Friday 6 April2018 The Guardian Bollywood ‘bad boy’ sentenced to five World j | years in prison for poaching antelope Delhi The Bollywood superstar Salman Khan was sentenced to five years in prison yesterday for poaching a protected species of Indian antelope, in the lat- esttwisttoan off-screen life almost as dramaticas the epics he has starred in. A court in Rajasthan state found Khan, one of the world’s best-paid actors, guilty of illegally hunting the two blackbucksTrom his car window while filming in Jodhpur in 1998. Prosecutors alleged that Khan, 52, and four other dctorsin the car with him fled the scene when they were spotted, leaving the animals’ carcasses behind. The otheractors,amongthem Saif AliKhan and Sonali Bendre, were acquitted by the court in Jodhpur Because of alack ofevidence. India’s wildlife protection act bans the hunting ofall buta few wild species without a permit, As well as the five-year sentence, the court also Tined Khan 10,000 rupees (£110). His Tawyers said they wouldappeal againistthesentenceand thatan urgentbail hearing was sched- uled for today. Khan wastaken to Jodhpur central jail after visiting a local hospital fora Medical examination. Hundreds of police surrounded the courtroom in Jodhpur to keep back fans of theactor, whoisknown forhis bad-boy image and macho film roles. Khan has long maintained that he was framed by forest officials in the case and that the blackbucks could have died from overeating. Khan was first arrested over the poaching case in 1998 after reports Salman Khan, centre, arriving at the court in Jodhpur, Rajasthan emerged that he had hunted the two antelopesand three other gazelles. In 2006, he was convicted of killing the blackbuicksand sentenced to fiveyears in prison. On appeal, the Rajasthan high court suspended the sentence in 2007 after the actor had spent two. short stints in jail. ‘The charges were revised and broughtagain the following year, and fave hungover Khan for the past dec- ade, preventing him from obtaininga UK visa in 2013 until the Rajasthan gov- emmentasked the court toallow him totravel. In 2016, he was acquitted of separate poaching charges relating to the gazelles. ‘Anand Desai, Khan’s lawyer, saidhe wassurprised by yesterday's judgment asthe facts of the case mirrored those the Rajasthan high courthad reliedon to suspend his client’s conviction for 20 Number of years since Khan was Jirst arrested for poaching Salman Khan in his latest film, Tiger Zinda Hai, about a soldier rescuing Isis hostages in Iraq. It has taken $85m worldwide euovocravt As RAs FUMS/EVERETT the same crime in 2007. Healso ques- tioned why other defendantshasbeen freed, which he said implied “that Salman was out hunting alone in the middle of the night ina remotearea”. At the time of the poaching, black- bucks were seen as a vulnerable species but they have since been reclassified as a species of “least con- cern”, though they remain protected by Indian wildlife laws. Khan has had several brushes with the law. In 2015, he was acquitted of killing a homeless marr 3002 hit and-run incident, a decision now baingchalfenged in thesupremecourt. ‘Also in 2002, Aishwarya Rai, a for- mer girlfriend and fellow Bollywood star, accused Khan of verbal and phys- ical abuse- allegations he denies. "The poaching allegations against Khan were first made by some- one belonging to the Bishnoi sect in Rajasthan, Members of the sect con- siderblackbucks to be areincarnation of their 15th-century guru. Poonamchand Bishnoi reportedly told the court he heard gunshots and saw headlights on the night of the poaching and wrote down the regis- tration number of the hunter’s car as itsped away. Members of the sect cheered out- side the court as the verdict was read and Khan was takenraway by police. India’s overburdened legalSystem can take years to hearCases but the lingering poaching @hfarges have not dampened the obsessive devotion Khan commands from his fans. He earned $37m (£26m) last year, according to Forbes, making him India’s second-highest paid enter- tainerafter Shah Rukh Khan. Hislatest. film, Tiger Zinda Hai, about a soldier who goes into Iraq to rescue hostages from Islamic State, is one of the high- est-grossing Hindi moviesever, taking about $85m worldwide. Women told to leave sumo ring while giving first aid to city mayor Tokyo Women who rushed to help a man when he had a stroke while giving a speech at a sumo event in Japan were ordered off the raised ring because of rules banning females from the area. ‘The 66-year-old mayor of Maizuru city, Ryozo Tatami, collapsed on the dohyo sumo ringin Kyoto on Wednes- day. The ringis traditionally regarded asa sacred place