the National Council of Resistance of Iran reported that a number of political prisoners, among them supporters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), had disappeared, according to family members and other prisoners.

Russia should abolish the death penalty in the near future, presidential council for civil society and human rights development Chairman Ella Pamfilova said.

Vietnam is considering abolishing the death penalty for nine different crimes, including smuggling, fraud, counterfeiting and bribery, state-controlled media reported.

two persons were put to death and eight people received life sentences in Belarus in 2005, Valyantsin Sukala, chairman of the Supreme Court, told reporters in Minsk.

President Bush has been asked to authorize the executions of two men who have been on the military’s death row at Fort Leavenworth for a combined 35 years.

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.