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It was two years ago yesterday that 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, a 1996 Kalani High School graduate, declared publicly that he would not deploy to Iraq with his Stryker brigade combat team. Today, Watada is still in the Army working at a desk job at Fort Lewis, Wash., while his case is tied up in federal court. Ken Kagan, Watada's attorney, told the Star-Bulletin that federal judge Benjamin Settle in Tacoma will probably take up the matter early this fall. In November, Settle ruled that no court-martial will be held for Watada pending the outcome of his claim that it...

JARRATT, Va. — Lawrence Vaughan didn't get to see his wife's funeral. But after nearly 10 years, he was able to see her killer take his last breaths. Vaughan and his family watched Tuesday as Kevin Green, 31, was executed by lethal injection for killing Patricia Vaughan in August of 1998 when he robbed the store she and her husband owned in rural Brunswick County. Green was pronounced dead at 10:05 p.m. at Greensville Correctional Center. It was Virginia's first execution in nearly two years and the third in the U.S. since the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of lethal...

Washington - The US state of Georgia is set to execute William Earl Lynd on Tuesday, the first use of the death penalty in the United States in more than seven months. The execution comes after the Supreme Court last month upheld the right of states to use lethal injections, which opponents argued were unconstitutional and amounted to "cruel and unusual punishment."

In a widely splintered decision, the Supreme Court cleared the way for executions to resume across the country, concluding that the most common method of lethal injection does not violate the Constitution.

U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said on Friday he hoped the six Guantanamo prisoners charged with the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington would not receive the death penalty.

Gay Iranian teenager faces deportation to Tehran and likely execution. CNN's Alphonso Van Marsh reports. (video link)

Seoul - Fifteen North Koreans have been executed because they illegally crossed the border with China. The South Korean humanitarian organisation Good Friends says they did so in search of food. The group which consisted of 13 women and two men, was shot dead in a public execution on a bridge in the town of Onseong. The humanitarian organisation says the local population was extremely shocked by the incident. Border crossings by starving North Koreans are a daily occurrence. Many North Koreans have family or friends in China and visit them illegally. Normally, anyone caught crossing the border is sent...

The long-delayed execution of "Chemical Ali", Saddam Hussein's cousin and one of his most notorious henchmen, has been approved, an Iraqi government adviser said. Ali Hassan al-Majid known as Chemical Ali Chemical Ali - whose real name is Ali Hassan al-Majid - was one of three former Saddam officials sentenced to death in June after being convicted of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for their part in the 1988 Anfal campaign that killed nearly 200,000 Kurds. An appeals court upheld the verdict in September.

22 N. Korean drifters executed after return home: source SEOUL, Feb. 17 (Yonhap) -- A group of 22 North Koreans who had been returned home after their boats drifted into South Korean waters were all immediately executed by North Korean authorities, a source here said Sunday. Two fishing boats carrying the 22 North Koreans, including 14 women and three teenagers, drifted into the western waters off South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island on Feb. 8 and were sent back home after South Korean interrogators found they had no intention to defect, the National Intelligence Service said in a press release on Saturday....

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14, 2008 – The U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is sound and can work, but the challenge lies in executing that strategy and sustaining success over time, a Defense Department official told Congress today. James Shinn, assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security affairs, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in response to two recent reports that contend the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan needs to be fundamentally changed. Shinn described the strategy in Afghanistan as one of clearing, holding and building. The coalition has done very well in the clearing aspect of the strategy, he said,...

Three Japanese prisoners executed Three death row prisoners have been executed in Japan, the authorities have announced. The justice ministry identified the men as convicted murderers Masahiko Matsubara, 63, Takashi Mochida, 65, and Keishi Nago, 37. They were hanged at separate prisons in Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka. Human rights groups are critical of the secrecy surrounding executions in Japan, one of the few industrialised countries to retain the death penalty. Relatives are told only after the hangings have taken place and this is just the second time the names of those executed have been publicly announced. The first was in...

