BAGHDAD, Iraq - At least seven men of different Arab nationalities were hanged Wednesday in Iraq on charges of links to al-Qaeda and convictions for terrorist crimes, officials said. "The death penalty has been carried out against seven terrorists holding various Arab nationalities after the completion of their legal procedures,” read a statement by the Iraqi ministry of justice. The seven were captured at least four years ago and found guilty of terrorist activities with al-Qaeda in Iraq. "The blood of the martyrs will not go unpunished," Haidar al-Zamili, Iraq’s justice minister, said in the statement. The executed were from Libya, Tunisia, Sudan, Palestine, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. They were all hanged at the Nasiriyah prison in southern Iraq, said a local official from Dhiqar province, also in southern Iraq. In June, the Iraqi Justice Ministry announced that in the first half of this year, it carried out 45 executions. Another 36 were hanged for their involvement in a massacre at the Speicher military base, where ISIS killed 1,700 Shiite cadets. The cadets were killed after ISIS took over large swathes of Iraq and seized Mosul, starting in June 2014.
