NASIRIYAH: Security and health sources said on Wednesday that 11 persons found guilty of “terrorism” had been executed by Iraqi authorities this week. Amnesty International, a human rights organization, denounced the “alarming lack of transparency.”
Under Iraqi law, the president must approve execution decrees before they can be carried out, and both terrorism and murder are capital crimes.
Eleven “terrorists from the Islamic State group” were hanged at a jail in the city of Nasiriyah “under the supervision of a justice ministry team,” according to a security source in the southern province of Dhi Qar.
The bodies of eleven victims who were executed had been sent to the health department, according to a local medical source. The source said that they were hung on Monday “under an anti-terrorism law.”
According to the medical authority, all eleven were from Salahaddin province, and seven of the remains had been given to their relatives.
In recent years, Iraqi courts have sentenced hundreds of individuals to death or life in prison for the crime of belonging to “a terrorist group,” which carries the death penalty regardless of the defendant’s combat history.
Iraq has come under fire for trials that human rights organizations have called hurried and for confessions that were allegedly forced through torture.
