Marcel Williams, aged 46, is due to be executed in Arkansas on 24 April. The jury never heard any mitigating evidence about his childhood of severe abuse and trauma.

Despite a pending clemency application before the state’s Pardon Board, brothers Suthar Batumalai and B. Rames Batumalai were executed at dawn on 15 March 2017.

An incursion by paramilitaries and subsequent armed confrontation between them and guerrilla groups forced a mass displacement of families and the potential confinement of surrounding communities in Peña Azul, Chocó department, in north-western Colombia.

Palestinian journalist Muhammed al-Qiq suspended his hunger strike on 10 March 2017 after he learned that the Israeli authorities were not renewing his administrative detention order. He is expected to be released on 10 April.

Algerian activist Dahmane Kerami was released on 31 December 2016 after spending one year behind bars for participating in 2014 and 2015 in peaceful social protests in Tamanrasset, southern Algeria.

On 15 January the Bahraini authorities executed three men by firing squad. Seven others continue to serve life sentences which were upheld by the Court of Cassation on 9 January along with the three death sentences.

On 20 March the oral trial against three members of the Chañaral Wichí Indigenous community for defending their territory will take place. These legal proceedings violate their right to defence and access to justice.

Elias Waya Nyipuoch, former governor of Wau state, was released without charge on 14 March. He had been detained by the South Sudanese military since 26 June 2016.

Abdulrahman Bin Sobeih was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment by the State Security Chamber of the Federal Supreme Court in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on 14 November 2016.

A 21-year-old Syrian refugee has spent more than five months in police detention awaiting a decision on whether he will be forcibly returned from Greece to Turkey under the EU-Turkey deal.