Iraq executes five terror convicts in Nasiriyah

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region— Iraq executed five terror convicts  in Nasiriyah on Tuesday, security sources told AFP, despite international concern about the rising number of death sentences being carried out in the country.

The five men, all Iraqis, were all hanged at Nasiriyah’s central prison.

The group execution is the second this year, after three terror convicts were hanged in Nasiriyah in late January, following a double suicide attack on Baghdad that killed at least 32 people, which was claimed by the Islamic State (ISIS).

Just days after the suicide attack, Iraqi President Barham Salih ratified more than 340 death sentences for people with terrorism and other criminal charges, state media reported.

Human Rights Watch described the mass execution order as politically motivated, rather than a move made out of concern for justice.

"This announcement, unfortunately, speaks to a concern we have had for many years in Iraq that the death penalty is used as a political tool more than anything else," Belkis Wille, the watchdog's senior crisis and conflict researcher, told Rudaw English in January.

Iraqi authorities executed 42 prisoners on death row for terror offences at the same prison in October and November, in what seems to be "part of a larger plan to execute all prisoners on death row," the United Nations Human Rights Council said in November.

Iraq ranks fourth among the countries that carry out the death penalty in the world, after China, Iran and Saudi Arabia, according to Amnesty International, which recorded 100 executions in the country in 2019. 

Iraq has come under repeated criticism for suspected international human rights violations against prisoners, particularly in relation to prison conditions, unfair trials and executions.

Since the rise of ISIS in 2014, thousands of people have been detained across Iraq for suspected links to terrorist groups, including ISIS, while hundreds have been executed.

According to Article Four of the 2005 Counter-Terrorism Law, anyone found guilty of committing a terror offence is given the death sentence, with life imprisonment given to those who assist or hide those convicted of terrorism.

At least 41,049 people are imprisoned in Iraq, including 22,380 convicted on terror-related charges, according to a document obtained by Rudaw on January 17th from the Ministry of Justice's Iraqi Reform Department.