Iraq executes 36 men convicted in massacre carried out by Islamic State

Even in a country where killings had become almost routine for more than a decade, the June 2014 massacre at Camp Speicher was unique in its brutality. Islamic State jihadis rounded up and shot, choked and beheaded 1,500 to 1,700 Iraqi army cadets, filming the executions with unabashed glee.

Since then, the families of those killed have clamored for justice, if not revenge.

On Sunday, the Iraqi government hanged 36 of those convicted of perpetrating the massacre, officials and activists said, in what was seen as the first measure of that long-sought justice, even as human rights activists raised concerns about the trials that convicted the defendants.

The mass execution was announced by Iraqi Justice Minister Haidar Zamili in a statement from the city of Nasiriya in Dhi Qar province, according to the online news outlet Arabi21. The provincial governor as well as families of those killed at Speicher were also in attendance at Nasiriya Central Prison.

“There were viewing areas for the families, the women on one side and the men on another. A man came and said, ‘I came today to tell you that the souls of the martyrs will rest,’” said Thaer Saadoun, a journalist with the local television station Ahwar who witnessed the executions.

“Some women ululated, and others immediately went on their knees and started praying right there. For the last two years, the families didn’t know where to go and to whom to complain, and they had gotten no response from the Iraqi government. The executions managed to mollify them a little,” he said in a phone interview.

Saadoun added that those executed Sunday were Iraqis, and some were from Dhi Qar.

Forty convicts were sentenced to death in February, and an appeals court this month upheld the sentences of 36. Four remain on appeal.

The massacre at Camp Speicher, a former U.S. military base outside Tikrit and roughly 100 miles northwest of Baghdad, occurred during Islamic State’s blitz offensive in June 2014 that saw the group take over wide swaths of northern and central Iraq.

The militants rounded up thousands of Shiite Muslim captives and put them in neat lines before spraying them with machine-gun fire. Others were choked and beheaded, their bodies thrown in the nearby Tigris River or dumped in mass graves. Many bodies have yet to be recovered.

Islamic State, a Sunni Muslim extremist group, considers Shiites to be apostates

Sunday’s executions come in the wake of Iraqis’ fury over last month’s bombing in Baghdad’s Karada district that killed more than 300 people. That attack forced Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi to ratify a set of amendments aimed at expediting executions of those convicted of terrorism.

30 days of attacks: Terror’s daily reality »

The changes reduced the number of appeals allowed for death row inmates to one from four. They also allowed the Justice Ministry to implement death penalties without the ratification of Iraq’s president 30 days after being submitted to the presidency’s office for approval. This condition had in the past led to a backlog under former President Jalal Talabani, who had refused to ratify any death sentences.

Sunday’s executions had been approved by Iraqi President Fouad Massoum.

The changes to the law had spurred watchdog Amnesty International to call on Iraq to halt all executions, according to a statement issued in July by Philip Luther, the group’s Middle East and North Africa program director.

But even before the changes to the law, rights groups had raised concerns over the Speicher trials, which Human Rights Watch, in a statement released last year, described as “patently unfair.” The group said that trials had lasted only a few hours and that suspects had been tried en masse. They were not allowed to speak to their lawyers.

An Iraqi lawyer, Habib Quraishi, told Human Rights Watch that the verdicts were delivered after two minutes of deliberation.

At trial, the defendants’ families had thrown chairs at defense lawyers, who had not met their clients and left — out of fear — before the session started, said Human Rights Watch.

Yet for some, Sunday’s executions, and the government’s prosecutions of those suspected of involvement in the Speicher incident, did not go far enough.

“It is estimated that more than 200 people were involved in these crimes, based on the videos and pictures published by Daesh itself, so those executed today were only a fraction of those responsible,” said Hisham Hashimi, a consultant to the Iraqi government on Islamic State affairs. He referred to Islamic State by its Arabic acronym, which is considered a pejorative.

“This is a momentary painkiller. No more,” he said.

Bulos is a special correspondent.

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UPDATES:

1:30 p.m.: This article has been updated throughout with Times reporting.

This article was originally posted at 3:35 a.m.