According to Amnesty International, as many as 527 people were executed in 2010. The official number of the victims of judicial killings is lower than the actual figure, the rights watchdog has said. These figures DON’T include thousands of people executed in China, it says.

And a staggering number of 17,833 people are counting their days in the death row in various countries, and yet again, this is a partial figure. At least 17,833 were under sentence of death worldwide at the end of 2010, which is a minimum from the addition of the partial figures available.

Among the methods of execution employed were beheading (Saudi Arabia), electrocution (USA), hanging (Bangladesh, Botswana, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Malaysia, North Korea, Singapore, Sudan and Syria), lethal injection (China, USA), shooting (Bahrain, Belarus, China, Equatorial Guinea, North Korea, Palestinian Authority, Somalia, Taiwan, USA, Vietnam and Yemen), according to Amnesty International's 2010 report on the death penalty.

Details about death penalty are classified as state secret in countries like Belarus, China and Mongolia.

Amnesty says the number of countries carrying out death penalties has come down significantly over the years. In the mid 1990s, as many as 40 countries on an average reported executions. However this number has come down since the start of the new century. In 2009, only 19 countries carried out executions, while this number was 25 in 2008. In 2010, 23 countries were known to have carried out executions.

The number of countries which have decided to abstain from carrying out death penalty by law or practice has risen to 19 in recent years from 108 in 2001. According to the report, 96 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, while 58 countries have retained it.

Some countries still sentence people to capital punishment though executions have not taken place in several decades. One example was Jamaica which sentenced four people to death in 2010. Jamaica hasn’t executed anyone in more than two decades though more than dozen people are in the death row there.

Following is an overview of the system of death penalty in China, Iran, the United States, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and Yemen which top the chart of executions worldwide.