Iraq Orders Hundreds of Terrorism Convicts Executed After Dead Hostages Found

Former ISIS militant with her daughter in Iraqi court.

Iraq’s prime minister has ordered the immediate execution of all death row terror convicts after militant group Islamic State (ISIS) killed eight hostages.

Haider al-Abadi said the executions would avenge the deaths of the captives, whose bodies were found next to a highway north of Baghdad on Wednesday, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Abadi ordered “the immediate punishment of terrorists condemned to death whose sentences have passed the decisive stage,” the prime minister’s office said. The order relates to all those whose appeal process has been exhausted. AFP cited an Iraqi judicial source who said more than 300 people have been condemned to death for ISIS membership.

Iraq’s criminal justice system is creaking under the weight of tens of thousands of detainees as its forces round up remaining ISIS elements and root out suspected sympathizers. Because Iraqi authorities refuse to provide statistics, it is hard to know exactly how many prisoners are being held or executed.

Analysis by Associated Press suggests at least 19,000 people have been detained, accused of terrorism offenses. The estimate is based on a spreadsheet of prisoners provided by an anonymous Iraqi official. The real number of prisoners is likely even higher, as many others are being held by military intelligence and Kurdish forces.

AP estimated that 3,130 people have been sentenced to death for links to ISIS and other militant links since 2013. Those sentenced to die include the sister of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and around 100 foreign women who traveled to join ISIS’s self-declared caliphate. Thousands of others of prisoners have been handed long jail terms.

The government has been accused of heavy-handed sentencing. According to Human Rights Watch, those sentenced to death include includes cooks and people who worked in ISIS-run hospitals.

Abadi has previously called for an accelerated rate of executions as Iraqi criminal infrastructure struggles to deal with the huge influx of prisoners. Since 2014, at least 250 hangings have been carried out. One hundred of those took place in in 2017, marking a clear effort to fast-track cases, AP said.

Belkis Wille, a senior Iraq researcher for Human Rights Watch told Newsweek that the organization objects to the death penalty being applied in any circumstances. Wille—who has spent significant time observing Iraqi courts and judges—said the organization is particularly concerned about the situation in Iraq because “these trials don’t need (sic) even the most basic due process standards. In that context, it is even more concerning that these are then trials that are leading to people being executed.”

Iraqi authorities began executing convicts on Thursday, with at least 12 people killed. The executions were announced via a message posted to Abadi's Facebook page.

ISIS released a video on Saturday showing six captured police officers and members of the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force. The militants said they would kill the hostages unless Iraqi authorities released Sunni Muslim women held in its prisons within three days.

Abadi suggested the hostages were likely already dead when the video was released. Their bodies were among the eight found decomposing and strapped with explosive vests in Tel Sharaf in Iraq’s Salaheddin province on Wednesday.

“Our security and military forces will take forceful revenge against these terrorist cells,” Abadi said. “We promise that we will kill or arrest those who committed this crime.

This article has been updated to include the fact that executions have begun.

Source: Newsweek, David Brennan, June 29, 2018

⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Florida Set to Execute Man Who Said He Killed to Reach Death Row, Challenging Misconception that Death Penalty Deters Crime

Florida is scheduled to execute James Robertson at noon on Tuesday, October 13, at Florida State Prison. His execution remains scheduled despite the withdrawal of William Lee Thompson’s death warrant, which had called for a 2nd execution that evening. If completed, this will be Florida’s 17th execution of 2026. Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) and partners will be holding a series of vigils and demonstrations across the state.

Christa Pike's Survival Wasn't a Miracle. That's What Should Scare Us.

What happened in Tennessee's execution chamber is one of the most common failures in medicine Christa Pike is awake. A week after Tennessee strapped her to a gurney and gave her two doses of pentobarbital , she is off the ventilator and speaking from a hospital bed, still shackled to it. Her lawyers call her recovery " medically unprecedented. " Legal scholars say she is the first person in American history to survive a lethal injection after the drug was actually given. I understand the impulse to make such claims. I consulted for Pike's legal team, but I have also spent three decades in operating rooms and intensive care units (ICUs), and I want to resist the word "unprecedented" and the word "miracle" that hovers just behind it.

