More than 300 men and women have been sentenced to death in two separate courts in Iraq for joining the Islamic State terror group, according to judicial sources.
According to the Daily Mail, some of the accused were tried in a court near the group's former stronghold in Mosul. Others were tried in a court in Baghdad, which mainly deals with foreigners and women.
A total of 212 people received the death sentence at the court in Tel Keif near Mosul, according to Supreme Judicial Council spokesman Abdel Sattar Bayraqdar. At least 150 were sentenced to life imprisonment while 341 were sentenced to other jail terms.
"It has been proven that they carried out criminal actions at public hearings conducted in accordance with the law during which the convicts' rights were guaranteed," Bayraqdar said in a statement, as reported by the Daily Mail.
As many as 103 foreigners have been sentenced to death in Baghdad since January, while 185 have been given life sentences.
Since 2017, the courts have completed trials for 2,900 cases out of 10,000 referred cases. However, there are no official figures on how many of the convicted received the death penalty or how many executions have already taken place.
A statement from the Justice Ministry said 11 people were executed on Monday for "terrorism crimes."
The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that the trials against the suspects were rushed and "riddled with due process violations, including convictions based solely on confessions which are sometimes extracted by torture."
"Iraq's mishandling of the ISIS trials not only denies victims real justice, but also risks sending innocent Iraqis to their deaths," HRW senior Iraq researcher Belkis Wille said, according to the Daily Mail.
One trial against a Turkish woman reportedly lasted only 10 minutes. According to The New York Times, 42-year-old housewife Amina Hassan had only been given two minutes to defend herself in court.
Hassan admitted in court that she and her family entered Syria and Iraq illegally and lived under ISIS rule for more than two years, but she insisted that she never took money from the group. "I brought my own money from Turkey." She was sentenced to death by the judge along with 13 other women.
Gen. Yahya Rasool, the spokesman for the Iraqi joint operations command, believes that the death sentences would serve as a deterrent to people who might think of joining extremist groups.
"These Islamic State criminals committed crimes against humanity and against our people in Iraq, in Mosul and Salahuddin and Anbar, everywhere," Rasool said, as reported by The New York Times.
"To be loyal to the blood of the victims and to be loyal to the Iraqi people, criminals must receive the death penalty, a punishment that would deter them and those who sympathize with them," he added.
