Deputy Prosecutor-General Nikolai Shepel asked judges to pass the death penalty on the sole surviving hostage-taker from the 2004 Beslan school massacre that killed more than 300 people, half of them children.

Vernon Evans, 56, who has been on death row in the eastern state of Maryland for more than 20 years, was granted a stay of execution on the week he was scheduled to die.

Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested he might take steps towards abolishing the death penalty in Russia.

Robert Neville, a man who abducted a young woman while she rode her bicycle to work, then shot and killed her in a field near Dallas, was executed by lethal injection

the army has executed 26 soldiers in northern Uganda over the last three years for murdering civilians in the region, the 2003-2005 report on action taken against human rights violations by the UPDF in northern Uganda revealed.

a 19-year-old Iranian journalist, Elham Foroutan, risked the death penalty for a satirical article in which she compared the Islamic revolution in Iran to the AIDS virus

a Saudi national was beheaded by the sword after being convicted of murdering a relative, the interior ministry said in a statement.

the United States is taking a new look at the use of lethal injections to execute condemned prisoners after the challenges of three inmates who were barely saved from lethal injection by the Supreme Court.

the Meherpur district court, Bangladesh, sentenced Rustam, Rahman and Enamul to death for the murder of a trader in Ghangni.

three men described as "thugs" who "disrupted public security" were executed in the northeastern Iranian city of Sabzevar, the Khorassan newspaper reported.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said that jailed opposition leaders accused of fomenting a coup after disputed elections in 2005 will be tried despite appeals for their release.

Zacarias Moussaoui returns this week to the courtroom where a jury will determine whether he should be executed for his crimes.