Tennessee | Republicans legislature to investigate other execution methods after failed lethal injections

Republican leaders in Tennessee’s legislature say they will investigate the reliability of lethal injection as an execution method after the state failed to execute two death row inmates in the span of five months. Gov. Bill Lee stopped the May execution of Tony Carruthers after a physician unsuccessfully attempted to insert intravenous lines to begin the lethal injection process for over an hour. Death row inmate Christa Pike survived two failed rounds of Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol on Sept. 30 before the execution was halted. Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, is receiving medical care in a Nashville hospital.

Christa Pike: 4 Major Questions As She Returns to Death Row

As Christa Pike returns to death row after surviving Tennessee’s attempt to execute her, several questions remain about her case and what comes next. Pike, 50, was discharged from hospital and moved back to the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, the women’s prison where she was housed for 30 years, her attorneys said on Saturday. She was hospitalized after surviving 2 doses of the lethal drug pentobarbital as Tennessee attempted to execute her on September 30. Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, her classmate at a Job Corps training program in Knoxville, Tennessee. Pike was 18 at the time.

What Tennessee wants to do next to Christa Pike is beyond grim

Christa Pike, the woman who survived two execution attempts in Tennessee earlier this week, remains hospitalized in critical condition, where presumably medical staff is at work trying to keep her alive. If she wakes from the coma she had entered, Tennessee officials want to start anew to inject lethal drugs into her seemingly too-small veins to kill her and carry out the state death warrant. Pike also is being treated for “significant injuries to both arms” sustained when two lethal injections of pentobarbital failed to kill her. If she dies, there will be no need to try again. As we know by now, Tennessee tried to put Pike to death Wednesday night by lethal injection for a murder she committed when she was 18. She would have been the first woman executed in the state in 200 years.

USA | Firing squad execution to be livestreamed, Pentagon says

The public will be able to watch the execution of a former US Army major by firing squad, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has said. A Defense Department official told the BBC the execution of Nidal Hasan, who shot dead 13 unarmed US soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009, would be livestreamed. It is believed it would be the first public execution in the US in almost a century. The decision to livestream it is "unprecedented in the modern era" and "on uncertain legal terrain", said John Mills, a lawyer who works with inmates sentenced to death.

Tennessee | Christa Pike’s lawyer says she has not regained consciousness since her failed execution

Christa Pike has remained unconscious and on a ventilator at a hospital in the four days since her failed execution in Tennessee, and her prognosis might not be known for days more, one of her lawyers said Sunday. Little has been released about Pike’s condition since Wednesday night’s execution attempt. She has since remained hospitalized under guard as doctors try to get the massive dose of the barbiturate pentobarbital out of her system. When asked whether she ever regained consciousness after the execution attempt, Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell, Pike’s lawyer, said on CNN’s “State of the Union”: “Not that I am aware of.”

Florida executes James Robertson

STARKE, Fla. — A Florida prisoner who said he killed his cellmate specifically to get on death row was executed Tuesday, nearly 18 years after the attack. James Robertson, 63, declined to offer any last words before receiving a three-drug injection and was pronounced dead about 10 minutes later. It was a stark contrast to the failed execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee two weeks ago, where she was rushed to the hospital after surviving two lethal doses of pentobarbital.

Opinion | I Know Christa Pike’s Medical History. What Tennessee Did Is Unforgivable.

Dr. Zivot is an anesthesiologist and intensive care physician. He consulted on Christa Pike’s case before her attempted execution. On Wednesday night, Christa Pike lay strapped to a gurney at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville while the State of Tennessee injected pentobarbital, a sedative that is lethal in high doses, into her veins. When the 1st dose did not kill her, the execution team gave her a 2nd. At one point, she told the room her arm felt as if it were about to burst. She was nearly correct. More than an hour after the procedure began, an ambulance was called. She was severely injured but still alive.

After Christa Pike survives lethal injection, America's shameful botched executions

The US is one of the few Western nations that still permits the death penalty, carried out regularly in 27 states. And in a country where regional political culture strongly favours retributive justice, it is no wonder capital punishment remains an enduring part of the American legal system. But following Christa Pike's botched lethal injection last week, fresh questions are being raised over whether executing convicted murderers and rapists outweighs the risks of an innocent person being put to death, or of an execution going so badly that a prisoner is left to die in agony, or even survives the attempt.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog