Shirin Ebadi, a leading Iranian human rights lawyer and Nobel Laureate, said that the hardline Islamic regime was still using medieval punishments on its people, including the stoning of women for adultery and the torture of dissidents.

Governor Rick Perry signed a law to give juries the option of sentencing murderers to life without parole - a measure some believe will lead to fewer executions in the No. 1 death penalty state.

Iran’s Supreme Court upheld the death sentence against Hojjat Zamani, a longtime political prisoner in Iran, making his execution imminent. Zamani, 29 years old, had been imprisoned in the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran since the year 2000 for being a member of the main Iranian opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI).

Hadi Safdari, an Iranian convicted of blackmailing his gay partners with videotapes of their sex acts, was hanged. Safdari was executed in Bojnourd in the eastern province of South Khorasan, the Qods newspaper said citing the local judiciary.

judiciary denied newspaper reports that a mother of two who strangled her lover had been sentenced to death by stoning, saying sentence had yet to be passed in the case.

Iraq said it would bring only 12 charges of crimes against humanity against Saddam Hussein although there were more than 500 possible cases against the ousted dictator.

an Iraqi judge on the court that will try Saddam Hussein said the former Iraqi dictator committed many crimes and likely will be sentenced to death.

only a week since announcing the intention of adhering to the Statute of Rome and thus also to the International Court of Justice, the provisional government of Iraq announced the withdrawal of such an initiative with a new decree, stated the Italian group No Peace Without Justice (NPWJ).

Iraq's new president, Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, hinted in an interview that he opposed the idea of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein being sentenced to death.

Hands Off Cain Secretary and Radical Party board member, Sergio D’Elia, warned about the dangerous consequences of Minister Roberto Calderoli’s proposal to offer a reward for the Italian Unabomber and to sentence him to death if caught.

Italy’s Interior Minister, Giuseppe Pisanu, put out an extradition order on Moroccan national Mohamed Daki, acquitted of taking part in international terrorism a week previously by a Milan tribunal. The presence of the Moroccan national in Italy constitutes for the Minister a “serious threat to public order and a danger to state security”.

the Nagoya High Court, Japan, decided to allow a retrial for Masaru Okunishi, who had been on the death row since 1972 when he was convicted of murdering five women in a wine poisoning case in Nabari, Mie Prefecture, in 1961, citing new evidence that could prove his innocence.