UN condemns Iraq's execution of 42 Sunni Muslim prisoners

Iraq executed 42 people, including a woman, for mass killings and other "terrorism" offences over the past week, the justice ministry and the United Nations said on Wednesday after a surge in sectarian violence.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein said on Wednesday he was "appalled" that Iraq had hanged 42 men on Sunday, almost certainly without a fair trial, and that he feared more would follow.

"I am appalled to learn of the execution of 42 prisoners in a single day," Zeid said in a statement.

Zeid added that it was "extremely doubtful" that strict due process and fair trial guarantees, including the men's rights to effective legal assistance and a full appeals process as well as to seek pardon or commutation of their sentence, had been met in every one of the 42 individual cases.

Amnesty International described the news as "extremely alarming" and that "mass execution is a shocking display of the Iraqi authorities' resort to the death penalty to try to show they are responding to security threats."

"The death penalty is an irreversible and reprehensible punishment that should not be used in any circumstances and there is no evidence to show that it deters crime more than any other means of punishment," Amnesty said in a report.

Both urged Baghdad to immediately suspend the death penalty, which rights groups say has been used with increasing frequency by Iraqi authorities in recent years.

The 42 hanged this week amounted to almost a third of the total number the campaign group said were put to death in all of 2012, when Iraq ranked third in a list of countries that carried out the most executions, behind China and Iran.

The justice ministry said on Sunday the 42 had been hanged at a prison in Nassiriya, three months after 14 other militants were executed following convictions for terrorism.

Relatives of victims were invited to witness Sunday's executions, the justice ministry added.

"Despite all the pain inside me after losing my two brothers in the suicide attacks, when I saw the terrorists dangling from the rope I felt relief," said Fadhil Abdul Ameer from Nassiriya.

After invading Iraq in 2003, the US-led interim authority suspended the death penalty, citing its use as a tool of repression under dictator Saddam Hussein, who left behind mass graves filled with thousands of bodies.

But as sectarian carnage began to take hold of the country in 2005, Iraq reinstated the punishment for those who commit "terrorist acts," as well as people who provoke, plan, finance and enable others to perpetuate them.

Kidnapping and murder, but also lesser offences like damage to public property, in certain circumstances, are also punishable by death.

Members of Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority accuse the Shia-led government that came to power after Saddam's overthrow of using the death penalty to persecute their sect.

"The escalation in the number of executions in recent days is an extremely alarming development," said Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui in a statement. "Death sentences continue to be imposed after grossly unfair trials."