IRAQ: 24 SENTENCED TO DEATH OVER SPEICHER KILLINGS

An Iraqi court sentenced 24 people to death over the killing of hundreds of soldiers at a former U.S. military base near Tikrit during an offensive by Islamic State militants, an official said.
As many as 1,700 mainly Shi'ite soldiers were killed at Camp Speicher when the hardline Sunni Islamist militants swept through northern Iraq last summer.
Video footage of the soldiers being gunned down in their hundreds, posted online by jihadists, came to symbolise Islamic State brutality and could mark the deadliest single act of violence during a decade of intermittent sectarian war in Iraq. Dispensing swift justice, the court issued the death sentences within hours of the start of the trial on Wednesday (July 8), based on what a spokesman described as strong evidence and confessions from the convicted men. "Today the Iraqi central criminal court issued a death sentence against 24 people convicted of the Speicher massacre," said Abdul-Sattar al-Birqdar, spokesman for Iraq's Supreme Judicial Council. He said all those tried and sentenced on Wednesday were Iraqi nationals. Another 604 suspects wanted in connection with the killings remained at large, he added.