Those executed included one Saudi and one Syrian citizen and three women. Authorities said that all had been convicted on charges “related to terrorism,” but provided little information about what crimes they had committed.

“There is no doubt that Iraq still has a serious terrorism problem, but it also has a huge problem with torture and unfair trials,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The lack of transparency around these convictions and executions, in a country where confessions that may have been coerced are often the only evidence against a person, makes it crucial for Iraq to declare an immediate moratorium on all executions.”

Human Rights Watch said it opposes the death penalty in all circumstances because it is unique in its cruelty and finality, and is plagued with arbitrariness, prejudice, and error.

Iraqi authorities rarely announce executions beforehand and have not made public the total number of executions in a given year, Human Rights Watch said.

According to the United Nations, more than 1,200 people are believed to have been sentenced to death in Iraq since 2004. The number of prisoners executed during that period has not been revealed publicly. Iraqi law authorizes the death penalty for close to 50 crimes, including terrorism, kidnapping, and murder, but also including such offenses as damage to public property.

“The government should disclose the identities, locations, and status of all prisoners on death row, the crimes for which they have been convicted, the evidence supporting their conviction, and details of any impending executions,” Stork said.

International human rights law requires that where the death penalty has not been abolished, it should be imposed only in cases for the most serious crimes and after scrupulous adherence tointernational fair trial standards, including the rights of the defendant to competent defense counsel, to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and not to be compelled to confess guilt.

Criminal trials in Iraq often violate these minimum guarantees, Human Rights Watch said. Many defendants are unable to pursue a meaningful defense or to challenge evidence against them, and lengthy pretrial detention without judicial review is common.

“It is extremely disturbing that up to 196 individuals may be at imminent risk of execution, with a serious lack of public information on the cases,” said the Special Rapporteur on arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns (photo). “And this is in a single province of the country.”

Iraq’s Ministry of Interior has reportedly announced that the Court of Cassation has upheld the death sentences in Anbar province, west of Baghdad, according to a news release issued by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). It added that it is unclear whether any of these sentences have yet been ratified by the Iraqi Presidential Council.

“The lives of too many individuals are at stake,” Heyns said, urging the Iraqi Government to immediately halt executions and review all death row cases. He recalled that the death penalty may only be imposed – in countries that still have this form of punishment – if a strict set of substantive and procedural requirements are met.

He supported the appeal, made in January 2012, by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, for the establishment of a moratorium on the death penalty.

In that statement, Pillay deplored that 34 individuals had been executed in Iraq within one day. Reports indicate that 70 people have been executed in the country thus far in 2012. “Overall, an alarming number of death sentences have been carried out in Iraq over the past few years,” stated the news release.

Stressing the duty of the State to ensure transparency and legal due process, Heyns called on the Government to disclose information on the number of executions carried out, the identity of death row prisoners, the charges and judicial proceedings against them, and the outcome of the review of their cases.

“Maintaining secrecy over executions undermines public scrutiny and may lead the international community to conclude that these are being imposed in violation of international law,” he said.

Independent experts, or special rapporteurs, are appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work.