BAGHDAD
An Iraqi court sentenced 24 people to death on Wednesday for their role in a massacre that took place last year at Tikrit’s Speicher Airbase, according to Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council (SJC).
On June 12, 2014, at least 1,700 people at the camp – mostly unarmed Iraqi air force cadets – were allegedly killed by members of the Daesh militant group.
In the one year since, critics have decried the government’s failure to bring the perpetrators to account.
In previous statements, SJC spokesman Abdul-Sattar Albeirqaddar said that Iraq’s central criminal court had begun prosecuting 28 people suspected of having played a role in the incident.
The spokesman, however, did not provide the suspects’ identities.
According to the Iraqi authorities, three mass graves thought to be linked to the killings were recently discovered in Iraq’s Saladin province north of Baghdad.
Iraq has suffered from a security vacuum since June of last year, when Daesh militants overran the northern Mosul province.
