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Communist Vietnam's secret death penalty conveyor belt: How country trails only China and Iran for 'astonishing' number of executions

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Prisoners are dragged from their cells at 4am without warning to be given a lethal injection Vietnam's use of the death penalty has been thrust into the spotlight after a real estate tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to be executed in one of the biggest corruption cases in the country's history. Truong My Lan, a businesswoman who chaired a sprawling company that developed luxury apartments, hotels, offices and shopping malls, was arrested in 2022.

Saudi carries out new beheading after UN appeal for halt

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Public beheading in KSA
Saudi authorities beheaded a national for murder today, the interior ministry said, a day after a UN appeal for an immediate moratorium on their use of the death penalty. 

Hussein Daghriri was executed in the southwestern province of Jizan after being sentenced to death for fatally stabbing fellow tribesman Nayef Daghriri in a dispute, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

His beheading brought to 49 the number of executions carried out in the desert kingdom this year, according to an AFP tally.

It came after UN independent experts called on Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to implement an immediate moratorium.

"Despite several calls by human rights bodies, Saudi Arabia continues to execute individuals with appalling regularity and in flagrant disregard of international law standards," said Christof Heyns, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

"The trials are by all accounts grossly unfair. Defendants are often not allowed a lawyer and death sentences were imposed following confessions obtained under torture."

Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery, homosexuality and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under Saudi Arabia's strict version of Islamic sharia law.

Source: Agence France-Presse, Sept. 10, 2014
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