SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iraq hanged 21 convicted “terrorists” and murderers on Monday, an interior ministry statement said, the latest in a series of mass executions it has carried out since defeating Islamic State (ISIS) in 2017.
Among those executed at a prison in the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya were people involved in two suicide attacks that killed dozens of people in the northern town of Tal Afar, the statement said, according to Reuters.
The Iraqi men from various provinces had all been convicted under a 2005 Counter-Terrorism Law, which carries the death penalty, but there were no details on their specific crimes, AFP reported.
Iraq has put hundreds of suspected jihadists on trial and carried out several mass executions since defeating ISIS militants in a 2014-2017 U.S.-backed military campaign.
Human rights groups have accused Iraqi and other regional forces of inconsistencies in the judicial process and flawed trials leading to unfair convictions. Iraq says its trials are fair.
ISIS captured a third of Iraq in 2014 and was largely defeated both there and in neighboring Syria over the following three years.
Iraq ranks fifth among countries that carry out death sentences, according to Amnesty International, which documented 100 executions in the country in 2019.
That amounts to one out of seven executions across the world last year.