in the ancient sport and purified with rituals by Shinto Priests before sumo bouts. ‘Womenare banned from taking part in sumo tournaments or ceremonies, as well as touching or stepping on to. the ring, because their presenceis seen asdefiling its purity. Anumber of women ran on to give emergency treatment, but the sumo judge at the event repeatedly called over the PA system for them to step away. Two could be seen starting to leave but then returning to help, ina video shown on Japanese TV. ‘The actions of the judge drew crit- icism from television commentators and on social media in Japan. Nobuyoshi Hokutoumi, chairofthe Japan Sumo Association (JSA) and a former grand champion, later apolo- gised and expressed his appreciation for the women’s help. “Ina situation that could have been life-threatening, it was an inappropriate response. We offer a sincere apology,’ said Hokut- oumi, whoisalso knownas Hakkaku, thename of thesumostableheheads. ‘Themayor, who hada subarachnoid haemorrhage, was ina stable condi- tion in hospital, city officials said. Fusae Ohta, the female governor of Osaka from 2000 to 2008, was once forced to presenta prize to the cham- pionof atournament onawalkway by thering. The JSA rejected her request toenter the ring, claimingit would dis- honour sumo’s ancient traditions. In the 18th century, female sumo tournaments were held in parts of Japan, with women also taking part in the Shinto rituals from which they are now banned. ke ‘A Scenes from the sumo event, when women defied a ban on entering the ring in order to help the stricken manOPINION | Ehe New York Gimes INTERNATIONAL EDITION AG. SULZBERGER, Publisher JOSEPH KAHN, Managing Editor STEPHEN DUNBARJOHNSON, President, International ‘TOM BODKIN, Creatioe Director JEAN-CHRISTOPHE DEMARTA, Senior VP, Global Advertising ‘SUZANNE DALEY, Associate Editor ACHILLES TSALTAS, VP, international Conferences CHARLOTTE GORDON, VP, international Consumer Marketing JAMES BENNET, Ecitorial Page Ector HELEN KONSTANTOPOULDS, VP, International Circilation JAMES DAO, Deputy Editorial Page Editor HELENA PHUA, Executive VP, Asia-Pacific KATHLEEN KINGSBURY, Deputy Editorial Page Editor SUZANNE YVERNES, international Chief Financial Officer END THE DEATH PENALTY FOR GOOD It’s time for the U.S. Supreme Court to end state- sanctioned killing once and for all. Alva Campbell was supposed to die on Nov. 15. That was the date chosen by the State of Ohio, which had convicted and condemned Mr. Campbell for murdering a teenager, Charles Dials, during a 1997 carjacking in Columbus. Inside the death chamber that morning, prison offi- cials spent more than an hour searching Mr. Camp- bell’s arms and legs for a vein into which they could inject the lethal drug cocktail. They comforted him as they prepared to kill him, providing the 69-year-old with a wedge pillow to help with breathing problems related to his years of heavy smoking. After about 80 minutes, they gave up and returned Mr. Campbell to his cell, where he sits awaiting his next date with death, now set for June 5, 2019. The pathetic scene was a fitting symbol of the state of capital punishment in America in 2017, a vile prac- tice that descends further into macabre farce even as it declines in use. Mr. Campbell would have been the 24th person put to death last year. That’s less than a quarter of the 98 executions carried out in 1999. The number should be zero. As the nation enters 2018, the Supreme Court is considering whether to hear at least one case asking it to strike down the death penalty, once and for all, for violating the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishments. Whether the justices take that or another case, the facts they face will be the same: The death penalty is a ‘savage, racially biased, arbitrary and pointless punish- ment that becomes rarer and more geographically isolated with every year, ‘Texas was one of just two states — Arkansas is the other — responsible for almost half of 2017’s execu- tions. It would be tempting to conclude from this lit- any, which is drawn from an annual report by the Death Penalty Information Center, that capital punish- ment is being reserved for the most horrific crimes committed by the most incorrigible offenders. But it would be wrong. The death penalty is not and has never been about the severity of any given crime. Mental illness, intel- lectual disability, brain damage, childhood abuse or neglect, abysmal lawyers, minimal judicial review, a white victim — these factors are far more closely asso- ciated with who ends up getting executed. More troubling still are the wrongful convictions, In 2017, four more people who had been