Baghdad accelerating trials, death sentences for terrorists

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – An Iraqi court on Monday sentenced to death two men accused of belonging to the Islamic State (IS) after being found guilty of carrying out attacks in the country.

Over the past few months, the Iraqi government has stepped up the pace regarding trials of individuals accused of participating in IS activities.

The Central Criminal Court in Baghdad sentenced two defendants to death, one of whom “took part in the terrorist attack on the Iraqi Justice Ministry in 2013,” which killed at least 24 people, spokesperson for Iraq’s Higher Judicial Council, Abdul-Sattar al-Birqdar, said in a statement.

“The other suspect was a member of the so-called Islamic court of IS, who was also a member of the Mujahideen Army in 2007 before he pledged allegiance to the terrorist organization,” he added.

According to Birqdar, the court sentenced both men to death by hanging in accordance with the provisions of article 4 of the anti-terrorism law.

Iraqi courts recently sentenced 212 people to death in Mosul and surrounding areas, most of them for membership to the extremist group.

International humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, say efforts by the Iraqi authorities to speed up the implementation of death sentences could lead to the execution of innocent people.

The death penalty in Iraq was suspended on June 10, 2003, but was reinstated the following year.

Critics say the country’s flawed and confession-based criminal justice system in which torture is routinely used to extract confessions is incompatible with a sentence such as capital punishment.

(Nadia Riva contributed to this report)