hundreds Hundreds of well-off Japanese and other nationals are turning to China's burgeoning human organ transplant industry, paying tens of thousands of pounds for livers and kidneys, which in some cases have been harvested from executed prisoners and sold to hospitals.

Phung Long That, or Bay That, a former senior customs officer who had taken bribes and abetted one of the country’s largest smuggling scandals back in late 1997, was executed by firing squad in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City.

the military court of the Bukavu Garrison, in the Eastern region of the DRC, sentenced six soldiers, handing down the death penalty to one of them.

the Malaysian Bar called for the abolition of the death penalty and an immediate freeze on all executions.

the Kobe District Court sentenced 65-year-old Mineteru Yamamoto to death for robbing and killing a couple in 2004 in what was believed to be the first death sentence handed down by a court through streamlined trial procedures.

the Syrian dissident and founder of the Liberal Unionist Party Dr Kamal Al Labwani may be sentenced to hard labour or even death if the court accepts the accusations against him, said his lawyer Anwar Al Bana.

North Korea issued a special decree that called for the maximum penalty of death for its citizens involved in manufacturing and trafficking drugs, a South Korean relief group said.

Afghan police detained a man for converting from Islam to Christianity, Supreme Court judge Ansarullah Mawlavizada said, adding the man could face the death penalty if he refused to become a Muslim again.

opposition supporters in Belarus were warned that they could face the death penalty if they took part in a protest after the presidential election on March 19.

prison officials in Iran repeatedly threatened to execute Valiollah Feyz Mahdavi, a sympathizer of an armed opposition group, during the Persian New Year holidays that begin on March 21, Human Rights Watch said.

nearly 30 percent of death row inmates polled in Japan had no one to visit them, a survey conducted by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations showed. The survey was given to 79 inmates as of January 2006 and 58 people responded.

Tommie Hughes was put to death by lethal injection for the 1997 robbery and murder of a Dallas woman in a movie theater parking lot. Hughes, 32, was condemned for killing Foulke Erinkitola, 25, after he and a cousin robbed Erinkitola and her friend, Roxanne Mendoza, 29.