Iraq has sentenced 14 people to death by hanging for their role in the brutal ISIS massacre which saw close to 2,000 people killed.
The massacre was one of the worst committed by the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and saw the extremists abduct mainly Shiite cadets from the Speicher military base, who were receiving a military course, and execute them.
While there is still no official number of casualties, ISIS itself put the number of men it killed there at 1,700 and others say it could have been up to 3,000.
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 gruesome details of the massacre were filmed and released in various ISIS propaganda videos, with many gut-wrenching clips showing teenage boys pleading for their lives.
Photos posted following the massacre showed militants loading captives in civilian clothes onto trucks and forcing them to lie in three shallow trenches with their hands bound.
One of the only survivors, Ali, 23 at the time, told Human Rights Watch that he was captured with thousands of other men as they sought to flee along the main road from Speicher military base.
The IS fighters stripped the men of their mobile phones and money and drove them into what Ali described as a palace compound.
He said he was crammed into a shipping container for six hours with over 100 other detainees before they were taken to a different location.
The men were lined up and shot with a pistol, one after another. A small gap in his blindfold meant he saw the man next to him fall to the ground covered in blood, but that somehow he was not hit himself.
He feigned death until nightfall when he managed to escape to the banks of the river and spent three days there surviving off weeds.
The 14 men have 30 days to appeal the sentence, and the decrees authorising executions must also be signed by the president.
In 2016, 36 men were hanged for their participation in the massacre.
The United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Daesh/ISIS (UNITAD) said on June 2021 that there was “clear and convincing evidence” that the massacre “constituted a number of war crimes under international law.”
However, the trials that have led to Iraq’s death sentences have been severely criticised by rights groups as failing to meet basic standards.
Amnesty International condemned Iraq’s systematic resort to the death penalty after previous executions, saying its use is "deplorable in all circumstances, and it is particularly horrendous when applied after grossly unfair trials marred by allegations of confessions extracted under torture as is frequently the case in Iraq""
