Iraq executes 36 people over Speicher massacre

By Hadi Hassan

BAGHDAD (AA) - Iraqi authorities have executed 36 people convicted with the 2014 mass killing of hundreds of Iraqi air force cadets by Daesh militants in northern Iraq.

“The convicts were executed in al-Nassiryah prison on Sunday,” a source with the Iraqi Justice Ministry told Anadolu Agency. The source spoke anonymously because he was unauthorized to speak to the media.

The executions came one week after President Fuad Masum ratified the death sentences against the convicts.

On June 12, 2014, Daesh terrorist group seized the northern city of Tikrit and posted a video purporting to show the mass killing of hundreds of security officers and military students. The officers were alleged to be affiliated to the Speicher base.

The Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights said the number of those murdered was 2,398.

Iraq has plunged into a security vacuum since June 2014, when Daesh stormed the northern city of Mosul and declared what it calls a caliphate in Iraq and Syria.