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The government's underreporting of executions reflects a general lack of transparency in the process. Hangings are conducted in secret, at a heavily fortified location in Baghdad built by an American contractor. Only a few officials are notified beforehand, and the vast majority of the names of those executed are never made public. Human Rights Watch, which monitors the fairness of judicial systems around the world, is concerned about the ability of defendants in Iraq to get a fair trial and access to a thorough appeals process. Iraq has repeatedly rebuffed requests from the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights for statistics on the country's death-penalty cases, leading the high commissioner to request that Iraq commute all death sentences. The government has refused. In a written response to the U.N., the government said that suspending capital punishment would "undermine our policy on crime," citing capital punishment as a "public deterrence."
That was the objective when the Iraqi government announced in March that they had executed an infamous psychopath and insurgent hit man named Shukair Farid, "the butcher of Mosul," whose gang slaughtered more than 200 during a yearlong rampage in the northern city. Farid, a police lieutenant, had gained fame after appearing on the hit reality-TV interrogation show Terrorism in the Hands of Justice, on which he told in gruesome detail of the scores of Iraqi lives he took, often using his uniform to trap victims. Farid didn't go easily. On the morning the convoy of Iraqi officials drove out to oversee the execution, 30 cars ambushed them with gunmen firing PKC automatic weapons. After fighting their way through to the gallows, the executioners were surprised at how defiant Farid was as he faced his own death. When asked to verify his identity before they put the rope around his neck, Farid said, "That's me, so what." "That guy was ready to go to hell, I guess," says a government official.
But there are many others on death row who continue to profess their innocence. Women doing time for murder in Baghdad live in a single 10-bunk cell in Khadamiyah Women's Prison in the northern part of town near the Tigris River. There waits Zayneb, a brown-haired woman in her late 20s wearing a black head scarf, convicted in September of conspiring with her husband to murder three relatives. The judge gave her three death sentences, one for each relative who was murdered. She says she didn't have anything to do with their deaths. She has only one chance to appeal the ruling before she faces the noose. The reality of her predicament sinks in as Zayneb looks at the empty bunk across the room, until recently occupied by a friend of hers who has been transferred to another jail to wait for her own execution. "We spent a long time together here," Zayneb says, tears welling up in her copper-colored eyes. "They took her two days ago." She sees little hope for herself. "I am convicted of three crimes. If one is waived, what about the other two? For sure I will be hanged."