Jordan hangs 11 men after eight-year moratorium on death penalty

Human rights groups have condemned Jordan for ending an eight-year moratorium on the death penalty by hanging 11 men convicted of murder.

Authorities said the men were all Jordanians with no links to politics or extremism. Jordan's last previous executions were in 2006, and 122 people have since been sentenced to death.

Interior minister Hussein Majali suggested recently that the moratorium might end, saying there was a major debate in Jordan on the death penalty.

"The public believes that the rise in crime has been the result of the non-application [of capital punishment]," he said. Experts said the government was responding to a rise in crime.

"The authorities have been confronted in recent years with a wave of violence, criminality and murders and want to meet the challenge by opting for deterrence and the renewed application of the death penalty," Oraib Rantawi, head of Amman's Al-Quds Centre for Political Studies, told AFP.

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