Background:
At the ninth United Nations Congress on the prevention of crime and the treatment of offenders, central issues were discussd regarding the spread of organized crime and the dangers posed by its international tendencies. The conference was held in Cairo from 29 April to 8 May 1995. It was emphasized that the traditional approach of considering organized and economic crime as a law and order problem at merely a national level to be insufficient. The response of the governments to such operations – which are clearly at a macro level – was discussed in order to improve the former poorly executed responses.
Side A:
Amnesty International issued an article on capital punishment in Saudi Arabia; however this article has reportedly gotten many facts wrong. It is said if you are a robber or a thief, your hand will not just be amputated from the first offense. The government takes into consideration your case and your reasoning for the crime. If one does it to survive for example, their hands will not be cut off immediately per se. The capital punishment is not applied arbitrarily or without reason. If the family of the victim expresses their wish to lessen the punishment of the perpetrator, there will be no capital punishment. The number of capital punishments in Saudi Arabia has increased according to one of the interviewers; however this is allegedly not true as it is just a matter of increase in population and a lot of foreigners with different attitudes and behaviours than Saudis. Thus the capital punishment occurs more often among these foreigners, making it look like the number of capital punishments is increasing says one of the interviewees. It is the population that is increasing, thus the punishment increases respectively.
Cornelis Hulsman mentions that in Sudan, people are stealing in order to survive but they are being punished anyways. One of the representatives at the conference argues that the tradition of Islam is wise, but that Sudan interprets the divinity of the Qurʾān. It is also not fair that in the West, terrorism is continuously being linked to Islam. There is a stereotype that Muslims or Middle-Easterners are terrorists and it is untrue and unfair. There is no actual connection, says the man and he mentions the incident in Oklahoma City that happned the same month of the press conference. There was a domestic terrorist bomb attack on a Federal building in downtown Oklahoma City and it was carried out by two Americans. Many initial news stories speculated the attack to have been carried out by Islamic terrorists, such as those we were behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Some responded to these reports by persecuting Muslims and people of Arab descent, although the incident proved to have nothing to do with Islam.
Islamic Jihād Group calls themselves Islamists, but the government calls them terrorists. The man argues that Islamic Law is very clear, anybody who studies it, knows that what those groups do is not at all related to Islam. They can call themselves whatever they want; calling yourself something and actually being that something are two completely different things. Islam does not encourage violence against innocent people, not even against non-Muslims.
A Dutch representative is asked the outcomes of the UN Conference. He replies that the Dutch are involved in a way as they are demonstrating in Egypt the way which Holland handles information technologies in terms of law enforcement. It grabbed the attention of many neighbouring countries of Egypt and it has shown that Holland has made greater progress and even developing countries who wish to improve their law enforcement show great interest in the way the Dutch go about it. Additionally, the Dutch submitted a resolution which aimed at improvement of the living and work conditions in prisons based on a manual that was created bu the Penal Reform International (PRI). These, according to him, are two concrete examples of the conference’s outcomes.
An Egyptian at the conference, thinks it is important to understand that certain forms of organization that engage in terror violence are so large in size and due to the scope of their activities, they have acquired some of the attributes that organized crime has. Obviously, organized crime has the purpose of financial outcomes, while terrorism deals with strictly political outcomes. Terror organizations that use terror violence want to change these regimes, but those who are active in organized crimes want to get higher up in society.
Side B:
Sharīf Basyūnī was Emeritus Professor of Law at DePaul University where he taught from 1964-2012. He has served in numerous United Nations positions and was the President of International Association of Penal Law which is an NGO within the United Nations and that is specialized in extradition. Basyūnī says in many European countries there is a concern of treatment of persons who are going to be surrendered. Human rights organizations are scared they will be tortured or mistreated. Many countries look into it and Basyūnī says it is not necessarily aimed at Egypt, because it happened before between the German and American prisons as well. Basyūnī says Egypt is a poor developing country and thus does not have the same conditions in prisons as in Europe and is definitely not up to international human rights standards, due to mainly the overcrowding of the prisons, and often torture.