On March 13, the Iraqi Public Security Directorate...

On March 13, the Iraqi Public Security Directorate announced that Muhammad Khudayyir Abbas, Abbas Khudayyir Abbas, Jasim Khudayyir Abbas, Haqqi Isma'il Abd Radi, Basim Abbas Abd Abbas, Abd Ali Mahdi Hassun, Abd al-Razzaq Hasan Mani and Faysal Ni'mah Husayn Ja'id were executed after a court issued its final verdict, convicting them and sentencing them to death by hanging. They were charged with murdering leading clerics of the Shia branch of Islam, to which most Iraqis belong. Gunmen have assassinated many prominent Shia leaders during the past 5 years in or around the holy city of Najaf, on the Euphrates, where many of them lived. The executions follow the killing in an ambush of Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr in Najaf in February. Iraqi exiles said they were the victims of government death squads and the executions are an attempt to divert attention from the Government's responsibility for the killings.