Amnesty International puts U.S. 5th on global executions scale

PanARMENIAN.Net - The United States was the only Western democracy that executed prisoners last year, even as an increasing number of U.S. states are moving to abolish the death penalty, Amnesty International said.

America's 43 executions in 2011 ranked it fifth in the world in capital punishment, the rights group said in its annual review of worldwide death penalty trends. U.S. executions were down from 46 a year earlier.

"If you look at the company we're in globally, it's not the company we want to be in: China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq," Suzanne Nossel, executive director of Amnesty International USA, told The Associated Press.

Meanwhile, according to AFP, rising number of executions in Iran totaled 676 in 2011.

China is still executing thousands of people every year, more than the rest of the world put together, Amnesty said in its annual review of death sentences and executions worldwide.

But the number of countries using the ultimate penalty continued to fall and even China reduced the number of offences attracting it, the London-based rights group said, expressing some optimism.

Amnesty singled out "a significant increase in judicial killings in Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia." Iran executed at least 360 people - three-quarters of them for drugs offences - Saudi Arabia at least 82, Iraq at least 68 and Yemen at least 41, the report said.

Amnesty said it had credible reports of at least a further 274 unconfirmed or even "secret" executions in Iran.

People were executed or sentenced to death for offences including adultery, sodomy, apostasy and "enmity against God" in Iran, blasphemy in Pakistan, sorcery in Saudi Arabia and the trafficking of human bones in the Republic of Congo, said Amnesty.

Some 18,750 people were under a death sentence at the end of 2011, compared to 17,833 in 2010.

But only 20 countries used capital punishment last year, down from 23 in 2010, and 31 a decade ago.

Amnesty said China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Saudi Arabia were using "confessions" obtained through torture.

The methods used for execution in 2011 were beheading, hanging, lethal injection and shooting.