Man set free after spending 21 years on death row in Pakistan
Islamabad: A Pakistani man, who spent 21 years on death row for a criminal offense he was convicted of committing when he was a juvenile, has been released, a non-profit human rights group said on Wednesday.
Muhammad Iqbal was 17 years old in 1998 when he was arrested and consequently sentenced to death a year later, according to the Justice Project Pakistan (JPP). But Pakistan passed the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance (JJSO) in 2000, making death sentence illegal for juvenile offenders.
A presidential notification of 2001 subsequently provided remission to all juveniles sentenced prior to the ordinance. However, Iqbal continued to languish on death row despite his proven juvenility, the JPP said.
A letter, it said, was written by the Punjab government to the Lahore High Court in 2003, listing Iqbal as one of the prisoners entitled to remission.
“Two decades later, the Lahore High Court had finally acknowledged that Iqbal was wronged and did not deserve to be on death row, the JPP said.
His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in February 2020 and Iqbal was released from jail on June 30, 2020, after it was established that he has already served a life term. The advocacy group did not specify the crime committed by Iqbal.
The JPP is a non-profit human rights law firm that provides pro-bono legal advice, representation and investigative services to the most vulnerable prisoners facing the harshest punishments. (PTI)
Worker calls police on Black woman staying at hotel
Williamston (US): A worker at a North Carolina hotel has been fired after she called police on a Black woman and her child who were guests there and swimming in the pool.
A woman identified on her Facebook account as Missy Williams-Wright said she was using the pool with her family at a Hampton Inn in Williamston last week when she said an employee approached asking for proof they were guests, news outlets reported.
“It was two white people sitting over there. She said nothing to them,” Wright told responding officers in a Facebook Live video posted on Friday. “She said to me, ‘Oh because it’s always people like you using the pool unauthorized.’ Who’s people like me?”
The officers and the employee, who appears to be white, are then heard asking for proof she has a room at the hotel. When Wright showed them a hotel key card, the employee asked her what room they were staying in.
In the video, police and the hotel employee are heard asking for Wright’s name. She declined to give it, saying she didn’t break the law. The video then shows an officer doing a check on her car’s license plate.
About seven minutes after she started filming, Wright ushered her children out of the pool. Her narration suggested the worker followed her to an elevator as she went back to her room, but Wright refused to talk to her. As of Tuesday, the video had been viewed more than 940,000 times on Facebook.
“Hampton by Hilton has zero tolerance for racism and discrimination of any kind,” Shruti Gandhi Buckley, global head of Hampton by Hilton, said in an Instagram post on Monday. The post also said the worker who called the police was “no longer employed” and that the company apologized directly to the guest and her family. (AP)
Cairo palace opens to public after decades of neglect
Cairo: Cairos Baron Palace, which has the shape of a Hindu temple and a luxurious interior, has opened to the public as a museum after decades of inexplicable neglect.
The restoration of the site, which was built in the early 20th century and comprises a main building and a tower, began three years ago, reports Efe news. With decorations inspired by elements of Khmer or Cambodian architecture, experts started renovation work in 2017.
The palace was damaged despite having a concrete skeleton, something unusual when it was built between 1907 and 1911.
French architect Alexandre Marcel, who rose to fame for his designs in the 1900 Paris Exposition, designed the two-storey palace.
It has a large terrace adorned with statues and shrines that can be accessed through a steep wooden spiral staircase, which has also been restored.
The palace served as the residence of Belgian Baron Edouard Empain, who decided in 1906 to build the Heliopolis neighbourhood on 2,500 hectares of desert, away from central Cairo.
The palace, considered as national patrimony since 1993, became a state property in 2005 but it remained closed and neglected. (IANS)