Iran’s Supreme Court upheld a death by hanging sentence against two teenagers in Tehran, the official state news agency reported.

a military court sentenced nine men, including al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to death for a plot to carry out a chemical attack on the kingdom.

Pakistani national Akthar Hussain, 70, on death row in the UAE, was to walk out a free man after receiving a pardon from the family of his Indian victim.

an Indonesian court sentenced two young Australian men to die by firing squad for attempting to smuggle heroin from the resort island of Bali, verdicts that could strain ties with Canberra.

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.