when I saw what was going on," said Sara de Leon, 49, who did not want her children to watch. "What kind of message can a child learn from that?"

The executions took place after weeks of often wild speculation about possible jailbreaks allegedly planned by the kidnap gang to rescue their condemned associates.

"Everything here has been extremely quiet," said Luis Rivas, a spokesman for the Guatemala City fire department, outside the Pavon rehabilitation work farm, 20 miles south-east of Guatemala City, where the executions took place. "There was no reason for us all to be so nervous."

The gang is also believed to have issued death threats against the family of President Alfonso Portillo, prompting Mr Portillo to send his mother, sister, brother-in-law and two nephews to Canada. Membersof the dead woman's family also left Guatemala for the United States this week.

The second execution began at 7.15am. Cerrate was shown being led, shaking, to the death chamber and prison doctors said he had had "a complete nervous breakdown".

The men were the second and third Guatemalans to be executed by lethal injection. The 52 other Guatemalan executions in the last 100 years were by firing squad, the last of which was televised live in September 1996.