BAGHDAD, April 17 (Xinhua) -- An Iraqi court on Tuesday sentenced four foreign women to death and three to life in prison for joining the extremist militant group Islamic State (IS), the Iraqi judiciary said.
The Iraqi Central Criminal Court issued verdicts of death penalty for "three Azerbaijani women and a Kyrgyz woman for being members of IS group," the Supreme Judicial Council said in a statement.
The court also "sentenced a French woman and two Russian women to life imprisonment for joining IS group," the statement said.
The Iraqi judiciary frequently sentenced women of foreign nationals to death and imprisonment for joining IS militants, including 16 Turkish women, sentenced to death on Feb. 25.
After the Iraqi forces defeated IS in Iraq in 2017, hundreds of IS loyalists were killed or captured, while many others are still at large in hideouts in Iraq or abroad.
Tuesday verdicts came a day after the Iraqi Ministry of Justice said it had executed 13 Iraqi prisoners, 11 of them over charges of terrorism, despite international calls to end the death penalty.
The increase of executions in Iraq has sparked calls to stop capital punishment by the UN mission in Iraq, European Union and some international human rights groups, which have criticized the lack of transparency in Iraqi courts.
Death penalty in Iraq was suspended on June 10, 2003, but was reinstated from Aug. 8, 2004.
