On Sunday, Iraqi Justice Minister Haidar Zamili said that the Iraqi authorities had hung 36 people over the 2014 massacre of as many as 1,700 military recruits at Camp Speicher near the city of Tikrit.
"These mass executions mark a chilling increase in Iraq’s use of the death penalty… Relying on executions to counter Iraq’s security challenges is completely misguided. It does not address the root causes of deadly attacks and will only serve to perpetuate the cycle of violence. The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment and there is no credible evidence that shows it serves as more of a deterrent to crime than a prison term," Lynn Maalouf, the deputy director for Research at Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Regional Office, was quoted as saying in the group’s statement.
"However, executing men who were forced to ‘confess’ under torture and were not given a proper chance to defend themselves is not justice," Maalouf said.
Amnesty International called on Iraq to introduce a moratorium on the death penalty immediately and remove capital punishment from the country’s legislation.
The men, sentenced to death in February, allegedly took part in the Camp Speicher attack carried out by the Daesh group, banned in many countries including Russia.
