Iraq sentences 14 ISIS fanatics to death for horrific 2014 massacre
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Iraq sentences 14 ISIS fanatics to death for the terror group’s horrific massacre of 1,700 army cadets who were massacred one by one in 2014
- ISIS massacred up to 1,700 army cadets as they tried to flee the base.
- The Speicher massacre is considered one of the deadliest terrorist 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, court officials have said.
In the massacre, one of the worst committed by ISIS in Iraq, extremists in June 2014 kidnapped up to 1,700 mainly Shiite cadets from the Speicher military base in the Tikrit region and executed them.
The Al-Rusafa Criminal Court in the capital Baghdad “handed down death sentences against 14 criminal terrorists for their participation in the 2014 Camp Speicher massacre,” the judicial authority said in a statement, without specifying their nationalities.
The 14 ISIS fanatics have 30 days to appeal the ruling. Decrees authorizing executions must also be signed by the president of Iraq.
ISIS kidnapped up to 1,700 mainly Shia cadets from the Speicher military base in the Tikrit region and executed them.
Harrowing footage was released by the terror group in 2014 showing gunmen shooting the men 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-largest city, Mosul, and made it its stronghold.
The terror group then moved south and seized Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit. They captured some 1,700 Iraqi cadets fleeing the Speicher military base. ISIS executed the recruits one by one.
The terror group released harrowing footage showing gunmen shooting the men after forcing them to lie face down in a shallow ditch.
ISIS dumped 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, second only to the horrors of the 9/11 attacks.
Some 36 men were hanged for their part in the 2016 massacre.
The massacre sparked outrage in Iraq and partly fueled the mobilization 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 city of Tikrit in 2015 with the help of US-led airstrikes.
A year later, 36 men were hanged for their part in the massacre.
ISIS was finally driven out by the Iraqi army and an international coalition in 2017.
Although the Iraqi authorities do not give figures, several thousand people accused or convicted of links to ISIS are currently being held in Iraqi prisons.
The United Nations estimated in 2018 that more than 12,000 Iraqi and foreign ‘fighters’ were being held in Iraqi prisons.
An Iraqi forensics team digs up bodies from a mass grave in the compound of former President Saddam Hussein’s palace April 9, 2015 in Tikrit, Iraq.
But Iraq has also been criticized for carrying out hundreds of what human rights groups say are expedited trials using confessions obtained under torture or without proper defense.
In 2021, Iraq executed 17 people for all crimes, according to the human rights group Amnesty International.