01 August 2023 :

An Iraqi court on July 25, 2023 issued the death sentence for a suspected drug dealer, reported state media.
“A death sentence was issued for a criminal after he was caught in the possession of 39 bundles of narcotic substances (captagon pills) which he was intending to trade,” Iraqi state media cited the Rusafa criminal court as saying.
The suspect was being sentenced in accordance with Article 27 of the Iraqi Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances Law, the statement added.
The Article states that any suspect charged with exporting, importing, producing, or planting narcotic substances shall be sentenced to either death or to life imprisonment.
In June, an Iraqi court sentenced eight people, including two of foreign nationalities, to death accused of being in possession of narcotics.
The rate of drug addicts and dealers has been on an alarming rise in Iraq in recent years, despite strict measures taken by the Iraqi government to curb the phenomenon.
Iraqi security forces on July 24 announced seizing around one million captagon pills in the capital Baghdad, in addition to arresting more than 30 suspects on drug-related charges in separate operations.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani has ordered the establishment of rehabilitation centers in all Iraqi provinces, excluding the Kurdistan Region, as part of his cabinet’s commitment to combat growing drug trade and use as seriously as the country fights terrorism.

08 May 2023 :

An Iraqi court on May 7, 2023 issued a death sentence for a policeman after he was found guilty of leading a group that shot dead the well-known analyst and government advisor Hisham al-Hashimi three years ago in Baghdad.
Al-Hashemi, who was advising the government on defeating ISIS fighters and ways to curb the influence of armed factions, was killed in front of his family’s home in Baghdad in July 2020 when gunmen riding a motorcycle bombarded him and killed him.
A statement issued by the Media Center of the Supreme Judicial Council stated that a court in Baghdad on May 7 issued a death sentence for Ahmed Hamdawi, based on the Iraqi anti-terrorism law.
Media were not allowed to attend the court session, but a lawyer who attended said Hamdawi did not say anything in court in response to the judge’s ruling.
A spokesman for the Supreme Judicial Council in Baghdad said it could appeal the verdict.
In 2021, Iraqi state television broadcast a video clip in which Hamdawi confesses to leading the group that killed al-Hashemi.
At the time, government officials said that al-Hashimi was the target of the attack, without accusing any specific group.

20 April 2023 :

A court in Baghdad on 18 April 2023 sentenced eight people to death for attempting to organize the Islamic State (ISIS) in prison.
The eight were being held in three different prisons and had been in contact with ISIS prisoners in order to “restructure the organization and plan a prison escape to carry out an organized terrorist project,” according to a statement from the Iraqi judiciary.
They confessed to receiving orders from ISIS, the statement added, and were sentenced in accordance with the 2005 anti-terrorism law, which stipulates that anyone who participates in committing a “terrorist act,” as defined by the law, shall be sentenced to death.
Since the rise of ISIS in 2014, thousands of people have been detained across Iraq for suspected links to terrorist groups, including ISIS, while hundreds have been executed.
Amnesty International in March reported that at least 20 death sentences have been handed down since Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani assumed office in October.
At least 17 people sentenced to death for terror charges in Iraq were executed in 2021, reported AFP.
Amnesty recorded 45 executions in 2019, down from 100 the year before.
The United Nations has criticized Iraq’s trials of ISIS suspects, saying proceedings have not met fair trial standards and raising concerns about allegations of torture.

29 January 2023 :

Iraq's judiciary has sentenced 14 people to death over the 2014 Camp Speicher massacre.
Baghdad's Central Criminal Court issued the verdict on 26 January 2023 under Iraq's antiterrorism law.
More than 1,700 unarmed air force recruits, mainly Shiite, were killed in the massacre as ISIS swept across Iraq.
The killings were one of the worst attacks by the terrorist group and became a symbol of its brutality.
Dozens have already been sentenced to death for taking part in the attack at the former US base, near the city of Tikrit.
In June 2021, nine men were handed the death sentence over links to the massacre. They had confessed to their involvement in the killings, the judiciary said. Thirty-six men were hanged in 2016 over the attack.
Baghdad has sentenced hundreds of people to death for terrorism links since declaring the defeat of ISIS in 2017, and has carried out mass executions at Nasiriyah prison, the only facility in Iraq to carry out capital punishment.
Because executions require presidential approval, a relatively small number have been carried out.
A UN team established to investigate ISIS actions in Iraq and Syria found that seven types of war crimes were committed during the massacre.
Soldiers at the base were ordered to change into civilian clothes and were later captured by ISIS militants, who herded them to the banks of the Tigris river and shot them dead.
Numerous mass graves were found and excavated.
Authorities in Lebanon detained the grandson of Saddam Hussein in August over his alleged involvement in the attack.
An Interpol warrant was issued for his arrest when he was stopped in the city of Jbeil. He was extradited to Iraq in November.
Human rights groups have raised concerns over Iraq's detention and prosecution of terrorist suspects.
Amnesty International has accused of Iraq's judiciary of holding "unfair trials" and extracting confessions through torture. It described the 2020 execution of 21 people convicted of terrorism as “an outrage."

