the number of supporters of capital punishment in Russia is steady on the descent, a Levada Center opinion poll found in the middle of June, having questioned 1,600 Russian men and women in 128 cities and communities in 46 regions.

three men who had been condemned to death for armed robbery were hanged in the Qasemabad district of Mashhad, Iran.

a Speedy Trial Tribunal in Natore, Bangladesh, sentenced five men to death by hanging in the Maju murder case.

an Iranian couple, Roya, 28, and Mohammad, 30, accused of murder were hanged at dawn in the main prison in Isfahan (central Iran), according to a state-run daily.

Sultan al-Laqmani, a Saudi man, was executed in the western city of Medina for attacking and killing his wife as she slept, the Saudi Interior Ministry said.

an Algerian criminal court sentenced to death in absentia seven Islamic gunmen belonging to the radical Salafi Movement for Daawa and Fighting.

a Moroccan court sentenced two radical Islamists to death and jailed four of their followers for life on charges that included killing five Moroccans, one of them Jewish.

five men were sentenced to hang for killing Sarath Ambepitiya, a Sri Lankan judge who had handed down heavy sentences on gangsters.

it was reported that Bangladesh was planning a special jail for prisoners on the death row.

two Pakistani brothers convicted of murdering their aunt were beheaded by the sword in the western Saudi town of Yanbu, the interior ministry announced.

Uzbekistan is working to abolish the death penalty, but it will be "no less than two or three years" before the country scraps capital punishment, Justice Minister Buritosh Mustafayev said.

for the first time the EU is banning trade in goods that have no use other than for capital punishment or torture.