Dozens executed in Iraq this week

The Iraqi government has executed more people it claims were convicted of terrorism, bringing the total number of prisoner hangings since Sunday to 37.

Justice Ministry spokesman Haider al-Saadi reported to Reuters in a text message that all those executed were Iraqi nationals.

The Iraqi government's steady acceleration of executions has come under repeated criticism from the United Nations. Human Rights Chief Navi Pillay said in 2012 that she was "stunned" at the number of offenses – 48 – under Iraqi law that are eligible for the death penalty.

There is also evidence that many of the convictions were based on confessions coerced from defendants.

Iraq hanged at least 151 people in 2013, up from 129 in 2012 and 68 in 2011, New York-based Human Rights Watch said in its annual world report published on Tuesday.

“This continued conveyor-belt of executions by the government of Iraq is simply deplorable,” Pillay's spokesman, Rupert Colville, said on Sunday, after 26 people were hanged.

“Iraq's justice system still has huge deficiencies which mean that resorting to even a small number of executions is risking a grave and irredeemable miscarriage of justice,” he said. “When people are executed by the dozen, it means that such miscarriages of justice are virtually certain to be occurring.”

One person currently on death row is Saudi national Abdullah Qatani. His London-based lawyer Akhtar Raja wrote Al Jazeera to say that the Iraqi parliament had rejected a prisoner exchange with Saudi Arabia that would have led to his release into Saudi custody.

"The political climate is complicated," Raja said.

Raja and his firm have sent letters to Iraqi officials urging them to stay his execution until a full review of his case could take place. 

Iraq's rate of execution has attracted the condemnation and anger of the international community and the United Nations, not only because the process by which they are sent to death row is deeply dysfunctional, but because it also seems to align with the increasing frequency of violent attacks.

The Iraqi government is currently fighting for control of Anbar province, a Sunni stronghold in the west of the country, where Al-Qaeda-linked group The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has gained territory in the area, and has launched attacks against civilians in other parts of the country.