Baghdad, Iraq ? Iraqi authorities executed 13 men by hanging Tuesday after they were convicted of murder and kidnapping, lining them up in hoods and green jumpsuits with their hands bound behind their backs.

In a rare move that came amid chaotic violence sweeping the capital, the Iraqi government recorded and distributed graphic television footage of the convicts in the moments before they were put to death. The footage was given to both Iraqi and foreign media.

Iraqi TV has rarely aired such pictures since Saddam Hussein’s 2003 ouster. Even under Saddam, executions were common but rarely made public.

Iraq hanged three people convicted of killing police officers on Sept. 1, 2005, in the first executions since Saddam’s ouster. In March of this year, Iraqi authorities executed convicted insurgents for the first time, hanging 13 of them. There may have been other executions in the same time period, but they have not been publicized.

The government executed the men after an appeals court and the presidency approved the verdict, said Busho Ibrahim, undersecretary of the Justice Ministry.

“They included terrorists and other criminals convicted of abduction and murder as well as assassination plots in several provinces,” he said.

After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, American officials deemed the Iraqi court system incapable of rendering a fair decision and banned the death penalty. Iraqi authorities reinstated the death penalty after the transfer of sovereignty in June 2004 so they would have the option of executing Saddam for crimes committed by his regime. The government also pointed specifically to the need to quell the insurgency when it reinstated the death penalty.

Elsewhere in the Iraqi capital, gunmen in military uniforms robbed government accountants as they left a bank with bags of cash. It was the second major robbery in Baghdad in eight days.