Three Lebanese men sentenced to death for murder were...

Three Lebanese men sentenced to death for murder were executed at dawn in the first use of the death penalty in the country since public hangings in 1998. The executions, which were carried out despite pleas for clemency from human rights movements, the European Union and Lebanese politicians, took place at 5:00 am in Rumieh prison northeast of Beirut. Ahmad Mansur, who killed eight co-workers in a shooting spree on July 2002, was hanged. Remy Antoine Zaatar, convicted of killing two members of the civil defense and a Syrian army officer in June 2002, and Badih Hamadeh, a Sunni militant who killed three Lebanese soldiers the same summer, were executed by shooting. Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, whose country held the rotating EU presidency, called on Lebanese President Emil Lahoud to halt the executions, which France said would be "contrary to the spirit of the association accord signed between the European Union and Lebanon in June 2002."