2,390 people executed worldwide during 2008

AMNESTY International has revealed that between January and December 2008 at least 2,390 people were executed in 25 countries around the world with at least 8,864 sentenced to death in 52 states.

"The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. Beheadings, electrocutions, hangings, lethal injections, shootings and stonings have no place in the 21st century," said Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International.

The report Death Sentences and Executions in 2008, which provides a world overview on the death penalty, found that more people were executed in Asia than in any other part of the world in 2008 because China carried out more executions than the rest of the world put together.

Amnesty International also highlights countries that handed down death sentences after unfair trials, like Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen. The report addresses the discriminatory manner with which the death penalty was often applied in 2008. A disproportionate number of sentences were handed down to the disadvantaged, minorities and members of racial, ethnic and religious communities, in countries such as Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and USA. The risk of executing innocent people continues, as highlighted by the four inmates released from death row in the USA on the grounds of innocence.

Many death row inmates languish in harsh detention conditions and face psychological hardship. For example, in Japan inmates are typically notified of their hanging only on the morning of their execution and their families are informed after the execution has taken place.

"Capital punishment is not just an act but a legalised process of physical and psychological terror that culminates in people being killed by the state. It must be brought to an end," said Irene Khan.

Most of the world is moving a step closer to the abolition of the death penalty, with only 25 out of the 59 countries that retain the death penalty reported to have actually carried out executions in 2008. But Amnesty International warned that, in spite of this trend, death sentences continue to be handed out in their hundreds all over the world.

Progress was undermined, however, in 2008 by countries like St Kitts and Nevis which carried out the first execution in the Americas outside the USA since 2003 and Liberia where the death penalty was introduced for the crimes of robbery, terrorism and hijacking.

"The good news is that executions are only carried out by a small number of countries, which shows that we are moving closer to a death-penalty free world," said Irene Khan. "By contrast, the bad news is that hundreds of people continue to be sentenced to death and suffer in the many countries that have not yet formally abolished the death penalty."

Europe would be a ‘death penalty free zone' if it were not for Belarus where the death penalty is shrouded in secrecy: execution by a gunshot to the back of the head and no official information given relatives about the date of the execution or where the body is buried. The former Soviet country carried out four executions in 2008 and remains the only country in Europe to retain the death penalty.

A copy of Amnesty International's report Death Sentences and Executions in 2008 is available on www.amnesty.org