HRW Calls for Moratorium on Executions in Iraq

Earlier today, Human Rights Watch called upon Iraqi authorities to halt all executions and abolish the death penalty. With the onset of 2012 Iraq has executed at least 65 prisoners, 51 in January, and another 14 in February. The group said trials often violate international standards, while many defendants are unable to challenge the evidence against them. 14 Iraqis were executed last Tuesday that were “convicted of terrorism and other crimes committed in 2006 and 2007,” according to an unnamed Iraqi official. “The Iraqi government seems to have given state executioners the green light to execute at will,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. Stork stated, “The government needs to declare an immediate moratorium on all executions and begin an overhaul of its flawed criminal-justice system.”

34 individuals were executed on January, 19 following their conviction for various crimes. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, responded that “even if the most scrupulous fair trial standards were observed, this would be a terrifying number of executions to take place in a single day.” Pillay went on to say there is not a single report of someone on death row being pardoned, “despite the fact there are well documented cases of confessions being extracted under duress.”

As the violence escalates Marina Ottaway, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, believes the bigger problem in Iraq is the collapse of the political agreement reached in 2010. “Unless a new political agreement is reached soon, Iraq may plunge into civil war or split apart,” said Ottaway. The U.S. was able to forcible hold Iraq together with the 2007 troop surge, but the recent turmoil indicates it did not secure a lasting agreement amongst the Iraqis. Now ”the outcome depends on whether the political factions that dominate Iraq and tear it apart find it in their interest to forge a real compromise or conclude that they would benefit more from going in separate directions.”