This pretty much exceeds the reach of corruption:
Iraq has hanged 42 prisoners convicted of terrorism-related charges, including a woman, the Justice Ministry said Thursday, in Baghdad's latest use of capital punishment despite international appeals to have it abolished.
With violence mounting since April, the government defends the death penalty as a way to face down insurgents bent to destabilize the country. More than 5,000 people have been killed over the past six months, including nearly 200 so far in October.
Yes, "innocent" people (in the sense that they might not be guilty of the specific crime for which they were sentenced to death) are almost certainly being executed.
But guilty people were definitely escaping. And with general death rates at a higher level as some Sunni Arabs restart the war (and many others look away from fear or sympathy), the Iraqi authorities are under pressure to do something to defeat the new wave of killing.
Without us there to help them resist corruption, this is their something.
