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US Carries Out First Execution Of Transgender Person

Published

3 years ago

January 4, 2023

A transgender woman convicted of murder was put to death late Tuesday in the first such execution in the United States, officials said.

Amber McLaughlin, 49, was pronounced dead shortly before 7 pm local time at the Diagnostic and Correctional Centre in the town of Bonne Terre, Missouri, according to a statement from the state prison department.

Local news station Fox2now reported that McLaughlin died by lethal injection.

McLaughlin was the first transgender person of either sex to be executed in the country, and also the first person to die by capital punishment this year in America.

She was convicted of murdering a former girlfriend in 2003 in a suburb of St. Louis, before she transitioned.

McLaughlin stalked the victim to the point where the ex-partner sought a restraining order.

The day of the killing, McLaughlin waited for the woman — named Beverly Guenther — as she left work.

Guenther was raped and stabbed to death with a kitchen knife. Her body was dumped near the Mississippi river.

In 2006 a jury found McLaughlin guilty of murder but was deadlocked on what her punishment should be.

The trial judge stepped in and imposed the death penalty. Such intervention is allowed in Missouri as well as in Indiana.

Citing the fact that a jury did not sentence McLaughlin to death, her lawyers asked Governor Mike Parson to commute her sentence to life in prison.

“The death sentence now being considered does not come from the conscience of the community — but from a single judge,” her attorneys argued in their clemency request.

They also argued that McLaughlin had had a troubled childhood and suffered from mental health issues.

Her cause had drawn support from high-profile people including two Missouri members of the US House of Representatives, Cori Bush and Emanuel Cleaver.

In a letter to the governor they said McLaughlin’s adoptive father used to beat her with a baton and even tasered her.

“Alongside this horrendous abuse, she was also silently struggling with her identity, grappling with what we now understand is gender dysphoria,” the letter stated. The condition describes people feeling their sex at birth and gender identity do not match.

Press reports said McLaughlin began her gender transition in recent years but had remained in the men’s section of death row in Missouri.

The Death Penalty Information Centre, which works to abolish such punishment in America, said there was no known previous case of an openly transgender person being executed in the United States.

The issue has drawn more attention in recent months, with the supreme court of Ohio upholding a death sentence against a transgender woman and Oregon state commuting one, the center said.

AFP

Headline

Serbia Indicts Ex-minister, 12 Others Over Train Station Tragedy

Published

3 hours ago

September 16, 2025

Editor

Serbian prosecutors filed an updated indictment on Tuesday against 13 people, including a former minister, over a fatal railway station roof collapse that has triggered a wave of anti-government protests.

The prosecution said all those indicted, among them former construction minister Goran Vesic, face charges of “serious crimes against public safety” over the tragedy that killed 16 people last November.

“The indictment proposes that the Higher Court in Novi Sad order custody for all the defendants,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

The roof collapse at the newly renovated station in Serbia’s second-largest city, Novi Sad, became a symbol of entrenched corruption and sparked almost daily protests.

Protesters first demanded a transparent investigation, but their calls soon escalated into demands for early elections.

The Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Novi Sad initially filed an indictment at the end of December, but judges returned it in April, requesting more information.

The accused were released or placed under house arrest following the decision.

The prosecutor’s office said it had complied with the judge’s request and had now completed the supplementary investigation.

The prosecutor specialising in organised crime and corruption in Belgrade is leading a separate, independent investigation into the tragedy.

That investigation is focused on 13 people, including Vesic and another former minister, Tomislav Momirovic, who headed the Construction Ministry before him.

In March, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) launched a third, separate investigation into the possible misuse of EU funds for the station’s reconstruction.

AFP

Headline

Kazakhstan Bans Forced Marriage, Bride Kidnapping

Published

3 hours ago

September 16, 2025

Editor

Kazakhstan has banned forced marriages and bride kidnappings through a law that came into effect Tuesday in the Central Asian country, where the practice persists despite new attention being paid to women’s rights.

Forcing someone to marry is now punishable by up to 10 years in prison, Kazakh police said in a statement.

“These changes are aimed at preventing forced marriages and protecting vulnerable categories of citizens, especially women and adolescents,” it added.

Bride kidnappings have also been outlawed.

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“Previously, a person who voluntarily released a kidnapped person could expect to be released from criminal liability. Now this possibility has been eliminated,” the police said.

There are no reliable statistics of forced marriage cases across the country, with no separate article in the criminal code prohibiting it until now.

A Kazakh lawmaker said earlier this year that the police had received 214 such complaints over the past three years.

The custom is also present in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, where it mostly goes unpunished due to indifferent law enforcement and stigma surrounding whistleblowers.

The issue of women’s rights in Kazakhstan gained media attention in 2023 following the murder of a woman by her husband, a former minister, a case that shocked Kazakh society and prompted President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to react.

“Some people hide behind so-called traditions and try to impose the practice of wife stealing. This blatant obscurantism cannot be justified,” Tokayev said last year.

AFP

Headline

Russia Arrests Woman For Detonating Bomb On Railway

Published

3 hours ago

September 16, 2025

Editor

Russia’s FSB security service said on Tuesday it had arrested a woman in her fifties accused of detonating explosives in a bid to sabotage the Trans-Siberian Railway.

The suspect was allegedly working on behalf of Ukrainian intelligence, the FSB said, in the latest incident of alleged covert activity during the countries’ conflict.

“In August 2025, following the instructions provided by the adversary, the suspect manufactured a homemade explosive device from publicly available components, placed it on the railway tracks and triggered it,” the Russian agency said.

“She recorded the moment of the explosion on her mobile phone camera and sent the footage as a report to the handler to receive a reward.”

The statement did not name the suspect but said she was born in 1974 and carried out the alleged attack in eastern Siberia’s Zabaikalsky region.

The FSB warned Russians that it was monitoring social networks and online messenger services such as Telegram and WhatsApp for evidence of Ukrainian services recruiting Russians to carry out sabotage.

Separately, the agency told state news agency TASS that a man had been sentenced to 18 years and six months for transporting explosives on behalf of a “pro-Ukrainian” group.

A resident of the Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine, had, the FSB said, established contact through the Telegram app with a banned “terrorist organisation”.

He allegedly retrieved explosives from a cache on the orders of this group before waiting for “further instructions”, according to the same source cited by TASS.

He was jailed by a military tribunal.

AFP