NASIRIYAH: Iraq executed ten “terror” offenders on Monday, according to officials. This was the country’s fourth execution in three months, and it prompted a rights organization to demand that the death sentence be abolished.
In recent years, Iraqis found guilty of “terrorism” have received hundreds of death and life sentences from courts in decisions that human rights organizations have criticized as hurried.
Under Iraqi law, the president must approve execution decrees before they can be carried out, and both terrorism and murder are capital crimes. At the Al-Hut jail in the southern city of Nasiriyah, ten Iraqis who were “convicted of terrorism crimes and of being members of the militant Islamic State group were executed by hanging,” according to a health official.
The executions were verified by a security source. According to the health official, they were hanged in accordance with Article 4 of the anti-terrorism statute, and the health department had received their remains.
The Arabic name for the infamous prison in Nasiriyah, Al-Hut, means “the whale” since Iraqis think inmates there never make it out alive. The trials in Iraq have drawn criticism since the “terrorism” offense carries the death penalty regardless of the defendant’s combat experience.
Iraq put eight people to death on May 31 after they were found guilty of “terrorism.” Security and health sources reported that eleven persons were hung on April 22 and another group of the same nature was put to death on May 6.
UN experts expressed their alarm in June about the large number of executions—nearly 400 since 2016—that have been made public, including 30 this year. The special rapporteurs, who included an expert on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary execution, stated that “arbitrary executions may amount to crimes against humanity when they are carried out on a widespread and systematic basis.”
They went on to say that 8,000 inmates are listed as being on Iraq’s death row in official records.
“Stop the executions.”
The experts recommended that the Iraqi government “halt all executions.” Additionally, they expressed their horror at the large number of documented deaths at Nasiriyah jail as a result of “torture and deplorable conditions.”
The UN Human Rights Council appointed the experts, but they do not represent the UN when they speak. Rights organizations have also criticized the trials, claiming that they were hurried and that confessions were occasionally thought to have been forced.
Razaw Salihy, an Iraq researcher for Amnesty International, stated, “We could be hurtling toward a human catastrophe unfolding on its death row—despite national and international outcry—because of Iraq’s continuous implementation of the death penalty.”
In order to address the egregious injustices that led thousands of people to be placed on death row and the appalling conditions they endure, she declared that Iraqi authorities “must halt executions immediately.”
In 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (IS) declared its “caliphate” and began a reign of terror after seizing substantial portions of both countries.
It was routed by US-led coalition-backed Iraqi forces in 2017 and lost its remaining territories to US-backed Kurdish forces in Syria in 2019.
However, its surviving members still carry out lethal ambushes and hit-and-run attacks, especially from isolated locations and desert hideouts.
