Amnesty International has revealed the number of executions carried out around the world jumped last year, largely due to a surge in use of the death penalty in the Middle East. Amnesty said at least 676 people were executed in 20 countries. Only four countries carried out more executions than the United States. Salil Shetty is secretary general of Amnesty International.

Salil Shetty: “The problem is that we have a handful of countries who have consistently been the — have had the largest number of executions, and that persists, and some of them have actually increased at an alarming rate. And China and Iran are sort of just simply off the charts. They are the two biggest. But then you have North Korea, you have Saudi Arabia, and unfortunately you have the United States in that group, strangely enough.”