51.   Yet Schadenfreude is unavoidable, even without theatrical public executions.

52.   Public executions are becoming increasingly common in eastern and southern Afghanistan, where leaders from the rebel Taliban militia have imposed strict Islamic law.

53.   Public executions are believed to be a deterrent to crime as well as a way of giving justice to the families of the victims.

54.   Public executions are the punishment for murder, rape and drug trafficking.

55.   According to his first deputy prime minister, Movladi Udugov, Maskhadov sees no immediate need for more public executions.

56.   According to Russian media reports, Chechen television earlier this month carried footage of a public execution of a man, recently convicted of murdering a family of three.

57.   According to his first deputy prime minister, Movladi Udogov, Maskhadov sees no immediate need for more public executions.

58.   Another record lists a video seen by a U.N. official showing the public execution of five unidentified men.

59.   British defense officials organized in February the first soccer game in a refurbished stadium in Kabul, the capital, which the Taliban rulers had used for public executions.

60.   But Chechnya, which considers itself an independent state, has staged several public executions in open defiance of Moscow.