the Arab Centre for the Independence of the Judiciary and Legal Council, an Egyptian human rights group, said that Libyan authorities had recently executed four Egyptians on criminal charges.

Donald Fell, a man convicted of kidnapping a supermarket worker and fatally beating her as she prayed for her life, was sentenced to death by a federal jury in Vermont's first capital punishment case in almost a half century.

Michael Pennington, convicted of killing a store clerk during a 1991 robbery and blamed it on steroid use, was executed by lethal injection.

Air Force Brigadier-General Thomas Hemingway, the US military legal adviser overseeing the possible trials of up to 12 terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, including Australian David Hicks, says no evidence from any of the cases warrant him seeking the death penalty.

China, whose judicial system has been under scrutiny after a series of widely publicised wrongful convictions, asked its courts to think twice before handing down the death penalty.

six men were executed in the Chinese capital Beijing for murder and other crimes including robbery and rape, state media reported.

Mahmoud Asgari, 16, and Ayaz Marhoni, 18, two men convicted for raping a teenage boy were hanged in public in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad

Ali bin Ahmad bin Hashidi Shuhaythi, a Saudi man, was beheaded by the sword in the holy city of Mecca, for strangling to death a teenager, the Saudi interior ministry announced.

Russia should ratify the protocol on the death penalty, Chairman of the Federation Council Foreign Affairs Committee Mikhail Margelov said.

Mohammad Zadeh Sawali, a Pakistani national, was beheaded by the sword in the northern Saudi town of Arar after being convicted of killing a compatriot residing in the kingdom, the Saudi interior ministry announced.

Eyvazali Hosseinzadeh, an Iranian man convicted of murder, was hanged in public in northwestern Ardebil province for killing a man in 1999.

two Turkish citizens were executed in Libya, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said. ''Selim Aslan and Yunus Ozkan, who were sentenced to death in Libya as they were accused of committing murder in 1995, were executed today. We express condolences to their families,'' the Ministry said in a written statement.