BAGHDAD, JUNE 30,
Iraq said on Friday that it has executed 13 death row jihadists after Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi vowed a forceful retaliation to calm public anger over the Islamic State (IS)’s murder of abducted civilians.
While Iraqis have grown accustomed to the atrocities committed by the IS, the recent killing of eight civilians shocked the nation and doused hopes the jihadists had been defeated.
For the first time, the authorities released photographs of the hangings, which came after Mr. Abadi on Thursday ordered the “immediate” executions of hundreds of convicted jihadists. The Justice Ministry said on Friday that the 13 convicts put to death at a prison in southern Iraq “had participated in armed operations with terrorist groups, in kidnappings, bombings and murders of civilians”.
100 foreign women
Mr. Abadi’s office had earlier announced the execution of 12 convicts whose appeals were exhausted.
More than 300 people, including around 100 foreign women, have been condemned to death in Iraq and hundreds of others to life imprisonment for membership of IS, a judicial source said in April. Mr. Abadi had vowed to avenge the deaths of the eight civilians held captive by IS, a day after their bodies were found along a highway north of Baghdad.
Six of the abductees — civilians working in the logistics department of the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force that helped defeat the jihadists — had appeared in an IS video released on Saturday.
