You are here
Iraq PM orders ‘immediate’ execution of terrorists
By AFP - Jun 29,2018 - Last updated at Jun 29,2018
Baghdad — Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi on Thursday ordered the immediate execution of all convicted jihadists on death row, in swift retaliation for the Daesh’s execution of eight captives.
Abadi 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.
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 Daesh group, 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 the eight Daesh captives, a day after their bodies were found along a highway north of Baghdad.
“Our security and military forces will take forceful revenge against these terrorist cells,” he told senior military officials and ministers.
“We promise that we will kill or arrest those who committed this crime,” he said.
The corpses, found at Tel Sharaf in Salaheddin province, were decomposing and had been strapped with explosive vests, the army said.
They included six abductees who had appeared in a Daesh video with badly bruised faces. The terror group claimed they were Iraqi police officers or members of the Hashed Al Shaabi paramilitary force.
In the video posted Saturday by the Amaq propaganda outlet of Daesh, the terrorists threatened to execute their captives unless Baghdad released Sunni Muslim women held in its prisons within three days.
But Abadi said that autopsies indicated the captives were already dead when the video was posted.
Iraq declared victory over Daesh in December after expelling the terrorists from all urban centres including 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.
Related Articles
Jordan on Monday called on Arab countries to immediately work out a pan-Arab action plan to fight terror and extremist organisations.
AMMAN — Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi and his counterparts from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and a senior Pales
AMMAN — Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi on Friday urged the UN Security Council (UNSC) and the international community to take "effective and