a United Arab Emirates appeal court commuted to imprisonment a sentence of death by stoning handed down by a lower court against a Bangladeshi convicted of adultery. The court ordered Shaheen Abdel Rahman jailed for a year and then deported to his home country.

a senior Vatican cardinal was quoted as saying that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein should not be executed because all life is sacred.

the Manila Regional Trial Court, the Philippines, imposed a death sentence on eight men after finding them guilty of kidnapping a 12-year-old Chinese-Filipino student and his maid on March 15, 1999.

press reports said that two men convicted on charges including murder, organised crime and assault were hanged in public in Iran.

an Iranian man convicted of murder was publicly hanged in the southern city of Shiraz.

the Islamic shari'ah Ifka Halan court executed Ilmi Ba Hasan Adow, convicted of murdering a man in Afgooye, southern Somalia.

the death penalty handed down in Yemen to cleric Yahia Hussein al-Dailamiwas commuted into a term of imprisonment by President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

dissident groups in Cuba asked Havana to grant a general amnesty to political prisoners and to introduce a legal moratorium on capital executions.

“Our Hands Off Cain is also valid for Saddam: thus, ‘hands off Saddam’, which does not equate to non-punishment, but physical wellbeing and human dignity”, stated Secretary and Treasurer of Hands Off Cain Sergio D’Elia and Elisabetta Zamparutti in commenting the prosecutors’ death penalty requests for the former Iraqi dictator.

a Saudi man condemned to death for murder was beheaded with a sword in the north of the country.

28-year-old Lamont Reese was put to death by lethal injection for killing three men in 1999 outside a Fort Worth convenience store.

“The request put forward by prosecutors to sentence Saddam Hussein to death will not bring justice to the genocides, torture and to the atrocious crimes against the Iraqi population committed by the former Baghdad strongman”.