Death Penalty News

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); 3 February 2026: IHRNGO has received numerous first-hand testimonies from doctors and medical staff in various cities across Iran indicating that, during the protest crackdowns, the Islamic Republic turned hospitals and medical centres into an integral part of its machinery of killing and repression. The testimonies show that injured protesters were not only denied medical care, but in some cases were deliberately killed inside medical facilities, or arrested from their hospital beds and transferred to undisclosed locations. At the same time, doctors and nurses who tried to save the lives of the injured were threatened, summoned and in some cases detained.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); 29 January 2026: Weeks after the violent crackdown on nationwide protests which resulted in thousands of people being killed, injured or detained, Iran remains under internet restrictions and a heavy security presence in major cities. There is serious concern regarding the condition of thousands of protesters who are incommunicado following arrest or have been reported missing. Detained protesters have been denied access to their lawyers of their choice, with many held in undisclosed locations. While state media have confirmed the arrests of 3,000 protesters, IHRNGO estimates that at least 40,000 people, including children, have been detained in relation to the nationwide protests. These arrests reportedly took place during street protests, following identification and raids on people’s homes or at checkpoints. 

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); 19 January 2026: Twenty-three days since the start of the nationwide protests in Iran and twelve days after the internet blackout, information and eyewitness accounts are revealing the scale of the large-scale killing of protesters by state forces. Given the magnitude of these crimes and the severe restrictions on communications, it is not currently possible to publish precise casualty figures in line with the IHRNGO’s standards, which require multi-layered verification and confirmation by at least two independent sources. For this reason, the organisation will refrain from issuing daily statistics until sufficient documentation has been obtained.

A senior Iranian cleric said on Tuesday that threatening Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei should carry a death sentence, days after a young man died in Western Iran after filming himself burning the 86-year-old theocrat's photo. "Any threat against the supreme leader is waging war on God, which carries a death sentence," Ahmad Khatami, a member of Iran's Assembly of Experts, said in a speech in Tehran. Omid Sarlak was found dead in a car in western Iran on Saturday, shortly after posting a video of himself burning a photo of Khamenei. Police called it a suicide, but his family said he was killed by the state.

Former President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested on Tuesday morning following the issuance of an arrest warrant against him by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Lawyers and complainants, however, believe this is only the start of a long legal battle before the international tribunal.  Malacañang confirmed Tuesday that former President Rodrigo Duterte is under the custody of authorities after getting arrested for crimes against humanity. In a statement, the Presidential Communications Office (PCO) said that when the former president arrived in Manila, authorities served the warrant of arrest from the International Criminal Court (ICC) against him.

Men’s bodies hung on an electricity pole and later dumped in the trash as crowds call ‘traitors’ and ‘Allahu Akbar’ Members of a Palestinian armed group executed two men in the West Bank city of Tulkarem Friday night accused of collaborating with Israel, as a mob cheered them on, according to Palestinian reports. A Palestinian journalist in the camp, speaking on condition of anonymity, said residents of the camp beat and stomped on the corpses after the two were shot and killed in the streets. Videos show hundreds of Palestinians flocking to the entrance of the camp, gawking and filming with their phones as men try to hang the mutilated corpses from an electrical tower.

CNN — Taliban fighters have committed hundreds of extrajudicial killings since taking power in Afghanistan in 2021, despite a “general amnesty” meant to protect the previous government, according to the United Nations. In a reported released Tuesday, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) counted at least 218 extrajudicial killings among more than 800 alleged offenses, including arbitrary arrests and detention, torture and ill-treatment and enforced disappearances. Former members of the Afghan National Army and police and National Directorate of Security officials were among those most targeted, and the majority of violations took place in the immediate months following the terror group’s takeover on August 15, 2021, the UNAMA said.

The human rights activists have voiced deep concerns over the recent agreement entered between the government of Pakistan and Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) where both parties agreed to set up a counter-blasphemy wing at Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), and include the charge under section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act against blasphemy accused in addition to Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code, which carries a mandatory death penalty. They have urged the government to prioritize the safety and security of blasphemy accused, and introduce robust legal and administrative safeguards to prevent the misuse of blasphemy laws, rather than opening avenues for its further abuse.

As he tried to restart his stalled car, the young military doctor would have heard the speech being delivered to the Muslim Railway Employees Association near Quetta railway station. Followers of the Ahmadi faith, a frenzied cleric was proclaiming, were blasphemers and heretics, who ought to be punished by death. Then, someone in the crowd noticed that Major Mahmood Ahmad had a short beard. The doctor’s body was found later, his one lung cut through and his guts carved out of his body. Like so many thousands after it, the murder on 11 August 1948—Pakistan’s very first blasphemy killing—remained unidentified and the case was filed untraced. There was, judges Muhammad Munir and MR Kayani acidly recorded in an official inquiry, no one “willing to take credit for this act of Islamic heroism and out of a large number of persons who were eyewitnesses, none was able or willing to identify the ghazis who were authors of this brave deed.”

Pakistan has received 340 recommendations from UN member states on its 4th periodic report on the human rights situation in the country, and the government will examine these recommendations and report back to the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) in its forthcoming meeting. A draft report prepared on Wednesday by the Working Group on Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, available with Dawn, stated: “All conclusions and/or recommendations contained in the present report reflect the position of the submitting state(s) and/or the state under review. They should not be construed as endorsed by the Working Group as a whole.”

