Trajan Markovski, the lawyer of five Bulgarian nurses facing the death penalty in Libya for allegedly giving children AIDS-tainted blood, vowed to have their sentences overturned even though Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi called them "murderers". "Despite all recent goings on, I insist that the sentences will be repealed," Markovski, said.

it was reported that Malaysia’s hangmen and floggers had won pay rises. For every hanging, executioners would be paid the equivalent of 100 EU (490 Malaysian Ringgits), up from 60 EU.

the Federal Court of Malaysia in Bernama upheld the conviction and death sentence imposed on Francis Antonysamy for murdering a Bangladeshi man in oil palm estate in Temerloh. Francis, 33, had been sentenced to death by the Temerloh High Court for murdering Ali Ahmmed Mohammed Ullah at the Kim Swee Leong oil palm plantation near Kuala Lumpur on August 19, 1994.

a court in Mali condemned five people to death and dozens to prison for their part in a religious clash that killed 10 people.

the Mexican Senate voted overwhelmingly to explicitly forbid the death penalty, which had not been imposed in the country since 1961.

the Abakaliki high court, Nigeria, sentenced 15 people to death by hanging for killing three over a land dispute.

the family of Scottish businessman Ian Millar, sentenced to death in Nigeria, spoke of their relief after his murder conviction was overturned. Millar, 56, spent a year and a half on death row after being found guilty of killing Anne Marie Gale, his girlfriend, at their home in Lagos in April 2003.

North Korea put two human traffickers to death in public in late February for smuggling North Korean women into China. The public execution took place in the North Korean city of Hoeryong, close to the border with China.

the BBC broadcast footage purportedly showing the public execution of North Koreans caught trying to flee the country. The videotape obtained exclusively by the BBC was reportedly filmed clandestinely in a village near the North's border with China a month previously.

Jean de Dieu Muzaliwa Maroy, former death row inmate in the Democratic Republic of Congo, intervened at the UN Comission on Human Rights representing Hands Off Cain and the Transnational Radical Party.

a briefing entitled: “THE ROLE OF THE UN TOWARD ENDING EXECUTIONS - True Stories and Practical Realities in Africa and the U.S.A.”, will be held at the Palais des Nations in Geneva on April 12. The event is organized by Hands Off Cain, the Transnational Radical Party and the National Association For Criminal Defence Lawyers.

the United Nations top human rights body backed a call by the United States to keep pressure on Cuba by renewing the mandate of a special investigator into alleged abuse there.