Foreign News
Kenneth Eugene Smith faces first nitrogen execution in US after losing last-minute appeals
An Alabama death row inmate is expected to become the first person in the US to be executed with nitrogen gas, after losing last-minute appeals.
The US Supreme Court and a lower appeals court declined to block what Kenneth Eugene Smith’s lawyers called a “cruel and unusual” punishment.
Opponents say using nitrogen could cause unnecessary suffering, and a leak could harm people present in the room.
Smith, 58, was convicted in 1989 of murdering Elizabeth Sennett.
Alabama has 30 hours to carry out the execution, which involves pumping nitrogen gas through a mask, from Thursday at 0600 GMT (0100 ET).
He told the BBC earlier this week that the wait felt like torture.
Smith would be the first person to be put to death by this method in the US and, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, anywhere in the world.
Lawyers for the inmate, who has been on death row since 1996, told the BBC on Wednesday night that they were lodging another appeal to the nation’s top court in the hope of a last minute reprieve.
Breathing pure nitrogen without oxygen causes the cells to break down and leads to death. Alabama said in a court filing that they expect him to lose consciousness within seconds and die in a matter of minutes. But its use has been denounced by some medical professionals, who warn it could cause a range of catastrophic mishaps, ranging from violent convulsions to survival in a vegetative state.
Alabama and two other US states have approved the use of nitrogen hypoxia as an alternative method of execution because the drugs used in lethal injections have become more difficult to find, contributing to a fall in the number of executions nationally.
Alabama already tried to execute Smith by lethal injection two years ago but were unable to raise a vein before the state’s death warrant expired.
Smith was one of two men convicted of murdering 45-year-old Sennett in a $1,000 (£790) killing-for-hire in March 1988. She was beaten with a fireplace implement and stabbed in the chest and neck, and her death was staged to look like a home invasion and burglary.
Her husband Charles Sennett, a debt-ridden preacher, had orchestrated the scheme to collect insurance money. He killed himself as investigators closed in. Smith’s fellow hitman, John Forrest Parker, was executed in 2010.
At his trial Smith admitted to being present when the victim was killed, but said he did not take part in the attack.
The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights has said gassing Smith could amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and called for a halt. Smith’s lawyers lodged a challenge with the Supreme Court, arguing that putting convicts through multiple execution attempts violates the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution, which protects against “cruel and unusual” punishment.
On Wednesday, the justices declined to hear the appeal and denied his request to halt the execution. No justice publicly dissented from the ruling.
Smith also made a separate legal challenge to the lower 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, where he contested the legality of Alabama’s nitrogen gas protocol. But that court also rejected the inmate’s request for an injunction in a ruling on Wednesday evening.
Smith’s lawyers said they would again appeal to the Supreme Court.
His legal team argue the nitrogen gas method is “recently released and untested”, leaving him at risk of choking on his own vomit.
State Attorney General Steve Marshall previously called it “perhaps the most humane method of execution ever devised”.
Smith’s spiritual adviser, Reverend Jeff Hood, will be present in the room when the execution happens. He told the BBC he believes he will be in danger if the nitrogen leaks.
On Wednesday, prison officials escorted Rev Hood for a “walk-through” of the execution chamber, as required by Alabama’s execution protocol.
He told the BBC afterwards that he saw oxygen-level meters unplugged on a ledge inside the room, which he described as “unbelievably disturbing, it feels like you are at the centre of evil”.
“I asked ‘what’s the safety plan?’ and they said they didn’t want to get into it, they couldn’t get into it,” he said. “Once again we’re back at this place of having to rely on these people who have botched three executions in the last few years, he said. “It’s absolutely a terrifying thing to think that your life hangs in the balance with these guys”.
Rev Hood said he had requested that Alabama’s Governor Kay Ivey be present in the chamber during the execution to demonstrate her confidence in its safety, but had not received a response. “We have somebody who is championing this type of execution in the governor and yet she is unwilling to get her hands dirty,” he said.
The BBC has approached Ms Ivey’s office for comment regarding this and the latest accusations over safety.
Alabama has one of the highest per capita execution rates in the US and has 165 people currently on death row.
Since 2018, the state has been responsible for three botched attempts at lethal injection in which the condemned inmates survived.
The failures led to an internal review that largely placed blame on the prisoners themselves.
(BBC)
A car has crashed into a crowd of rugby league supporters in the eastern Australian city of Newcastle, injuring 10 people, including three children.
New South Wales police said on Saturday that two of the injured – a five-year-old girl and a 67-year-old man – were in a critical condition and the other eight were in stable condition in hospital.
Police said they had arrested the 18-year-old man driving the vehicle and were investigating what happened. They said the crash was not believed to be related to “terrorism”.
The crowd had gathered to farewell the local rugby league side, the Newcastle Knights, ahead of their grand final against the Sydney Roosters on Sunday.
Newcastle Lord Mayor Gavin Morris said the driver, a rugby league fan, had lost control of his vehicle and had been taken into custody.