sentenced to death were exonerated, for a total of 160 since 1973 —a time during which 1,465 people were executed. In many of the exonerations, prosecutors won convic- tions and sentences despite questionable or nonexist- ent evidence, pervasive misconduct or a pattern of racial bias. A 2014 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences extrapolated from known cases of wrongful convictions to estimate that at least 4 percent of all death-row inmates are wrongfully convicted. Against this backdrop, it would take an enormous leap of faith to believe that no inno- cent person has ever been executed. This page has long opposed the death penalty, and would continue to even if the penalty’s application were completely free of bias and error, That is an un- attainable goal, as should be obvious by now. Perhaps this explains why Americans, whose support for capi- tal punishment climbed as high as 80 percent in 1994, have increasingly lost their appetite for state-sanc- tioned killing. Support is down to around 55 percent, its lowest level in 45 years. The rest of the developed world agreed to reject this cruel and pointless practice long ago. How can it be ended here, for good? Last summer, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sug- gested that the death penalty would eventually end with a whimper. “The incidence of capital punishment has gone down, down, down so that now, I think, there are only three states that actually administer the death penalty,” Justice Ginsburg said at a law school event. “We may see an end to capital punishment by attrition as there are fewer and fewer executions.” That’s a dispiriting take. The death penalty holdouts may be few and far between, but they are fiercely committed, and they won’t stop killing people unless they’re forced to, Relying on the vague idea of attrition absolves the court of its responsibility to be the ulti- mate arbiter and guardian of the Constitution — and specifically of the Eighth Amendment. The court has already relied on that provision to ban the execution of juvenile offenders, the intellectually disabled and those convicted of crimes against people other than murder. There’s no reason not to take the final step. The justices have all the information they need right now to bring America in line with most of the rest of the world and end the death penalty for good.Former South Korean President Park Geun-hye, left, was sentenced Friday to 24 years in prison on 16 corruption-related counts. AHN YOUNG-JOON/AP Former South Korean president sentenced to 24 years, fined $17M Thomas Maresca Special to USA TODAY SEOUL — Former South Korean lead- er Park Geun-hye wasisentencedito!24" years in prison and fined almost $17 mil- lion Friday, the culmination of a stun- ning fall from grace for the nation’s first female president. The sentence, handed down at Seoul Central District Court, appeared to be the final chapter in acorruptioninvesti- gation that began in 2016. The scandal surrounding Park and her closest confi- dante would ultimately ensnare several of South Korea’s top officials and busi- ness leaders in a web of¢bribery!and graft. Park was impeached bylawmiakers in December 2016 following months of massive street protests. Avcriminaltrial wasilaunehed in May 2017, and Park was foundeguiltysof 16 corruption-related counts, including:bribery, coercion and abuse of power. Prosecutors had requested ai30=year sentence. Business leaders from powerful Ko- rean conglomerates Samsung and Lotte were alsotried and convictedduring the course of Park’s trial, as was her confi- dante, Choi Soon-sil, a longtime friend of Park who used her tremendous in- fluence over the president to enrich herself and her family. Park did notappearattthesentenc= ing) which was televised live, and re- fused to participate in her :eriminal trial since October. She has one week to appeal the verdict. Park is the daughter of former Presi- dent Park Chung-hee, aidictator who tuled the nation for 18 years until his assassination in 1979. ‘A spokesperson for current Presi- dent Moon Jae-in said in a statement that Friday's proceedings were “heart- breaking,” and vowed that its lessons would be remembered. “History that is not remembered is said to repeat itself,” the statement read. “We will not forget today.” Park Geun-hye is not the only for- mer South Korean president to@face criminal charges. Her predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, was arrested last month ona raft of coruptiomallegations, in- cludingbribery, embezzlement and tax’ evasion. Two former presidents wereycon> wictediof bribery.and treason in 1996, but were both pardoned a year later.