Five Hanged in Evin January 30, 2008 AFP Tehran -- Iran hanged five convicted murderers in Tehran's Evin prison on Wednesday, the Fars news agency reported, as curbs were imposed on executions being carried out in public. A man identified only by his first name of Faraz was hanged for killing his girlfriend Andia in February 2004. "This morning Faraz begged Andia's father to forgive him, but the father reminded him of how he had murdered his daughter and refused to pardon him," Fars said in the report. Ramezan, 29, was executed for stabbing his brother's wife to death after...

Iran hangs 13 on single day: reports Wed Jan 2, 12:21 PM ET Iran hanged 13 convicted criminals on Wednesday, including the mother of two young children who had been found guilty of murdering her husband after discovering he was having an affair, reports said. Raheleh Zamani, who reportedly chopped her husband's body into pieces, was hanged alongside seven men convicted of murder, in a mass execution at Tehran's Evin prison, the Iranian Student Correspondents' Association (ISCA) reported. Three drug traffickers were also hanged on Wednesday in public in a square in the central city of Qom and another two...

This news bulletin just in from our victorious comrades on the Northern Front !!

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) has learned that Makvan Mouloodzadeh, a 21-year old Iranian citizen of Kurdish origin from the city of Paveh, in the Western province of Kermanshah, has been sentenced by the government to execution. Makvan has been convicted of multiple counts of anal rape and sentenced to execution for crimes allegedly committed when he was 13 years old. IGLHRC calls for an international response to stop this scheduled execution. Imposing the death penalty for crimes committed by juveniles is prohibited under international law as well as by the Iranian legal system. In addition,...

When Junny Rios-Martinez's cell phone rang Thursday afternoon, he and his wife were in their car, getting the family together on their way to witness the execution of their son's killer scheduled for that night. According to state records, on April 18, 1991, a schoolmate of Junny reported the boy got into a U-Haul truck with a man. Days later, Junny's body was found in a footlocker. Authorities said he'd been raped and asphyxiated.

The wife of executed killer Michael Richard filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday accusing Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller of causing the inmate's Sept. 25 lethal injection. Marsha Richard of Houston claims Keller had no authority to prevent what would have been a successful appeal to stay her husband's execution. The lawsuit says Keller violated Michael Richard's due process rights when she ordered the court clerk's office to close promptly at 5 p.m. on Sept. 25 before his lawyers could file an appeal. Houston attorney David Dow had asked for more time after having computer problems. The...

Billy Ray Hamilton, who killed three people with a sawed-off shotgun inside Fran's Market in Fresno more than a quarter-century ago, has died in prison. We have to ask the same question asked by the parents of one of his victims: Why did Hamilton spend 27 years on death row? His prison stay lasted more than one and a half times as long as his youngest victim's entire life. His victims were Douglas White, 18, Josephine Rocha, 17, and Bryon Schletewitz, 27. We support the death penalty. At the same time, we believe those sentenced to death must have every...

A state court judge is set to toss out California's new process for executing condemned inmates. State prison officials revised the lethal injection process in May. A federal judge temporarily halted executions in the state after finding that prison officials were inadequately trained and equipped to administer the three-drug cocktail during executions. Marin County Superior Court Judge Lynn O'Malley Taylor says prison officials bungled when they failed to treat the revised execution method as a new state regulation. That would have required public comment and the approval of the Office of Administrative Law. Taylor's ruling is tentative. Government lawyers will...

MOBILE, Ala.—A federal appeals court Wednesday granted a stay of execution for a terminally ill convicted killer who claimed his cancer medication would counteract with lethal injection drugs and inflict unnecessary pain. Daniel Lee Siebert, 53, was facing the death penalty Thursday for strangling two women and two young boys in 1986. He has been on Alabama's death row for more than 20 years and has terminal pancreatic cancer. In granting the stay, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta reversed an order by U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller in Montgomery. The panel noted...