Four young children and their mothers are seeking asylum in the US after escaping horrific violence in their home countries.

Journalist and activist Khudoberdi Nurmatov (also known as Ali Feruz) is at risk of being forcibly returned from Russia to Uzbekistan.

Ivan Teleguz, a Ukrainian national, is scheduled to be executed in Virginia on 25 April. He maintains his innocence of the 2001 murder for which he was sent to death row in 2006.

Two Sudanese nationals, who till 13 February had been held incommunicado in Saudi Arabia since their arrest on 21 December 2016, have been interrogated by the Saudi Arabian authorities about their social media activism and are now awaiting trial.

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.