24 January 2024 :

Thirteen men were executed in Nasiriyah prison on December 25, 2023, the first mass execution since 21 men were executed on November 16, 2020.
The December 25 executions were carried out without regard for the basic rights of those facing the death penalty, Human Rights Watch said. An inmate at Nasiriyah prison told his lawyer that on the evening of December 24, the names of the 13 men to be executed were called out on the prison’s loudspeaker. He said that the authorities collected them from their cells then executed them in the morning. They were not allowed to call their families or their lawyers before they were executed.
Nasiriyah prison is the only prison in Iraq that carries out executions. 
Iraqis refer to Nasiriyah prison as “al hout,” or the whale, because it swallows people up and never spits them out, as people say.
Two of the men executed on December 25 were convicted for the murder of a narcotraffic police officer.
About 8,000 prisoners, most charged with terrorism offenses, are believed to be on death row in Iraq.

23 March 2023 :

An Iraqi court has sentenced two men to death in absentia for the 2020 kidnapping and disappearance of an anti-government activist, the judiciary on March 22, 2023 said.
A criminal court in southern Dhi Qar province ordered Idriss Kurdi and Ahmed Mohammed Aboud, “who abducted activist Sajjad al-Iraki,” to be hanged, in a March 16 ruling, according to a statement released by the Supreme Council of Iraq.
A prominent activist in anti-government protests that rocked Iraq in October 2019, Iraki, aged in his 20s, has not been seen since September 2020, when witnesses and security force sources say armed men forced his car to stop and kidnapped him near Dhi Qar’s provincial capital, Nasiriyah.
Kurdi and Aboud remain at large and lawyers working on their behalf have 30 days to appeal the sentences before the decree authorizing their execution is signed by Iraq’s president.
In October 2019, young Iraqis led a nationwide protest movement that vented frustration at inept governance, endemic corruption and interference by Iran, sparking a bloody crackdown that left more than 600 dead and tens of thousands wounded.
Some activists died in targeted assassinations, including former government adviser Hisham al-Hashemi who was shot near his home in July 2020.
Mustafa al-Kadhimi, the prime minister until October 2022, had pledged to hunt down the perpetrators of the murders.
Last October, a man was sentenced to death for the murder of an activist in the protest movement, and in November 2021, another man received the same sentence for killing two journalists during protests in Basra in Iraq’s south.
In June 2022, the United Nations mission in Iraq denounced an “environment of fear and intimidation” that has stifled freedom of expression in the conflict-scarred country.
The UN report noted “persistent impunity with respect to targeted attacks against protestors” as well as against people “seeking accountability for these attacks, and activists and critics espousing views critical of armed elements and affiliated political actors.”

13 September 2023 :

On August 15, 2023 a draft bill was introduced in Iraq that would see the death penalty introduced for homosexuality. The Iraqi politician who introduced the bill into parliament is absolutely certain: Any behavior that deviates from heterosexuality is a danger to his country. This is why Raad al-Maliki, an independent member of parliament, introduced a bill that would amend Iraq's "Law on Combatting Prostitution" from 1988 to make same-sex relations a crime, alongside any kind of expression of transgender identity.Should al-Maliki's bill be passed, same-sex relationships in Iraq would be punishable by death or long prison terms. The bill also pertains to transgender women and sets a penalty of up to three years in jail or a fine of up to 10 million dinars ($7,700) for anyone who "imitates a woman." The latter is defined as wearing makeup or women's clothing or "appearing as a woman" in public.
According to Human Rights Watch, which has seen a copy of the bill, the Iraqi draft law describes same-sex relationships as "sexual perversion" and also punishes what it describes as the promotion of homosexuality with up to seven years of jail time and financial fines of up 15 million dinars ($11,500). The draft law does not explain what is meant by the "promotion of homosexuality."
Until now, Iraq has not had any laws explicitly against same-sex relationships, and authorities have tended to use morality laws to harass the LGBTQ community.

13 August 2023 :

An Iraqi court on July 31, 2023 overturned the death sentence handed down over the 2020 killing of prominent academic Hisham al-Hashemi and sent the case back to investigators.
Ahmed Hamdawi Oueid was sentenced to death by a Baghdad criminal court in May after being found guilty of killing Hashemi, an internationally recognised expert in Sunni Muslim extremism.
Hashemi, who was also a security adviser to the Iraqi government, was shot dead on July 6, 2020 by men on motorcycles in front of his home.
"All the decisions rendered by the central court are annulled... and the case is returned to the competent court responsible for investigating," the court of cassation said.
The ruling was issued on July 31 and published on the court's website this week.
Explaining its decision, the court said the committee responsible for investigating the killing had "no legal power" to do so.
The now-disbanded "Committee 29" had been set up by former prime minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi to fight corruption, among other issues.
In 2021, Kadhemi announced arrests and state television aired the "confessions" of Oueid, a 36-year-old policeman.
Hashemi's murder sparked outrage across Iraq and was denounced by Western countries as well as the United Nations.
Hashemi had thrown his support behind popular protests that had broken out in Iraq a year before his death against the ruling establishment, which was seen by many as inept, corrupt and too close to Iran.
More than 600 people were killed and thousands wounded in the protests that had erupted in October 2019 and the ensuing crackdown on the demonstrations.
In the aftermath of the protests, a spate of killings, attempted murders and abductions targeted dozens of activists in Iraq.