China executes EU citizen Akmal Shaikh, a 53 year old British resident for drug trafficking

Akmal Shaikh is the first European citizen to be executed in China since 1951, Western rights groups say. He leaves behind two children who are living in Poland with their mother.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was "appalled" after China on Tuesday executed a British citizen caught smuggling heroin, dismissing pleas from the prisoner's family that he was mentally unsound. Akmal Shaikh's relatives and the British government had appealed for clemency, claiming the former businessman suffered from bipolar disorder, also called manic depression. Shaikh's defenders, including British rights group Reprieve which lobbies against the death penalty, say he was tricked into smuggling the heroin by a gang who promised to make him a pop star. Arrested in 2007, a Chinese court rejected his final appeal on Dec. 21.

Based on locally collected information by foreign embassies China executes four times as many people as the rest of the world put together. The exact toll is a closely-guarded Chinese 'state secret', but estimates range from more than 1,700 to as high as 10,000 a year. At least 60 per cent of public executions are carried out with a single gunshot to the back of the head. Others are by various other methods including lethal injections.

No fewer than 68 crimes are punishable by death in China, including tax evasion, fraud and bribery. Nevertheless the Chinese Government says that an estimated 90 per cent of the Chinese population support the death penalty. Since China applies strict controls on all forms of communications and information, including the Internet, Chinese government statistics can not be verified.

Sam Zarifi, Amnesty's Asia programme director, said: "Much information about the death penalty is considered a state secret but Mr Shaikh's treatment seems consistent with what we know from other cases: a short, almost perfunctory trial where not all the evidence was presented and investigated, and the death penalty applied to a non-violent crime. "Under international human rights law, as well Chinese law, a defendant's mental health can and should be taken into account, and it doesn't seem that in this case the Chinese authorities did so. "It's simply not enough for the Chinese authorities to say 'we did the right thing, trust us'. Now there can be no reassessment of evidence, no reprieve after a man's life has been taken. The EU and the rest of the world should continue to press the Chinese government to increase the transparency surrounding the death penalty in China and to improve the due process offered all defendants, particularly those facing charges punishable by death."

Capital punishment has in the past been practiced in virtually every society, although currently only 58 nations actively practice it, with 95 countries abolishing it. The remainder having not used it for 10 years or allowing it only in exceptional circumstances such as war. In the EU member states, Article 2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union prohibits the use of capital punishment.

Over the last ten years, EU Member States have indicated both individually and collectively that drug trafficking offences should be punished more severely, but so far the results have been dismal to say the least. Efforts to reduce cocaine use in Europe have had little effect, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), while cocaine use globally remains steady. The manufacture of synthetic drugs like ecstasy or methamphetamine ('crystal meth') continues to rise, as production shifts steadily to the developing world, according to the UNODC.

EU-Digest: China executes EU citizen Akmal Shaikh, a 53 year old British resident