China remains 'world’s biggest executioner', Amnesty announces

More than 90 per cent of the world's executions last year took place in five countries - China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan, Amnesty International has revealed.

China is believed to have executed "thousands" of people, more than the combined figure of at least 1023 executions in 23 other countries in 2016, the rights group said.

"China now wants to assume a global leadership role. In respect to death penalty it is leading in the worst possible way," Amnesty International's regional director for East Asia, Nicholas Bequelin, said.

"Nobody executes at that scale. Nobody executes with such secrecy. Nobody executes so quickly."

The country has not announced the number of people executed, guarding the data as a state secret.

The head of China's Supreme People's Court, Zhou Qiang, said in March the country has made sure to impose capital punishment on "an extremely small number of criminals who committed extremely serious crimes", according to the official Xinhua news agency.

But Mr Bequelin called Mr Zhou's statement "misleading and disingenuous".

More than 3000 people in 55 countries were condemned to death last year, marking a 56 percent surge from 2015.

For the first time in a decade, the US dropped out of the world's top five executioners, recording 20 death sentences carried out last year, the fewest since 1991, putting it in seventh place after Egypt.

Most US executions took place in the states of Georgia and Texas, while 19 states have abolished the death penalty.

The number of death sentences in the United States, at 32, was also the lowest since 1973.