A man convicted of adultery has been stoned to death in Iran. Judiciary spokesman Alireza Jamshidi said the stoning was carried out near the town of Takestan, in the northwestern province of Qazvin.

U.S. prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty for a former U.S. soldier if he is found guilty of taking part in the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the killing of her family.

Uzbekistan's upper house of parliament today adopted amendments to the constitution that would abolish use of the death penalty, RFE/RL's Uzbek Service reported.

The Commission is proposing a draft Joint Declaration to the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, to be adopted together with the Council of Europe, regarding the establishment of a European Day against the Death Penalty, on 10 October of each year.

Citing Iraq's "procedurally flawed legal processes," the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers today called on the country to halt the application of the death penalty.

Iran's Parliament approved death penalty for persons convicted of working in the production of pornographic movies.

The U.S. military says it is building a 5-kilometer wall to separate a Sunni enclave from the surrounding Shi'ite neighborhoods in Baghdad. The military said in a statement that the security wall is "one of the centerpieces of a new strategy...to break the cycle of sectarian violence."

Monitors from the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly have reiterated calls for Russia to abolish the death penalty. Speaking at a press conference in Moscow, Luc Van den Brande and Theodoros Pangalos said the Council of Europe insisted Russia remove the death penalty from its books, a commitment it undertook when it joined the body in 1996.

Council of Europe, which is the human rights wachdog of Europe, urges Iraqi government to stop the executions in Iraq, over the hanging of former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan on Tuesday.