the Independent learned that secret executions are being carried out in Iraq in the prisons run by Nouri al-Maliki's government.

Australia will not help people facing the death penalty other than its own citizens, Attorney-General Robert McClelland said.

A convicted drug trafficker was hanged in prison in the northern Iranian city of Hamedan, Etemad

a survey by a Japanese citizens' group opposed to capital punishment found that at least 42 of some 100

A divided Supreme Court refused to reconsider its ruling barring the death penalty for the

in South Korea a provincial court has challenged the constitutionality of the current law

a court in southern Vietnam sentenced a Chinese woman to death for circulating large amounts of counterfeit Vietnamese currency, the presiding judge said.

nine members of an outlawed religious sect in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were

Foreign Affairs Minister Franco Frattini said that Italy will promote a new UN resolution to confirm the moratorium on the death penalty that was approved last December by the United Nations General Assembly and to push countries that still employ the death penalty to stop its use."

the reformist Iranian newspaper Kargozaran published a public appeal asking the chief magistrate to suspend the execution of six Kurdish activists.

support for the death penalty is a denial of the basic Christian belief that God can turn any person from a life of sin, a Vatican official told a group of justice ministers, judges and lawmakers examining positions on capital punishment. Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers, spoke at the conference "No Justice Without Life," which gathered representatives from 16 countries in Rome for a daylong meeting.

a decision by the Conservative government to stop seeking clemency for a Canadian man on death row in the United States was arbitrary and unfair, his defense lawyer said.