BAGHDAD – Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Thursday ordered the immediate execution of all convicted militants on death row, in swift retaliation for the Islamic State’s execution of eight captives.
Abadi ordered the immediate execution 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 the Islamic State 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 IS 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.
