BAGHDAD — An Iraqi court sentenced 24 people to death on Wednesday over the killing of hundreds of soldiers at a former US military base near Tikrit during an offensive by Daesh (the so-called IS) militants, an official said. As many as 1,700 mainly Shiite soldiers were killed at Camp Speicher when the hardline militants swept through northern Iraq last summer. Video footage of the soldiers being gunned down in their hundreds, posted online by militants, came to symbolize the Daesh brutality and may represent the deadliest single act of violence during a decade of periodic sectarian war in Iraq. "Today the Iraqi central criminal court issued a death sentence against 24 people convicted of the Speicher massacre, based on Article 4 of the Terrorism Law," said Abdul-Sattar Al-Birqdar, spokesman for Iraq's Supreme Judicial Council. "After deliberations, the court finds that the evidence collected is sufficient to convict 24 defendants," said the judge. "The court decided they will be executed by hanging." All 24 denied any involvement in the massacre. Al-Birqdar said all those who were tried and sentenced on Wednesday were Iraqi nationals. Another 604 suspects wanted in connection with the killings remained at large, he said. Iraqi soldiers and Shiite militia fighters recaptured Tikrit from Daesh three months ago, allowing the start of exhumation at the site of 12 suspected mass graves thought to contain the bodies of the slain soldiers. Around 600 bodies of victims have been exhumed from burial sites in the Tikrit area. Footage released by Daesh last year shows some of the captured recruits were shot and pushed into the Tigris river. Iraq has been battling a sectarian conflict after the ouster and subsequent execution of Saddam Hussein. Thousands of people have died and the country has turned into ruins ever since. — Agencies
