Execution

Tangaraju Suppiah: Singapore executes man for supplying cannabis

BBC reports Tangaraju Suppiah, 46, was hanged at Changi Prison at dawn on Wednesday, his family said.

Activists said he had been convicted on weak evidence and had had limited legal access during his prosecution.

The authorities said he had received due process and criticised activists for questioning the courts.

Singapore has some of the world's toughest anti-drug laws, which it argues are a necessary deterrent to preventing drug crime.

Taliban publicly execute man accused of murder, in a first since takeover

It is the first officially confirmed public execution since the hardline Islamist group seized power last year.

Reuters reports the execution in Farah province was of a man accused of stabbing another man to death in 2017, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said, and was attended by senior Taliban officials.

The execution was carried out by the father of the victim, who shot the man three times, Mujahid said in a subsequent statement.

Japan executes Akihabara mass murderer, say reports

Tomohiro Kato committed one of the most shocking mass murders in the country's recent history.

He was 25 when he drove a truck into a lunch-time crowd of pedestrians at Akihabara shopping district, killing three people.

He then stabbed passers-by with a dagger, killing four and wounding eight.

He was apprehended by police at the scene and later admitted his crimes in his trial, saying he had been angered by online bullying.

Family prays as man with IQ of 69 to be executed in Singapore

Her brother, Nagaenthran Dharmalingam, is set to be hanged in Singapore's Changi Prison. If it happens, it will be the first execution Singapore has carried out since 2019.

"When I'm alone and I think of my brother, there is pain. But [we need to] be brave and keep on praying - anything can happen," she told the BBC.

Nagaenthran is due to be hanged on Wednesday morning, but was granted a last-minute stay of execution for a day. A court of appeal will decide his fate on Tuesday.

Syria executes 24 people over deadly forest fires

Those executed on Wednesday were charged with committing "terrorist acts that led to death and damage to state infrastructure, public and private property", the ministry said.

It said 11 others were sentenced to life in prison on the same charges from dozens arrested at the end of last year who confessed to igniting the fires that began in September 2020 and lasted until mid-October of the same year.

Although executions are common in the tightly run country with a powerful security apparatus, it is rare to publicise such a large number of executions on a single day.

Iran: Nuclear scientist executed for spying

Shahram Amiri had been in custody in Iran since 2010.

"Shahram Amiri had access to the system's top secrets and had gotten connected with our number one enemy the Great Satan," Iranian judicial spokesman Hojjat al-Eslam Mehdi Mohseni-Ejehei told reporters Sunday, according to state news agency IRNA.

Amiri's case had been reviewed by the Iranian high court, which upheld the conviction, according to Mohseni-Ejehei. "The Iranian High Court reviewed this decision with extreme care given the allegations of espionage," he said.

India hangs only man sentenced to die for 1993 Mumbai blasts

The police barred media from publishing images of Yakub Abdul Razak Memon's funeral, apparently fearing a backlash against the execution that many said was driven by politics.

Executions are rare in India and in the last decade only two others have taken place, both of terror convicts like Memon.

The earlier two executions were conducted in extreme secrecy and announced only after the fact. Their bodies were not handed to their families, but were buried inside prison compounds.