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Iraq executes 36 men convicted in Islamic State massacre

Militant group IS had reportedly released photos and video documenting connected to the massacre in 2014.

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An official with the Justice Ministry confirmed the executions, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Isis captured an estimated 1,700 soldiers from the Speicher military base when it overran the northern city of Tikrit in the summer of 2014.

The Sunni extremist group captured an estimated 1,700 Shiite army recruits from Camp Speicher, a former U.S. base outside of the city Tikrit.

The extremist group later posted gruesome images online of the soldiers being shot dead.

Outrage over the massacre of the mostly Shia cadets caused Iraq’s Shia militias to mobilize against Daesh.

The men executed in Nasiriyah were arrested after Iraqi forces recaptured Tikrit in 2015.

The government came under increased pressure from local Shi’ite politicians to execute militants sentenced to death after a massive bombing that targeted a shopping street in Baghdad on July 3, killing at least 324 people.

The head of the provincial council in Salahuddin province, Ahmed al-Karim has said some of them “were not even present at the scene of the crime”.

“The use of the death penalty is deplorable in all circumstances, and it is particularly horrendous when applied after grossly unfair trials marred by allegations of confessions extracted under torture as is frequently the case in Iraq”, the group’s Iraq researcher Diana Eltahawy said.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had said after last month’s Baghdad bomb blast that killed more than 300 people that he wanted to speed up executions of terrorism convicts.

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“Given the weaknesses of the Iraqi justice system, and the current environment in Iraq, I am gravely concerned that innocent people have been and may continue to be convicted and executed, resulting in gross, irreversible miscarriages of justice”, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said in the statement.

Iraq hangs 36 over 2014 massacre of recruits