Amman (Reuters): Jordan executed 15 people on Saturday including 10 convicted on terrorism charges ranging from an attack a decade ago on Western tourists to the slaying of a writer, a judicial source and the government spokesman Mohammad al Momani said on Saturday.
Al Momani said those executed included one man who was convicted of an attack last year on an intelligence compound that killed five security personnel. Another five were involved in an assault by security forces on a militant hideout in Irbid city in the same year that led to the death of seven militants and one police officer, while the rest related to separate incidents that go back as far as 2003.
It was the largest number of people executed in one day in Jordan's recent history, according to a senior judicial source. Human rights group Amnesty International condemned the executions by hanging saying they were carried out in "secrecy and without transparency".
"The scale of today's mass executions is shocking and it's a big step backwards on human rights protection in Jordan," Samah Hadid, deputy director of Amnesty International's Beirut regional office said. Hadid said the death penalty was "problematic because in some cases confessions in Jordan were extracted under torture or duress", echoing widespread complaints by human rights activists.