Rwanda will pass a law ending capital punishment by December 2006 to encourage European countries to extradite suspected masterminds of the genocide that occurred in the country in 1994. Unless the country abolishes capital punishment, it will not be able to try in its own national courts the masterminds of the genocide, Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama said.

Indonesia's Supreme Court has increased the sentences for four Australians convicted of drug smuggling in Bali to the death penalty, officials said.

Saudi Arabia executed Muhammad Bin-Shalal Bin-Farhud al-Shammari, an Iraqi man convicted of trafficking heroin in the strict Muslim kingdom.

the Taliban publicly executed a man for his alleged involvement in a murder case in the Garmsir district of southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

two Saudi soldiers were beheaded with a sword after being convicted of drug smuggling, the Saudi interior ministry said.

former security officer Rustam Ibragimov, one of the two key defendants in the murder trial of opposition leader Altynbek Sarsenbaev, was sentenced to death.

Undersecretary of State at the Presidential Chancellery Andrzej Krawczyk has written to Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly head Rene van der Linden that President Lech Kaczynski had not presented any initiative of reintroducing the death penalty in Poland.

an Afghan hitman convicted of murdering a dozen people in south-eastern Iran, was hanged in public.

the state of Ohio executed Darrell Ferguson, a triple murderer who stabbed and stomped his elderly victims and later begged his trial judge to be put to death.

a Sunni extremist convicted of killing a Shia political leader ten years ago was executed in in Pakistan's central Punjab province.

an Iranian man convicted of raping and murdering a young girl was hanged in public in the northern town of Babol, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

Delara Darabi, 19, has reportedly been sentenced to death for a second time after her case was retried. She is at risk of imminent execution for a murder which took place when she was 17 years old.