Amnesty International says the number of executions carried out worldwide surged in 2011 despite continuing progress toward the elimination of capital punishment.
Although the number of countries using capital punishment has fallen by more than a third in the last ten years, at least 676 people were executed in 20 countries in 2011, compared with 527 in 23 countries in 2010, the group said in an annual report. Some 18,750 people remained on death row at the end of 2011.
Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen were to blame for the rise, according to the review released on Tuesday.
The report comes a week after Belarus announced it had executed two men convicted of carrying out a deadly bombing in the capital Minsk.
Last year, Belarus also sent two men to death, the groups said. Belarus is the only nation in Europe still using capital punishment.
Amnesty says it has stopped publishing the data for China, where figures on the death penalty are a state secret. The group believes the secretive state executed thousands of people last year, "more than the rest of the world put together."
The group also believes substantial numbers of executions in Iran were "not officially acknowledged."
"The vast majority of countries have moved away from using the death penalty," said Amnesty's general secretary Salil Shetty. "Our message to the leaders of the isolated minority of countries that continue to execute is clear: you are out of step with the rest of the world on this issue and it is time you took steps to end this most cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. "
The number of recorded executions in the Middle East rose by almost 50 percent on the previous year.
Iran executed about 360 people, many of them under new harsh anti-dug laws as well as adultery and sodomy. There were at least 82 executions in Saudi Arabia; Iraq executed at least 68 and Yemen 41, the group found.
The continuing violence in Libya, Syria and Yemen made it difficult to collect adequate information on the use of the death penalty there in 2011, the group said.
The United States was the world's fifth biggest executioner and the only G8 nation to employ capital punishment, with 43 executions in 2011.
Amnesty's Shetty said that some "gradual progress" was to be seen e
ven in those countries that continue to execute on a high level. In China, the government eliminated the death penalty for 13 white collar crimes and in the United States, Illinois became the 16th state to abolish the death penalty.
"Even among the small group of countries that executed in 2011, we can see gradual progress. These are small steps but such incremental measures have been shown ultimately to lead to the end of the death penalty," Shetty said. "It is not going to happen overnight but we are determined that we will see the day when the death penalty is consigned to history."
