Baghdad: Iraq has executed 13 people including 11 convicted on charges relating to “terrorism,” the justice ministry said Monday.
They included individuals responsible for car bombings, “killings of security forces personnel” and kidnappings, it said in a statement, without specifying dates, locations or other details of the attacks.
The executions are the first since the beginning of the year in Iraq, which according to rights group Amnesty International put to death at least 111 people in 2017.
On December 15, 38 people sentenced under Iraq’s terrorism law were hanged in the country’s Nasiriyah prison.
Three months earlier, 42 others were hanged at the same prison.
Iraq faces regular criticism from diplomats and rights groups over death sentences handed down almost daily under its terror laws.
Some 20,000 people were arrested during a years-long offensive by Iraqi forces battling to retake swathes of the country from Daesh.
Many have been sentenced to death but not yet executed.
Iraq executes 11 convicted of ‘terrorism’: ministry
Iraq executes 11 convicted of ‘terrorism’: ministry
- Iraqi justice ministry says thirteen people have been executed
- Individuals executed were involved in car bombings and attacks on security personnel, says Iraq's justice ministry
High-level Turkish team to visit Damascus on Monday for talks on SDF integration
- The visit by Turkiye’s foreign and defense ministers and its intelligence chief comes amid efforts by Syrian, Kurdish and US officials to show some progress with the deal
ANKARA: A high-level Turkish delegation will visit Damascus on Monday to discuss bilateral ties and the implementation of a deal for integrating the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) into Syria’s state apparatus, a Turkish Foreign Ministry source said.
The visit by Turkiye’s foreign and defense ministers and its intelligence chief comes amid efforts by Syrian, Kurdish and US officials to show some progress with the deal. But Ankara accuses the SDF of stalling ahead of a year-end deadline.
Turkiye views the US-backed SDF, which controls swathes of northeastern Syria, as a terrorist organization and has warned of military action if the group does not honor the agreement.
Last week Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Ankara hoped to avoid resorting to military action against the SDF but that its patience was running out.
The Foreign Ministry source said Fidan, Defense Minister Yasar Guler and the head of Turkiye’s MIT intelligence agency, Ibrahim Kalin, would attend the talks in Damascus, a year after the fall of former President Bashar Assad.
TURKEY SAYS ITS NATIONAL SECURITY IS AT STAKE
The source said the integration deal “closely concerned Turkiye’s national security priorities” and the delegation would discuss its implementation. Turkiye has said integration must ensure that the SDF’s chain of command is broken.
Sources have previously told Reuters that Damascus sent a proposal to the SDF expressing openness to reorganizing the group’s roughly 50,000 fighters into three main divisions and smaller brigades as long as it cedes some chains of command and opens its territory to other Syrian army units.
Turkiye sees the SDF as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group and says it too must disarm and dissolve itself, in line with a disarmament process now underway between the Turkish state and the PKK.
Ankara has conducted cross-border military operations against the SDF in the past. It accuses the group of wanting to circumvent the integration deal and says this poses a threat to both Turkiye and the unity of Syria.
