Houston:

A 41-year-old man convicted of shooting and killing two people, including an Indian, in the US state of Oklahoma in 2002 was executed on Thursday.

Michael Dewayne Smith was executed by lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in the McAlester town, television station KOCO-TV reported.

Smith had been on death row for the murders of 24-year-old Indian store clerk Sharath Pulluru and 40-year-old Janet Moore in separate incidents on February 22, 2002.

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond released a statement on Smith’s execution, saying, “I pray that today brings some measure of peace for the families of Janet Miller-Moore and Sharath Pulluru. It has been a long and difficult 22 years for their loved ones, and my heart aches over the agony they have endured.” “I want the people of Oklahoma to know that the victims of Michael Smith were good and decent people who did not deserve their fate,” Drummond said.

“Sharath, a bright young man with a generous spirit, was the first in his family to come to the United States to pursue an education. He was fun to be around, was an inspiration to his family, and had a promising future,” he said.

He added that the two were murdered because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. “That was all. I am grateful that justice has been served,” he said.

Last month, Sharath Pulluru’s brother, Harish Pulluru, released a statement demanding the denial of Smith’s clemency.

“Sharath was a wonderful person, he was the first in our family to come to the United States in our family. He is the reason I became a doctor. When he first came to the United States I would wait in a phone booth in India for him to call and cherished every conversation we had,” KFOR television channel had reported, citing the statement.

“I saw the pain that my parents lived with every day. Sharath was a loving son, brother, and uncle. He was the life of our family. We are a very close family and his sudden death in such a violent manner has affected our lives every day since. We ask that clemency be denied,” Harish said.

Before his execution, Smith said in a statement: “My life is on the line. Despite new evidence, my attorney Mark Henricksen has informed my family that he will be filing no further appeals on my behalf. I am releasing this statement to demand that Mr Henricksen do his job and fight for my life.”

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Paris:

Iran executed a “staggering” total of at least 834 people last year, the highest number since 2015 as capital punishment surged in the Islamic republic, two rights groups said Tuesday.

The number of executions, which Iran has carried out by hanging in recent years, was up some 43 percent on 2022.

It marked only the second time in two decades that over 800 executions were recorded in a year, after 972 executions in 2015, Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) and Paris-based Together Against the Death Penalty said in the joint report.

The groups accused Iran of using the death penalty to spread fear throughout society in the wake of the protests sparked by the September 2022 death in police custody of Mahsa Amini that shook the authorities.

“Instilling societal fear is the regime’s only way to hold on to power, and the death penalty is its most important instrument,” said IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam in the report, which described the figure of 834 as a “staggering total”.

Iran has executed nine men in cases linked to attacks on security forces during the 2022 protests — two in 2022, six in 2023 and one so far in 2024 — according to the rights groups.

But executions have been stepped up on other charges, notably in drug-related cases, which had until recent years seen a fall.

“Of particular concern is the dramatic escalation in the number of drug-related executions in 2023, which rose to 471 people, more than 18 times higher than the figures recorded in 2020,” said the report.

Members of ethnic minorities, notably the Sunni Baluch from the southeast of Iran, are “grossly overrepresented amongst those executed” on drug-related charges, it said.

At least 167 members of the Baluch minority were executed in total, accounting for 20 percent of the total executions in 2023, even though the minority accounts for only around five percent of Iran’s population.

‘Wrong signal’

ECPM director Raphael Chenuil-Hazan said the “lack of reaction” by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) was sending “the wrong signal to the Iranian authorities”.

Most hangings in Iran are carried out within the confines of prison but the report said that in 2023 the number of hangings carried out in public in Iran tripled from 2022, with seven people hanged in public spaces.

At least 22 women were executed, marking the highest number in the past decade, the report said.

Fifteen of them were hanged on murder charges and NGOs have long warned that women who kill an abusive partner or relative risk being hanged.

In 2023, only 15 percent of the recorded executions were announced by official Iranian media, with IHR confirming the other executions with its own sources.

Amiry-Moghaddam expressed concern that a lack of international outrage at the executions, in particular with attention focused on the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas, was only encouraging the Islamic republic to carry out more hangings.

“The inconsistency in the international community’s reaction to the executions in Iran is unfortunate and sends the wrong signal to the authorities,” he said.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Riyadh:

Saudi Arabia executed two soldiers, including a pilot, on Thursday after they were convicted of “military treason”, the defence ministry said, without providing further detail on the charges.

The defence ministry, quoted by the state news agency SPA, named the two soldiers as Pilot Colonel Majid bin Moussa al-Balawi and Chief Sergeant Youssef bin Reda al-Azouzi.

They were arrested in September 2017 and investigations resulted in “the first being convicted of committing military treason and failing to safeguard the nation’s interests and the honour of military service,” it said.

The second was convicted of committing “high, national and military treason”, in addition to the other charges, the ministry said, without providing further details.

The two were executed in the western city of Taif.

Executions of soldiers are rare in Saudi Arabia, known for its secrecy on matters concerning its military forces.

The last announced executions of soldiers were in April 2021, when three were put to death for high treason.

The latest executions brings the total in the kingdom this year to 106, according to an AFP tally based on official sources.

Last year it put to death 147 people, 81 of them on a single day for terrorism-linked crimes. The mass execution sparked an international outcry.

Amnesty International ranked Saudi Arabia as having the third highest number of executions in the world in 2022, after China and Iran.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)