Iraq: Rights group warns executions based on unfair trials are 'surging'
Unlawful executions are "surging" in Iraq, a rights group has warned, with unfair trials and torture in detention rife across the country.
Human Rights Watch said that the country had dramatically increased the use of the death penalty in 2024, without prior notice to lawyers or family members.
The Iraqi government does not provide official statistics on executions, but monitoring group Afad said 50 men were killed in September alone, while at least 63 were executed in June in "secret" executions.
HRW highlighted a number of cases of the Iraqi authorities intimidating or threatening people for speaking out against unfair convictions.
Five men who submitted anonymous complaints through a foreign lawyer to the United Nations have been executed since April.
According to the lawyer of one of the men, in one of his last communications in March 2024, he said prison officials had discovered that he was transmitting information outside the prison, and expressed fear of retaliation.
The lawyer said in early April the man had been put in isolation, incommunicado. Authorities then informed his family and lawyer in July that he had been executed.
“Iraqi authorities are carrying out state-sanctioned murder on a disturbing scale,” said Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch.
“Signing off on these unlawful executions will leave President Abdul Latif Rashid’s legacy stained with blood.”
Widespread torture
Iraq has for many years had one of the world's highest execution rates, despite repeated warnings from lawyers and rights groups that the legal cases of many of those convicted were deeply flawed.
Torture, isolation from family and lawyers, and forced confessions are widespread in Iraqi prisons, while evidence provided in terrorism cases has often been flimsy and, in some cases, linked to disputes over land and businesses.
Iraqi anti-terrorism legislation allows the death penalty to be applied on the charge of "membership of a terrorist organisation".
Read More »Executions have also focused heavily on crimes related to drug offences.
In May, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said that the issue was as important as terrorism to the country, telling the inaugural Baghdad International Conference on Drug Control that drugs were a "serious threat to societies and state entities and the war against drugs is no less dangerous than the war against terrorism".
Iraq has long been a transit country for captagon, the amphetamine-like stimulant plaguing the Middle East.
But officials say Iraq has also become a consumer market for the drug.
“At this rate, Iraq is on track to become a world leader in unlawful executions,” Fakih said.
“The government should rather focus its efforts on making meaningful reforms to the Iraqi judiciary and prison system and abolish the death penalty once and for all.”
