Death Penalty News

The fiancée of an Egyptian man who is facing trial over converting to Christianity has issued an urgent appeal for journalists to “break the silence” over what she describes as “state-sanctioned religious persecution”. Thirty-year-old Said Mansour Rezk Abdelrazek is due to stand trial at Egypt’s Terrorism Circuit Court on 15th June and faces a potential life imprisonment or death sentence. He is officially recorded as an international religious prisoner of conscience by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

The EU has tightened the rules governing GSP+ trade preferences, but Pakistan’s record raises a harder question: whether Brussels is prepared to suspend market access when a major beneficiary fails to demonstrate sustained compliance with human rights, labour and governance obligations. The European Union has formally adopted revised rules for its Generalised Scheme of Preferences, strengthening the conditions attached to preferential market access for developing countries. The new framework will apply from 1 January 2027 and is intended to tighten monitoring, widen the list of international conventions, and make suspension of benefits easier in cases of serious violations.

A decade on from reforms to its religious police, Saudi Arabia might not be quite as tough as it once was on its Christian population, but it remains one of the toughest places in the world to believe in Jesus. In its annual ranking of global persecutors, Open Doors places Saudi Arabia as the 13th worst country for the persecution of Christians. While foreign-born Christians of a certain status are able to enjoy a very limited amount of religious freedom, the situation is far worse for those lower down in society and for native-born Saudis who wish to follow Christ.

Christian sanitation worker falsely accused under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws and imprisoned for over 3 years could receive the death penalty ISLAMABAD (10 March 2026) – A Pakistani Christian father accused under the country’s draconian blasphemy laws is awaiting a potential death penalty verdict in a case that raises serious concerns about religious freedom and the exploitation of blasphemy accusations by organized networks.  The trial proceedings concerning Pakistani Christian Ishtiaq Saleem have reached a critical stage, with the court completing hearings relating to false blasphemy-charges against Saleem, while proceedings continue for his co-accused. 

During Lance Shockley's final moments in Missouri's execution chamber in October 2025, he wanted his daughter, an ordained minister, by his side as his spiritual adviser. A few years earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had expanded religious rights for the condemned, saying spiritual advisers could accompany them into the execution chamber and could touch them while praying aloud. But the Missouri Department of Corrections refused Shockley his chosen spiritual adviser, and he died alone.

The Lahore police have arrested Jamila Jacob, a Christian woman, on charges of committing blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad. The arrest followed an FIR filed at the North Cantonment police station, Lahore by Asif Ali, a local shopkeeper.

RIYADH (Reuters) – Amnesty International criticised a leaked draft of Saudi Arabia’s first penal code on Tuesday, saying it would codify practices ranging from flogging to gender discrimination and urging changes to align it with international standards. In a report, Amnesty said the draft penal code “shatters the illusion” that de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman “is pursuing a truly reformist agenda” – a reference to social and economic changes he has introduced to modernise Saudi Arabia, attract investment and open up the country to tourism.

Missouri executed four people in 2023. Amber McLaughlin, Michael Tisius, Johnny Johnson and Leonard Taylor, who maintained that he was innocent, all died by lethal injection. The state is one of five in the country that carried out executions last year. An attorney for a man scheduled to be executed in April says Missouri’s protocols present a “substantial risk of serious, torturous, physical and psychological pain.” 

A Christian persecution watchdog has issued a warning about the increasing severity of global persecution, revealing that 365 million Christians currently experience ongoing discrimination due to their faith. Open Doors published these findings in its annual assessment of countries where believers encounter the most extreme persecution and discrimination. Here are the top ten nations where Christians are most under threat.

Saudi Arabia is currently promoting  the Saudi Green Initiative under which it plans to plant some 10 billion trees in order to “rehabilitate 40 million hectares of land and restore Saudi Arabia’s natural greenery.“ With the world’s current focus on climate change, such an initiative will create the impression of a modern, forward thinking and environmentally responsible nation. Politically this is a smart move, clearly designed to portray the Kingdom as being in tune with western norms and values.

A sessions court in Lahore has sentenced a Christian man to death in a three-year-old blasphemy case. The verdict was announced by Additional District and Sessions Judge Ishrat Abbas on December 20, 2023. The police lodged an FIR (237/20) dated June 2, 2020, on the complaint of a police officer, Muhammad Nawaz, allegedly accusing Anwar Masih of making objectionable remarks against the Prophet Muhammad, which is a criminal offense punishable with the death penalty under Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code.

Alabama has settled a lawsuit filed by a Death Row spiritual advisor who claimed the state’s procedures to execute an inmate violate the inmate’s religious liberty, the minister said. Under the settlement, the Rev. Jeff Hood will be able to anoint Kenneth Smith’s with oil and share the Holy Eucharist with him and place his hands on Smith’s feet while praying and reading scripture during the execution, the minister said. A settlement was not yet in federal court records, and the Alabama Department of Corrections could not immediately be reached to confirm a deal between the agency and Hood was in place.

On January 25, Alabama intends to put Kenneth Smith to death using nitrogen hypoxia as its method of execution. If it does so it will be the first time that this method has been used in an American execution. Alabama’s plan is just the latest chapter in a long-running American saga of efforts to find a foolproof execution technology . That saga has carried us from hanging to the electric chair, from the electric chair to the gas chamber, from the gas chamber to lethal injection, and now to nitrogen hypoxia.

13 countries have the death penalty for blasphemy or apostasy Humanists UK is dismayed by the news that the Danish parliament has banned the ‘inappropriate treatment’ of religious texts. Those falling foul of this regressive law will now face a fine or up to two years in prison. Humanists UK says that this is a de facto blasphemy law that fuels intolerance. Six years ago, Denmark became the fifth European country to abolish its blasphemy laws since Humanists UK co-founded the End Blasphemy Coalition . In February 2017, a man was charged for posting a video of himself burning a copy of the Quran. Up until this point, attempts to bring alleged blasphemy cases to court had been dismissed by prosecutors on the grounds of protecting free speech and the law had been considered dead letter for nearly 50 years. Its reactivation sparked a national debate, renewing calls for the law to be abolished, and that call was successful in June 2017.

The man sentenced to death for the mass shooting at a Squirrel Hill synagogue that killed 11 people is seeking a new trial. Robert Bowers, 51, who was convicted over the summer of 63 counts for the Oct. 27, 2018, attack at the Tree of Life synagogue at Wilkins and Shady avenues, filed the motion for judgment of acquittal and new trial with U.S. District Judge Robert J. Colville on Wednesday. The appeal, filed by Bowers’ trial defense team, includes a number of claims.

A new report from the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom identifies 95 countries with some form of blasphemy law in effect, including five countries that impose the death penalty as the maximum sanction. A separate report from the commission records the text of the 95 laws criminalizing expressions that insult or offend religious feelings or show disrespect toward religious figures or symbols. The reports show blasphemy laws are not exclusive to any single region. They document blasphemy laws in 13 countries in the Americas, 28 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, 16 European nations, 18 countries in the Middle East and North Africa, and 20 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Amidst the debris of smashed pieces of furniture, a shattered TV and broken doors, lies a twisted, mangled child’s bicycle. The sight leaves Qasir Pervez Masih teary-eyed. “My nine-year-old son loved this bicycle. He cried so much when he saw the damage,” says Masih, a resident of Jaranwala’s Christian Colony, in east Pakistan’s Punjab province. On August 16, Masih’s colony and surrounding areas, including several churches and even a cemetery, were vandalised by a Muslim vigilante group on charges of blasphemy. A human rights report said that 10,000 people hid in the nearby sugarcane fields while the mob ransacked over 20 churches and 400 homes.

Maryam Abbasi-Nikoo is the mother of Bita Shafii, a student who protested the poisoning of students. On June 26, 2023, security forces raided their home and, upon realizing that Bita was not present, physically assaulted her father and detained her mother, Maryam Abbasi-Nikou, in place of her daughter. Now, after 52 days of uncertainty in prison and being deprived of basic rights, security authorities have brought charges of blasphemy against Maryam Abbasi-Nikou. An informed source, in conversation with the Iran Human Rights Monitor, said, “Maryam Abbasi-Nikoo is a resident of Shahin Shahr, Isfahan. On June 26, 2023, security forces arrested her at 11 p.m. by raiding her home. They told her family that they were taking her for a simple questioning session, and she would return home tomorrow.” 

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Sweden raised its terror alert to the second-highest level on Thursday after a string of public desecrations of the Quran sparked angry demonstrations across Muslim countries and threats from militant groups. The Swedish Security Service, known as SÄPO, lifted the “terror threat level” one notch to “high,” the fourth of five levels, for the first time since 2016. The move reflects Swedish concerns that repeated Quran-burnings this year by a handful of anti-Islam activists have made the Scandinavian country a prime target for Islamic extremists.

On successive days last week, a grand jury indicted Donald Trump and a petit jury sentenced Robert Bowers to die. Something about the immediate juxtaposition of these two events had my head spinning. I can’t really explain it, and unlike my other essays, I don’t have a particular claim I want to establish or argument I want to advance in these 1300 words. It’s more an occasion to reflect on how we use the criminal law and what we hope it will accomplish. I hope readers will excuse the tentativeness in my writing. At one level, the two events seem so different as to make comparisons insulting. Donald Trump has been charged with attempting to subvert the democratic process by interfering with the result of the 2020 presidential election; Robert Bowers was sentenced to die for killing eleven worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. I recognize and acknowledge the obvious differences even as I write these words. But there is...