BAGHDAD: Iraqi authorities have hanged at least 21 people, including a woman, most of them convicted over “terrorism” charges, three security sources said on Wednesday.
It was reportedly the highest number of executions reported in one day in years in Iraq, which has previously come under fire over its trial processes and the use of capital punishment on a mass scale.
“Twenty-one convicts including a woman were executed” on charges including “terrorism” and being part of the Daesh militant group, an Iraqi security official told AFP.
“The woman was part of a group who killed a person” in 2019 as anti-government protesters demonstrated elsewhere in Baghdad, the source said.
A young man accused of firing shots was killed and his body hanged from a pole.
The same security source said they were executed in Al-Hut prison in the southeastern city of Nassiriya. Two other sources said they were all Iraqi nationals.
A medical source in Dhi Qar province, of which Nassiriya is the capital, said the forensic department had received the bodies of the executed convicts from the prison authority.
It was not immediately possible to confirm when the executions took place, with some sources saying Tuesday and others Wednesday.
Courts have handed down hundreds of death and life sentences in recent years to Iraqis convicted of “terrorism,” in trials rights groups have denounced as hasty.
In July, authorities hanged 10 “terror” convicts in Nassiriya, prompting a rights group to call for an end to the death penalty.
And in May, eight people were executed after being convicted on similar charges, while another 11 people were hanged earlier that month.
In late January, UN experts looking into the issue expressed “deep concern at reports that Iraq has begun mass executions in its prison system.”
The independent experts, who are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council but do not speak on its behalf, mentioned in their statement executions carried out late last year in the Nassiriya prison.
The statement said that “13 male Iraqi prisoners — previously sentenced to death — were executed on 25 December 2023,” calling it “the largest number of convicted prisoners reportedly executed by the Iraqi authorities in one day” since November 16, 2020, when 20 were executed.
At the end of July, Iraq’s Justice Minister Khaled Shuani dismissed the UN experts’ analysis as “not based on documented evidence,” the official Iraqi News Agency reported.
Iraq hangs 21 mostly on ‘terror’ charges: security sources
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Iraq hangs 21 mostly on ‘terror’ charges: security sources
- It was reportedly the highest number of executions reported in one day in years in Iraq
- The same security source said they were executed in Al-Hut prison in the southeastern city of Nassiriya
Syrian government and SDF agree to de-escalate after Aleppo violence
- 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
DAMASCUS: Syrian government forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces agreed to de-escalate on Monday evening in the northern city of Aleppo, after a wave of attacks that both sides blamed on each other left at least two civilians dead and several wounded.
Syria’s state news agency SANA, citing the defense ministry, said the army’s general command issued an order to stop targeting the SDF’s fire sources. The SDF said in a statement later that it had issued instructions to stop responding to attacks by Syrian government forces following de-escalation contacts.
HIGHLIGHTS
• SDF and Syrian government forces blame each other for Aleppo violence
• Turkiye threatens military action if SDF fails integration deadline
• Aleppo schools and offices closed on Tuesday following the violence
The Syrian health ministry said two people were killed and several were wounded in shelling by the SDF on residential neighborhoods in the city. The injuries included two children and two civil defense workers. The violence erupted hours after Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said during a visit to Damascus that the SDF appeared to have no intention of honoring a commitment to integrate into the state’s armed forces by an agreed 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.
Integrating the SDF would mend Syria’s deepest remaining fracture, but failing to do so risks an armed clash that could derail the country’s emergence from 14 years of war and potentially draw in Turkiye, which has threatened an incursion against Kurdish fighters it views as terrorists.
Both sides have accused the other of stalling and acting in bad faith. The SDF is reluctant to give up autonomy it won as the main US ally during the war, which left it with control of Daesh prisons and rich oil resources.
SANA, citing the defense ministry, reported earlier that the SDF had launched a sudden attack on security forces and the army in the Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyah neighborhoods of Aleppo, resulting in injuries.
The SDF denied this and said the attack was carried out by factions affiliated with the Syrian government. It said those factions were using tanks and artillery against residential neighborhoods in the city.
The defense ministry denied the SDF’s statements, saying the army was responding to sources of fire from Kurdish forces. “We’re hearing the sounds of artillery and mortar shells, and there is a heavy army presence in most areas of Aleppo,” an eyewitness in Aleppo told Reuters earlier on Monday. Another eyewitness said the sound of strikes had been very strong and described the situation as “terrifying.”
Aleppo’s governor announced a temporary suspension of attendance in all public and private schools and universities on Tuesday, as well as government offices within the city center.
