1. China
Officially the country with the highest population, China has remained the top executioner of the world since records began with an estimated 2000 executions carried out last year – more than the rest of the world put together, a recent report by Amnesty reveals.
2. Iran
Although execution figures significantly fell from 714 in 2009, 252 executions took place in the Middle Eastern country last year.
3. North Korea
Public capital punishment is common in North Korea. According to official Amnesty International statistics, 60 people were executed in 2010.
4. Yemen
In Yemen, 57 people were executed in 2010, with shooting the main method of execution. Unlike the conventional methods of shooting by firing squad in other countries, Yemen publicly kills the offender by laying them on the ground while a single executioner shoots them through the heart with an automatic rifle.
5. USA
A well-known liberal democracy, the USA put 47 people to death last year and handed out at least 110 death sentences. However, this number represents only about a third of the number handed down in the mid-1990s. The country is the only one on our top five list that reserves punishment by death for murder.
In March 2011, Illinois became the 16th US state to abolish the death penalty. The death penalty is a highly contentious issue in the United States and the policy came under fire last month when Troy Davis, of Georgia, received the lethal injection for killing an off-duty police officer in 1989. Anti-death penalty campaigners claim there is little evidence to support the execution.
The electric chair and the lethal injection are the most widely practiced methods of execution with one death by firing squad in Utah. Texas is, by far, the leader in executions, with 17 carried out in 2010. If Texas were its own country, it would have been tied for eighth in the world with Syria.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/top-five-of-the-world%E2%80%99s-executing-countries.html
