ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Kurdistan Region has 466 inmates with pending death sentences, their fate uncertain, according to data from Kurdistan’s correctional facilities. “Those who have execution sentences, their fate remains undetermined. If the execution is not carried out, their sentence will not be shortened or changed,” Aram Gardi, Kurdistan Bar Association spokesperson, told Rudaw on Wednesday. Courts in the Kurdistan Region issue death sentences but the government has a de facto moratorium on carrying out executions. The 466 inmates on death row are neither executed nor given a new sentence, leaving their fate unclear. Legal experts have criticized this method, saying it creates a legal gap. According to latest data from the Kurdistan Region Directorate of Corrections, 5,563 inmates are in their six correctional facilities - three for male prisoners and three for women and juvenile pretrial detainees and prisoners. “Among those who have been sentenced, 1,386 are for [charges related to] narcotics and the number has increased a lot compared to before,” Ihsan Abdulrahman, head of the corrections directorate told Rudaw on Wednesday. Kurdish security forces have arrested more than 1,000 people on drug-related charges this year, with more than half of them in Sulaimani, which is the largest province by area and population in the Kurdistan Region, according to the Kurdistan Region Statistics Office. Last October, Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said that the region is “seriously and widely working to eradicate and combat” the threat of drugs, calling on Kurdish and international communities to cooperate with Erbil to eliminate what he described an “endemic” problem. Since the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014, thousands of people have been detained across Iraq for suspected links to terrorist groups, including ISIS, while hundreds have been executed in extrajudicial processes - to the dismay of human rights organizations. Iraq was the fourth country in the Middle East and North Africa region for the number of executions carried out in 2022, according to an Amnesty International report released in May. Only Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Iran recorded more executions than Iraq in the region in 2022.
