MOSCOW (Sputnik) — In February, Iraq sentenced 40 out of 47 men to be be executed by hanging over the June 2014 massacre, when Daesh killed over 1,600 Shia Iraqi Air Force cadets in an attack on Camp Speicher in Tikrit. The Iraqi government blamed the massacre on both Daesh, outlawed in Russia and many countries, and members of the Iraqi wing of the Arab Socialist Baath Party, which is banned in the country.
"The decision [to uphold executions], taken earlier by the Central Criminal Court has been approved," a spokesperson for the court system was quoted as saying by the Alsumaria broadcaster.
In February, the sentence was criticized by the Amnesty International watchdog, that noted that the vast majority of such trials have been "grossly unfair".
