Egypt's state security court sentenced three people to death during a court hearing over involvement in a series of blasts targeting Red Sea holiday resorts.

three drug traffickers were executed by firing squad in Ho Chi Minh City for smuggling over 800kg of heroin, the biggest-ever drug haul in Vietnam.

a border guard officer has been beheaded for drug trafficking, press reports said. Khalaf bin Faheed al-Inizi was found guilty of smuggling a large quantity amphetamines.

Iraq executed 27 "terrorists" convicted by Iraqi courts of killings and rapes in several provinces. The 27 were executed in Baghdad, the government's media office said in a brief statement. It did not provide any further details.

Rwanda will pass a law ending capital punishment by December 2006 to encourage European countries to extradite suspected masterminds of the genocide that occurred in the country in 1994. Unless the country abolishes capital punishment, it will not be able to try in its own national courts the masterminds of the genocide, Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama said.

Indonesia's Supreme Court has increased the sentences for four Australians convicted of drug smuggling in Bali to the death penalty, officials said.

Saudi Arabia executed Muhammad Bin-Shalal Bin-Farhud al-Shammari, an Iraqi man convicted of trafficking heroin in the strict Muslim kingdom.

the Taliban publicly executed a man for his alleged involvement in a murder case in the Garmsir district of southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

two Saudi soldiers were beheaded with a sword after being convicted of drug smuggling, the Saudi interior ministry said.

former security officer Rustam Ibragimov, one of the two key defendants in the murder trial of opposition leader Altynbek Sarsenbaev, was sentenced to death.

Undersecretary of State at the Presidential Chancellery Andrzej Krawczyk has written to Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly head Rene van der Linden that President Lech Kaczynski had not presented any initiative of reintroducing the death penalty in Poland.

an Afghan hitman convicted of murdering a dozen people in south-eastern Iran, was hanged in public.