An al-Qaeda leader in Iraq has been sentenced to death for the killing of the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho - despite the church's opposition to the death penalty. The Iraqi government said the criminal court had imposed the death sentence on Ahmed Ali Ahmed.

The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland is set to express its outright opposition to the death penalty for the first time. It has never previously resolved to oppose capital punishment ‘unequivocally’.

The global human rights group Amnesty International has called on the government of Iran to immediately abolish the "grotesque and horrific" practice of publicly stoning people to death.

Human rights, religious and civic political activists are stepping up the global campaign for the abolition of the death penalty, in the wake of overwhelming worldwide criticism of the manner and impact of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's execution.

Welsh Labour MP Ann Clwyd, a long-term campaigner for human rights in Iraq, has said that Dr Rowan Williams did not do enough to get Saddam Hussein indicted for mass murder before the invasion of Iraq in 2003 ‚Ä' when he was Archbishop of Wales.

Following the execution of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein earlier this morning(30 December 2006), the general secretary of the World Council of Churches issued a statement asking God to grant the nation of Iraq "the mercy, justice and compassion that it has long been denied" and "an end to fear and death that marked Saddam Hussein's rule and that continue now".

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has been to death row in Texas to visit an inmate condemned for the slaying of a Houston man more than 12 years ago.