Family, our city, our nation, and the Commonwealth, what it deserves,” the London mayor added.
People in a 2.5-mile-long line in London to pay their respects to Queen Elizabeth II explained why they wanted to visit her coffin in Westminster Hall.
“I just feel like I will regret it if I don’t. And I just felt like I needed to come and say goodbye. That’s just me. And also, when my family has children — my boys have children — I’d like to teach them the history of it all. So, it just needed to be done today,” one woman told QT’s Anna Stewart as she waited in line.
A group told Stewart that they were told the line could last about five hours from where they stood, but the queue is moving.
Prince Pavlos of Greece remembers his late cousin, Queen Elizabeth II
Pavlos, Crown Prince of Greece, told QT that his cousin, Queen Elizabeth II, was “one of the kindest people I knew.”
“She was always smiling … knowledgeable about everything… and had a very good sense of humor,” he said.
He also expressed his love and praise for King Charles III, and he acknowledged the unique position of being an heir.
“What you’ve been waiting for your whole life is also the saddest day of your life,” he said.
King Charles III, according to Pavlos, is “best prepared” to inherit the Crown due to his vast knowledge of his country and the Commonwealth that he has acquired through his charity work under the Prince’s Trust.
Around 100 jobs are now at risk at King Charles III’s former official residence, union says
Around 100 employees at King Charles III’s former official residence, Clarence House, were given notice that they could lose their jobs after he became king, the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) said Wednesday.
[The] decision to announce redundancies in the Royal Household during the period of national mourning is nothing short of heartless,” PCS said in a statement published on its website, calling for an “immediate halt to the redundancy process.”
Some employees have worked there for decades, PCS noted.
This is a “significant majority of the household and many of these staff will be the same people who have so diligently supported the new king during this period of mourning, working extremely hard over recent days only to be given redundancy notices as thanks,” PCS added.
“While some changes across the households were to be expected, as roles across the royal family change, the scale and speed at which this has been announced is callous in the extreme. Least of all because we do not know what staffing the incoming Prince of Wales and his family might need,” PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka said.
Clarence House’s press office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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