A band of death row escapees receive a European Parliament ovation: Marking the International and European Day Against the Death Penalty, the assembly’s president, Hans-Gert Poettering, opened a plenary session by reaffirming the members’ opposition to executions everywhere.

He said: “We are grateful to receive in our tribune the Bulgarian and Palestinian medics who were condemned to death in Libya.”

The special visitors were held for eight years, accused of deliberately infecting Libyan children with the HIV Aids virus.

The EU is also looking to the 2008 Olympic Games in China to stiffen its objections to the use of the death penalty there.

The human rights movement Amnesty International cites progress in the fight to end capital punishment for all crimes, saying now 90 countries have abolished it.

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