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Iraqi PM seeks to accelerate death sentence implementation

Saturday, 23 July 2016 4:58 PM [ Last Update: Saturday, 23 July 2016 5:05 PM ]

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ©Reuters

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is seeking to accelerate the implementation of death penalty, says a statement released by his office.

Abadi ordered that a committee be set up “to determine the obstacles and causes that result in the delay in the implementation of death sentences,” the statement said Saturday.

It added that the committee will make recommendations to “speed up the ratification of those sentences and their implementation.”

Iraq has recently witnessed several deadly bombings. In one of the worst-ever single bombings in Iraq, nearly 300 people lost their lives after a bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle at a shopping district in Baghdad’s Karradah neighborhood on July 3.

One day after the bombing, which was claimed by the Daesh Takfiri terror group, Abadi ordered that all terrorists sentenced to death be immediately executed.

On the same day, the Iraqi Justice Ministry announced that five people had been put to death, in a statement linking the timing of the executions with the blast.

Iraqis gather on July 7, 2016 next to banners of condolences at a memorial for the victims of a bombing which claimed the lives of nearly 300 people in Baghdad's Karradah neighborhood on July 3, 2016. ©AFP

Rights group Amnesty International subsequently called on the Iraqi government to halt executions, saying death penalty is “frequently handed out by courts following grossly unfair trials marred by the use of 'confessions' extracted under torture.”

The rights group said nearly 100 death sentences had been carried out so far in Iraq this year.

The northern and western parts of Iraq have been plagued by gruesome violence since Daesh terrorists started a large-scale campaign of terror in the country in June 2014.

According to the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, a total of 662 Iraqis were killed and another 1,457 wounded in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict in June.

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