The number of prisoners executed in sub-Saharan Africa more than doubled in 2021, largely a result of death sentences passed on al-Shabaab militants in Somalia,But while the number of those either sentenced or actually put to death during the year rose, most countries which have not yet abolished the death penalty did not carry out any executions. Prisoners were executed in only three of 28 nations surveyed.
These are among the findings of Amnesty’s annual report on the worldwide use of the death penalty in national courts. Twenty-one people were executed by firing squads in Puntland, Somalia, on the same day in June after being convicted in three separate trials of acts of terrorism and membership of al-Shabaab. Six other people remained on death row in the country at the end of 2021. Eleven people were executed in the whole of 2020.