the first execution of 2007 was carried out in Faisalabad jail where a condemned prisoner Waheed Iqbal, 40, was hanged.

“Pannella’s initiative, taken on by the government and by [Foreign] Minister D’Alema, must find a way to carry on,” said Emma Bonino, Italian Minister for European Policies and International Trade, commenting on the initiative for a universal moratorium on capital executions.

it was reported that forty-four death sentences were handed down by courts across Japan in 2006, a record high since 1980, when the Supreme Court began keeping records on such sentences.

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.