As of Sunday, Iran’s judiciary sentenced five people to death in what human rights activists deem sham trials. Since the 1979 Islamic revolution unfolded in Iran, the clerical regime showed no reticence in imposing spectacular levels of violence on peaceful protestors. The mass arrest of Iranian demonstrators since the start of the mid-September nationwide protest against the theocratic state in response to the alleged murder of the 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini raises a pressing question: Will the ruthless Islamists who rule Iran carry out mass executions of the protestors who are packed into the nation’s vast penal system? How many have been arrested and sentenced to death? According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), Iran's regime has killed at least 348 protesters and arrested 15,900. Dozens of children have been murdered in the regime's violent crackdown. Amini, who died on September 16, was reportedly tortured in the custody of the Islamic Republic’s infam...

Anti-crime groups back efforts to push bill through Congress when Marcos becomes president At least 3 anti-crime groups in the Philippines are backing fresh calls to reinstate the death penalty for heinous crimes and drug lords. The Federation of the Anti-Illegal Drugs Campaign, together with the Anti-Crime Council of the Philippines and the Fight Drug Trade Movement, issued a joint statement on June 26 saying they would join efforts to push President-elect Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. into reinstating capital punishment, which was abolished in 2006 by former president Gloria Arroyo. “Our group has reached the conclusion that we need the death penalty to curb rising heinous crimes in the Philippines. Capital punishment provides benefits to society such as instilling fear into criminals, especially in a country where discipline is wanting,” the groups said. The call came after a recent survey revealed that more than 50 % of the population believed the death penalty was effective in p...

Sisi's government is accused of turning the country into the third worst executioner in the world, after Iran and China Egyptian authorities executed seven men on Wednesday and Thursday in connection with “politically motivated” cases, and after a legal process marred by torture and lack of evidence, a rights group has told Middle East Eye. The executions raise the number of political death penalty verdicts implemented since President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came to power in 2014 to 105 people.  According to the Geneva-based Committee for Justice (CFJ), Egyptian prison authorities executed four men on Tuesday, roughly a year after the country’s top appeals court upheld their sentences. The four men, along with 32 other defendants, had been charged with joining a banned group and with the killing of eight police officers in Helwan on 9 January 2016.  The CFJ said that four of the accused were subjected to extrajudicial killings during their arrest.  "The silence of the intern...

Dhaka, Jan 31 (EFE).- A Bangladesh court on Monday sentenced two former police officers to death for the extra-judicial killing of a retired army major in July 2020, in a case that triggered a wave of indignation and tensions between different security forces of the country. The former police chief of the southern Teknaf region, Pradeep Kumar Das, and police inspector Liyakat Ali were sentenced to death for the killing of retired military officer Sinha Mohammad Rashed Khan, prosecutor Faridual Alam told EFE. Mohammad Ismail, the judge at a lower court in the southeastern Cox’s Bazar district, also handed life imprisonment on six other people – including three police officers – for their alleged involvement in killing Khan, while six other accused were acquitted due to lack of evidence. “We are fully satisfied with the verdict. We will make a decision about appealing against the acquittals and lighter punishments after talking to the family of the victim,” Alam said. Before retiring, 36...

On December 3, 2021, a violent mob at the Wazirabad Road in Sialkot city (Sialkot District) of Punjab tortured a Sri Lankan national, Priyantha Kumara, to death over blasphemy allegations before burning his body. Kumara was accused of blasphemy for allegedly tearing down stickers of Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) from a wall of factory. Kumar was working as a senior manager at a leading Sialkot factory that manufactures and exports sports products, The last killing of a foreign national on blasphemy allegations was reported on July 29, 2020, when Tahir Naseem, a US citizen and an Ahmadi, was shot dead inside a District Court in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, in the presence of security and the presiding judge. A video of the attacker, identified as Faisal Khan, in handcuffs, shouting angrily that his victim as an “enemy of Islam” was posted on various social media platforms. Faisal Khan was taken into custody on the spot. Meanwhile, in a press release on February 2, 2021, the Lahore-b...

The religious fundamentalists of the Taliban who now rule Afghanistan have established a “kill list” targeting the LGBT community in Afghanistan, Canadian NGO Rainbow Railroad said Monday, and is ramping up persecution. “This is a really scary time to be in Afghanistan,” spokesman Kimahli Powell said. “We now know for sure the Taliban has a ‘kill list’ circulating, identifying LGBT persons.” He said the Islamist group, which regained power in August following the end of the two-decade-long U.S. occupation, had gained the information by paying close attention to the names of people that human rights groups were helping to evacuate. “After the fall of Kabul, there was a lot of information-sharing,” he said, explaining that those left behind were vulnerable as their identities had been exposed. Personal information has been leaked to the Taliban, while others have been victims of entrapment. “[Some] individuals who have reached out to us have told us about how they’ve received a mystery e...

The sportsman-turned-politician has retired from boxing to focus on his presidential bid – but will he be punching above his weight? He is one of the greatest boxers of all time, but Manny Pacquiao faces his biggest battle yet as he fights to be president of the Philippines. The 42-year-old is already a controversial political figure thanks to his anti-LGBT remarks and support of the death penalty. Some also have doubts about his competency to lead the country, and have speculated that his retirement from boxing is largely down to a need to mend his poor political reputation. The boxing star has been a senator in the Philippines since 2016 and announced his retirement from his sport on 29 September after 26 years. “I just heard the final bell. Boxing is over,” he said. “I never thought this day would come.” Jean Encinas-Franco, associate professor of political science at the University of the Philippines Diliman, told i that Pacquiao is regarded an “absentee legislator” because he was ...