Iraq sentences 14 ISIS fanatics to death over horrifying 2014 massacre

Iraq sentences 14 ISIS fanatics to death over terror group’s horrifying massacre of 1,700 army cadets who were slaughtered one by one in 2014

  • ISIS massacred as many as 1,700 army cadets as they tried to flee from the base
  • Speicher massacre is considered one of the deadliest terror attacks in history 

Iraq has sentenced 14 ISIS fanatics to death by hanging for their role in the brutal massacre of hundreds of army cadets in 2014, judicial officials said.

The massacre, one of the worst committed by ISIS in Iraq, saw the extremists in June 2014 abduct up to 1,700 mainly Shiite cadets from the Speicher military base in the Tikrit region and execute them.

The Al-Rusafa Criminal Court in the capital Baghdad ‘issued death sentences against 14 criminal terrorists for their participation in the Camp Speicher massacre in 2014’, the judicial authority said in a statement, without specifying their nationalities.

The 14 ISIS fanatics have 30 days to appeal the sentence. Decrees authorising executions must also be signed by Iraq’s president.

ISIS abducted up to 1,700 mainly Shiite cadets from the Speicher military base in the Tikrit region and executed them

Harrowing images were released by the terror group in 2014 that showed gunmen shooting the men dead after forcing them to lie face down in a shallow ditch

The Speicher massacre took place in 2014 in the early days of the terror group’s offensive in Iraq, when it captured the country’s second city Mosul and turned it into its stronghold.

The terror group then moved south and seized Saddam Hussein’s home town of Tikrit. They captured an estimated 1,700 Iraqi cadets who were fleeing from the Speicher army base. ISIS executed the recruits one by one.

Harrowing images were released by the terror group that showed gunmen shooting the men dead after forcing them to lie face down in a shallow ditch.

ISIS threw some of the bodies into the Tigris River, which runs through Tikrit, while others were buried in mass graves.

Although definitions vary, the Speicher massacre is considered the second deadliest act of terrorism in history, only surpassed by the horrors of the September 11 attacks. 

Some 36 men were hanged for their participation in the massacre in 2016

The massacre sparked outrage across Iraq and partially fueled the mobilisation of Shiite militias in the fight against ISIS, a Sunni extremist group. 

In 2015, Iraqi forces arrested dozens of men linked to the massacre after retaking the town of Tikrit in 2015 with the help of US-led airstrikes.

A year later, 36 men were hanged for their participation in the massacre. 

ISIS was eventually driven out by the Iraqi army and an international coalition in 2017.

While Iraqi authorities do not give figures, several thousand people accused or convicted of ISIS links are currently detained in Iraqi prisons.

The United Nations estimated in 2018 that more than 12,000 Iraqi and foreign ‘combatants’ were being held in Iraqi prisons.

An Iraqi forensics team unearths bodies from a mass grave in the palace compound of former President Saddam Hussein on April 9, 2015 in Tikrit, Iraq 

But Iraq has also been criticised for carrying out hundreds of what human rights groups claim as fast-track trials using confessions obtained under torture or without proper defence.

In 2021, Iraq executed 17 people for all crimes, according to rights group Amnesty International.

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