the Iraqi prime minister Ibrahim Jaafari has approved the first death sentence handed down by a Iraqi tribunal and confirmed by the court of cassation - the country's highest court.

Ali Safarpour, a 20 year old Iranian man convicted of killing police officer Hamid Enshadi, was hanged in public in Poldokhtar in the western province of Lorestan.

two Nigerian men appeared in court charged with committing sodomy and could face being stoned to death after they were caught together in a toilet in the northern Muslim city of Katsina.

while lauding Sudan for including provisions in its new constitution that strengthen the rights of children and women, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) called for the elimination of exceptions allowing the death penalty for youngsters under 18.

suitor Imarul, who uses one name, and four other men were sentenced to hang after being convicted of killing a 14 year old girl whose family spurned his offer of marriage. After the family accepted an offer from another man, Imarul and his accomplices broke into the victim's bedroom as she slept and abducted her, court official Abdur Rahman said.

the US Supreme Court granted a last-minute stay of execution to Robin Lovitt, a man convicted of murder in Virginia, because much of the evidence was accidentally destroyed.

China voiced "resolute opposition" to Australia's decision to grant asylum to Chen Yonglin, a former Chinese diplomat, and dismissed his accusations that he faced execution if repatriated as "lies not worthy of response".

Wang Ching-chan, a Taiwan man, was sentenced to death for poisoning energy drinks with cyanide in a botched extortion attempt that left one person dead.

Belarussian deputy presidential chief of staff Natalya Petkevich said the death sentence might be annulled in Belarus via a national referendum.

two people were sentenced to death for the murder of a Bahraini housewife, Latifa Abdulla Abdulaziz.

Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions raised the alarm over the case of a man who was on death row in northern Nigeria awaiting execution by stoning after a Sharia court found him guilty of sodomy.

the semi-official Saudi Ukaz daily said a tribunal in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah had sentenced a Pakistani and an Afghan to death for smuggling heroin into the country.