“He was revving the car, he was excited, he was a supporter, he was there for the joy of the moment,” Morris told the national broadcaster ABC.
“Somehow he lost control of the car … and he’s gone into the crowd,” he added.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said: “My thoughts are with everyone injured or involved in the horrible incident this morning in Newcastle.”
“Rugby league brings people together, and this should have been a weekend of excitement and pride for Newcastle fans,” he wrote in a social media post.
[Aljazeera]
Polls have opened in Latvia for an election taking place against the backdrop of perceived security threats from Russia and a nationwide cost-of-living squeeze.
Saturday’s vote is the first electoral test for Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs after coming to power in May this year when his predecessor resigned due to a backlash from stray drone incursions from Ukraine.
Kulbergs, whose right-wing United List party is currently polling at about 20 percent, is expected to hold onto his position, but the decline of two allies in his current coalition means he is set for a complicated negotiation over the makeup of any future government.
Polls opened at 05:00 GMT and will close at 17:00 GMT. The results are not expected to change Latvia’s pro-European and pro-Ukrainian course.
About 1.5 million people are eligible to vote in the country’s 11th parliamentary election since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Latvian politics are highly fragmented, with parties rarely seeing above 20 percent vote share and coalitions being the norm.
This year, 14 electoral lists are contesting the election, but polls indicate only seven are likely to enter parliament, with the rest expected to fail to meet the minimum 5 percent vote threshold.
Rising living costs, low wages, strains on the healthcare system and long-term population decline have all featured prominently in campaign debates.
Most parties in Latvia are pro-Ukraine; however, the populist Sovereign Power party – which says it wants Ukraine to win but argues money spent supporting Kyiv would be better spent at home – looks likely to become the country’s second-biggest party, with more than 9 percent of the vote. Most other parties have ruled out forming a coalition with Sovereign Power.
Latvia First, a pro-Ukraine and populist nationalist party currently polling at about 9 percent, could be a potential coalition partner for PM Kulbergs.
The Progressives, a pro-European social democratic party, are polling at 6 percent.
Ethnic Russians make up roughly one in four Latvian citizens, but their vote, which has traditionally been cast along identity-based lines, looks set to be made according to economic and social issues.
Latvia is the poorest of the Baltic states, and it has sharply increased its defence spending since Russia invaded Ukraine, now allocating nearly 5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) to defence.
[Aljazeera]
A flight from the United Arab Emirates to Israel was diverted to Saudi Arabia after issuing a distress signal, in what appeared to be a hijacking attempt, on Wednesday.
The Flydubai flight FZ1073 was diverted as it flew from Dubai to Tel Aviv through Jordanian airspace, prompting Israel to deploy warplanes, the Reuters news agency reported.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said one of the pilots had stabbed the other and then tried to crash the plane. He added that Israel was preparing for other “potential threats” after the incident.
There has been no official confirmation of a hijacking attempt, however.
Flydubai said an altercation had occurred on the flight deck and that all passengers were safe and accounted for. The plane was secured by on-duty crew travelling onboard, it added.
At Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk airport, where the plane landed, officials said both the plane’s captain and the first officer had been hospitalised after sustaining injuries. Both were taken to the hospital, according to a statement from the Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Tabuk carried by the Saudi state-run Alekhbariya television.
The UAE has become a popular vacation destination for Israeli tourists since the countries normalised ties in 2020. Here’s what we know about what happened.
Footage taken onboard the plane appears to show the captain of the aircraft lying on the ground with several stab wounds, and a passenger with a bloody wound to the head.
In another video, passengers weep and cry out in distress as the aircraft shakes.
Yasmin Abukasis, the mother of one of the passengers onboard, said her daughter Miriam thought she was going to die. “The plane started to lose control,” she told journalists at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, before other pilots onboard took control of the aircraft.
Flight tracking data indicated the plane descended over 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds around two and a half hours after leaving Dubai. Flightradar24 said on X that an initial general emergency signal designated by code 7700 was issued at around 05:31 UTC and was later changed to another emergency signal with code 7500 declaring “unlawful interference”.
Passenger Dalia Shpigel told Israeli newspaper Haaretz that some people seated towards the front of the plane broke into the cockpit after the plane began to descend and they realised something was wrong.
“An hour before landing, we felt that there was no control over the plane, that it was starting to jump,” she said. “The guys saw that the plane had begun to dive and broke into the cockpit.”
Netanyahu said he later spoke to one of the Israeli passengers who broke into the cockpit and overpowered one of the pilots who was reportedly trying to sabotage the aircraft’s systems.
“I salute these heroes who demonstrated extraordinary resourcefulness and courage,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “They saved many lives and prevented a major disaster.”
Timeline of events
03:05 – Flight FZ1073 takes off from Dubai05:21 – Altitude fluctuations begin05:22 – Aircraft drops more than 14,000 ft in under 30 seconds05:31 – Signal from aircraft changes to 7700 (general emergency)05:38 – Signal changes to 7500 (unlawful interference)06:45 – Aircraft lands at Tabuk Regional Airport
[Aljazeera]
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