the UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, speaking as Presidency on behalf of the EU, issued the following statement to mark the World Day against the Death Penalty.

Turkey’s Parliament passed the Protocol No. 13 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, concerning the abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances.

Council of Europe Secretary General Terry Davis expressed hope that Russia would ratify the sixth protocol to the European Convention of Human Rights.

a Pakistani military court sentenced four air force staff to death and two to life in jail on for their involvement in an al Qaeda-inspired assassination attempt on President Pervez Musharraf in 2003.

Iraqi lawmakers approved the death penalty for anyone financing or “provoking” terrorism.

Johnny Paul Penry, a convicted killer whose case stirred national debate over whether mentally retarded inmates should be executed had his death sentence overturned for the third time.

it was reported by Iranian press that a 26 year old man was condemned to “three hangings”.

a boy sentenced to death at 17 years of age will be executed, reported the Iranian daily Etemad.

Hands Off Cain’s “2005 Report – The Death Penalty Worldwide”, edited in its Spanish edition by HOC board member Begoña R. Antigüedad, was presented in Madrid at the Spanish Senate.

Liberia acceded to the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights aiming at the Abolition of the Death Penalty.

a Speedy trial tribunal in Rajshahi, Bangladesh, sentenced to death four people and gave life terms to six others for the murder of Khaleque at Dashuria in Pabna district.

in a dissenting opinion filed in the capital case of Moore v. Parker, Judge Boyce Martin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit wrote that "the death penalty in this country is arbitrary, biased, and so fundamentally flawed at its very core that it is beyond repair."