KUWAIT HANGS THREE ASIANS, ONE STATELESS RESIDENT

November 21, 2006: two Pakistani nationals convicted of drug trafficking and a Bangladeshi and a stateless resident found guilty of premeditated murder were hanged in Kuwait, officials said.
The four men were hanged inside the central jail, some 25 kilometers (16 miles) west of Kuwait City, before a number of officials and journalists.
Pakistani nationals Taj Mohammad Abdulghani and Abdulrahim Nader Shah were convicted of smuggling a large quantity of drugs into Kuwait, while Jhangir Alam Hussein, a Bangladeshi, and Faraj Joudah Majood, a stateless resident, were sentenced to death for premeditated murder.
A fifth man, a Sri Lankan convicted of murder, was supposed to be hanged with the group but the public prosecutor ordered a stay of execution, an interior ministry official said without elaborating.
The hanging was the first since 2002 which the public has not been allowed to attend.
Kuwait has executed a total of 70 people, three of them women, since its first use of the death penalty some four decades ago. (Sources: Agence France Presse, 21/11/2006)