Most of Africa is abandoning the death penalty but Botswana — an affluent, landlocked, diamond-exporting state — is among the leading exceptions

A Christian Sudanese woman sentenced to death for apostasy has given birth in jail, effectively giving her a two-year reprieve to nurse her child.

Iran on Wednesday hanged a woman convicted of murdering a love rival, her lawyer told the official IRNA news agency.

A Sudanese court on Wednesday condemned 10 rebels from the Darfur rebel Justice and Equality Movement to death for an attack on Khartoum in 2008.

A pair of identical twins escaped being convicted and hanged on drugs charges in Malaysia, due to confusion over which one of them was the culprit.

In 1985, 137 people were hanged and 35 reprieved; 1987 has seen an increase in the number of hangings and a decrease in reprieves to 18.