The brutal excesses of Saddam Hussein’s regime were relived yesterday as Iraq’s new government announced that it had hanged 27 prisoners convicted of terror and criminal charges.

Mass executions at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison, which has several gallows erected in the execution chamber, were suspended after coalition-led troops overthrew Saddam three years ago. The death penalty was reinstituted in 2004, and yesterday’s executions took place just days after control of Abu Ghraib was handed over to the Iraqi authorities.

An Iraqi Justice Ministry official said two of those hanged had been convicted of terrorism charges, and the other 25 — including a woman — were convicted of murder and kidnapping.

News of the executions was made public by Prime Minister al-Maliki when he attended a ceremony to mark the transfer of control of Iraq’s military to the recently elected government from American control.

“This is the message I have for the terrorists,” he said of the hanged prisoners, “we will see that you get great punishment wherever you are. There is nothing for you but prison and punishment.”

The government’s press office later confirmed that the sentences had been carried out on Wednesday. It also called the prisoners “terrorists,” a name normally reserved for insurgents who have attacked coalition or Iraqi forces.

Mass executions of convicted prisoners took place on an almost weekly basis under Saddam’s regime, with Sunday and Wednesday the most popular days.

Saddam himself faces execution if he is convicted on charges relating to a massacre that took place in the Shiite town of Dujail in 1982. The verdict in his trial is due next month. The ex-dictator has begged the Iraqi authorities that he be executed by firing squad, rather than by hanging, if he is convicted and sentenced to death. Hundreds of convicted prisoners are believed to be on death row in Iraq as the authorities have struggled to control the insurgency that has seen the country brought to the brink of civil war by rival Sunni and Shiite militias.

The number of detained prisoners in Iraq means that many of the country’s prisons, including Abu Ghraib, are suffering from severe overcrowding. Prison authorities recently relocated 3,000 prisoners to an undisclosed location outside Baghdad from Abu Ghraib. Concern about the Iraqi government’s increasingly authoritarian attitude was heightened yesterday afternoon when it ordered the Arabic satellite channel Al-Arabiya to close its Baghdad office for a month.

The station is based in Dubai and is considered to be one of the Middle East’s more objective news channels. It announced live on air that police had entered its studios in the center of the city. In July, Mr. Maliki’s office issued a warning to television stations against broadcasting gruesome footage that focused on the victims of insurgent attacks.