The UN Human Rights Office calls for US state Alabama to abandon plans to execute a man using the "untested" method of suffocation with nitrogen gas, warning it could amount to torture. Kenneth Eugene Smith, who has been on death row for more than three decades, is scheduled to be put to death on January 25. "We are alarmed by the imminent execution... through the use of a novel and untested method: suffocation by nitrogen gas," UN rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani tells reporters in Geneva. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES