World
12:25, 29-Jun-2018
Iraq orders executions of death row jihadists over ISIL killings
Updated
12:21, 02-Jul-2018
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Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered on Thursday the execution of hundreds of jihadists, including foreigners, already sentenced to death, as payback for the killing of eight captives kidnapped by ISIL.
Abadi, who has faced charges of failing to respond in force to ISIL, ordered "the immediate punishment of terrorists condemned to death whose sentences have passed the decisive stage," his office said, referring to convicts whose appeals have been exhausted.
No date was announced for the start of any mass hangings.
More than 300 people, including around 100 foreign women, have been condemned to death in Iraq and hundreds of others to life imprisonment for joining ISIL, a judicial source said in April.
Most of the convicted women are Turkish or from former Soviet republics, while a Russian man and a Belgian national are also on death row.
Abadi vowed Thursday to avenge the deaths of eight ISIL captives, a day after their bodies were found along a highway north of Baghdad.
ISIL claimed they were Iraqi police officers or members of the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force which was key to the jihadists' defeat.
"Our security and military forces will take forceful revenge against these terrorist cells," Abadi told senior military officials and ministers. "We promise that we will kill or arrest those who committed this crime," he said.
The change of tone from the prime minister came after criticism on social media of his failure to react forcefully to the grisly discovery.
Iraq declared victory over ISIL in December after expelling the jihadists from all urban centers, including Iraq's second city Mosul in a vast military campaign.
But the Iraqi military has kept up operations targeting mostly desert areas along the porous border with Syria.
Iraq, which has repeatedly faced criticism over the high number of death sentences handed down by its anti-terrorist courts, hanged at least 111 convicts in 2017.
Around 20,000 people were arrested in the three-year battle for Iraqi forces to evict ISIL, which had seized swathes of western and northern Iraq in 2014.
Source(s): AFP