© A Majeed/AFP/Getty ImagesPakistan central jail in Peshawar where judicial executions took place.
The number of known judicial executions around the world declined by nearly one-third in 2018 compared to 2017,
reaching the lowest level in at least a decade, Amnesty International says in its annual report on death sentences and executions.
Belarus was among a handful of countries that defied the trend, the human rights group said in the report released on April 10: The only European state that carries out executions put at least four people to death in 2018, it said, twice as many as in 2017.
Although Iran remains "a country where the use of the death penalty is rife,"
a change in Iran's drug laws led to a reduction of executions by "a staggering 50 percent," Amnesty International said. Still, the rights group said, executions in Iran often "were carried out after unfair trials."
It said Pakistan, Iraq, and Somalia also showed "a significant reduction in the number they carried out," helping to push down the number of global state executions from at least 993 in 2017 to at least 690 in 2018.
"The dramatic global fall in executions proves that even the most unlikely countries are starting to change their ways and realize the death penalty is not the answer," Amnesty International Secretary-General Kumi Naidoo said.
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