were responsible for the sharp global increase " in executions in the past year .

According to the annual report of the organization, seen by " Shafaq News " , 778 people were executed during last year , an increase of 15% from the previous year as 369 people - at least – were executed in Iran and 169 in Iraq .

The Secretary-General , Salil Shetty said that the Middle East countries adhere to the death penalty , describing it as " on the wrong side of history."

The report said that this is the third year that Iraq witness a " blatant " increase in executions , where the number increases by 30% from what it was in 2012.

He added that there is credible evidence indicating that hundreds of cases of executions are being carried out in Iran in secret , bringing the real total to more than seven hundred .

While the director of international affairs, Oredri Goghran said that total estimates do not include China, which " execute thousands of people each year and where the death penalty is a state secret ."

The report added that there is also an increasing number of executions that have been implemented globally in 1722 in 58 countries in 2012 and 1925 cases in 57 countries last year . The organization also believes that North Korea has executed more than seventy cases according to reliable reports”.

The report criticized the United States, which came in third place after Iran and Iraq with 39 executions for ignoring international standards , which states that who suffer from mental disabilities should not be executed.

However, the report also pointed to a continuation of the general trend towards abolition of the death penalty with the decline in the number of countries that implemented the penalty from 37 countries to 22 over the past two decades .

The Amnesty report said that the death penalty has not been carried out against any person in Europe and Central Asia for the first time since 2009 .

The means of execution in 2013 included according to the report , electricity, decapitation , hanging and lethal injection . Some states are implementing the death penalty in public , such as Iran , North Korea , Saudi Arabia and Somalia .