UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, dogged by charges he was softening UN opposition to capital punishment, weighed in again on the issue on January 6, urging a stay of executions in Iraq.

Rome lit up the arches of its ancient Colosseum at dusk to protest against the death penalty after Saddam Hussein's hanging, with the mayor calling it the city's symbol to the world for human rights.

British Chancellor of Exchequer Gordon Brown condemned the hanging of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein as "deplorable" and "completely unacceptable", the BBC reported.

on the nonviolent initiative undertaken by Marco Pannella...

Italy will campaign at the United Nations for a global ban on the death penalty, Prime Minister Romano Prodi said, after graphic images of Saddam Hussein's hanging shocked people around the world.

Radical Party leader and European Parliamentarian Marco Pannella, also President of Hands Off Cain, completed eight days of a total hunger and thirst strike. On January 3, 2007, he discontinued the thirst strike for 24-48 hours in order continue with the hunger strike.

Saddam Hussein was executed at dawn following his conviction by an Iraqi court for crimes against humanity.

Marco Pannella, a member of the European Parliament and leader of the Nonviolent Radical Party, started a thirst and hunger strike to protest the death sentence against former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

novelist Ngugi wa Thiong'o said the death sentence passed by a Kenyan court on the three guards who attacked him and his wife was too harsh.

Iran hanged three people for carrying out bombings in the oil rich Khuzestan province. The Tehran Emrooz daily newspaper said the men were hanged in the provincial capital Ahvaz, where in January 2006 they bombed a private bank and the office of the governor.

Nobel Peace Laureate, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, has appealed to the Iraqi Government not to carry out the death sentences passed on former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, as well as his former Vice President, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, and former Intelligence Chief, Awad Hamed Al-Bander, all three having been indicted over the Dujail slaughter.

on the presentation by the EU of the Declaration on the death penalty at the United Nations General Assembly, Secretary of Hands Off Cain Sergio D’Elia and Treasurer Elisabetta Zamparutti made the following declaration: