The Court of Cassation upheld a March Criminal Court ruling, sentencing a 27-year-old man to 20 years in prison after convicting him of murdering his younger sister for reasons related to family honour in Mafraq in July of 2016.

On the day of the vote of the UN General Assembly on the Resolution for the moratorium on capital punishment, the International Commission against the Death Penalty went to Italy where it met Pope Francis and Hands Off Cain.

The Criminal Court on 23 December 2018 convicted and sentenced a Libyan man to death for murdering a fellow national in Amman in July of 2017.

Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa on 21 December 2018 confirmed the death sentence awarded to 14 hardcore terrorists involved in heinous acts of terrorism.

The Cairo Criminal Court handed a death sentence to an ISIS-affiliated man who killed a christian doctor in his clinic in Shubra, Asharq Al-Awsat reported on 23 December 2018.

The mastermind of militant car bombs that killed 26 people and injured nearly 40 others in Mogadishu in 2017 was executed in Somalia 24 December 2018, the prosecutor of the military court said.

Japan hanged two men convicted of murder on 27 December 2018, the justice minister said, bringing the number of executions this year to 15 -- tied for the highest amount on record.

Over 30 people were executed and nearly 600 death sentences were issued in Egypt in the first 11 months of 2018, according to a report issued on 22 December 2018 by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR).

Hamid Bagheri Dermani, a businessman known by the State-run Iranian media as the "Sultan of Bitumen", was executed on 22 December 2018 on alleged economic corruption charges.

A Chinese court on 21 December 2018 sentenced the former chairman of Bank of Inner Mongolia, a private joint-stock lender, to death for corruption with a two-year reprieve, the official Xinhua news agency said, effectively meaning he will be jailed for life.

A High Court in Jonglei State on 18 December 2018 sentenced to death a man who was found guilty of killing two of his children, two months ago.

The North Korean authorities have recently focused on cracking down on “acts of superstition” leading to the execution of a fortune teller in the Chongjin and the arrest of other fortune tellers in Onsong and Hoeryong who are awaiting trial, the Daily NK reported on 19 December 2018.