Death Sentences Surge, Even as More Countries Drop Capital Punishment Somini Sengupta - The New York Times
go to original January 5, 2016

This man's life was spared at the last minute in Iran in 2014. One of the world’s leading executioners, Iran executed at least 289 people that year, according to Amnesty International. (Arash Khamooshi/Agence France-Presse)

The death penalty is steadily receding toward the dustbin of history worldwide, with fewer than two dozen countries relying on it at all as a form of punishment.

Yet a handful of countries have been especially eager to mete out capital punishment, including against those convicted of nonlethal crimes, while some countries that had discontinued capital punishment have resumed the practice, especially in what they consider to be terrorism cases.

All told, in 2014, at least 2,466 people were sentenced to death — a 28 percent increase from 2013, according to an annual tally by Amnesty International.

Among the leading executioners in the world are the archrivals of the Middle East, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Indeed, it was Saudi Arabia’s execution of a Shiite cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, on Saturday that led to an unraveling of diplomatic ties between the two nations and raised apprehensions of a widening sectarian crisis in the region.

China leads the world in executions, according to human rights groups, although no recent figures are available because death sentences are a state secret. The United States and Iraq round out the list of the top five countries that resort to capital punishment.

They are in a minority of nations. A total of 105 countries have abolished the death penalty, with Suriname and Mongolia the latest to do so. According to the United Nations, 60 other countries allow for the death penalty but have not carried it out in a decade, making them what the United Nations calls “de facto abolitionists.”

Only 28 countries have retained capital punishment on their books and used it in the last 10 years.

Read the rest at The New York Times

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