Camp Speicher massacre

Before the massacre, according to the Iraqi politician Mish'an al-Jubori, "Some of the chief officers of the camp ordered the cadets to have a rest for 15 days and to go to their families, with civilian clothes".[5] Several survivors later testified that their senior officers in the camp had forced them to leave the camp.[3][6]

While the cadets were walking on the highway looking for a bus to take them to Baghdad, two buses stopped near them with 10 armed men inside. One bus was driven by Ayman Sabawi Ibrahim, the son of Saddam Hussein's half brother, Sabawi Ibrahim al-Tikriti.[5] Several more buses with ISIL members arrived, and the cadets were kidnapped at gunpoint and taken to the Al-Qusour Al-Re'asiya region.[5]

Peter Bouckaert, the emergencies director for Human Rights Watch (HRW), stated: "The photos and satellite images from Tikrit provide strong evidence of a horrible war crime that needs further investigation. [ISIS] and other abusive forces should know that the eyes of Iraqis and the world are watching".[7] HRW also said that ISIL posted on its websites many videos and photographs showing how they beheaded and shot their victims while they celebrated.[7][8]

The photos show masked ISIL fighters tying up the cadets and loading them up on trucks, with other photographs showing ISIL fighters killing dozens of the cadets with assault rifles while they are lying down. ISIL propaganda videos show them shooting at hundreds of men lined up in mass graves in the desert. Some cadets faked their death, covering themselves with blood and escaping at night. Survivor Ali Hussein Kadhim told his story to The New York Times following his escape from the massacre.[9]

ISIL released footage of the massacre as part of their propaganda video Upon the Prophetic Methodology. The cadets are seen being crammed into trucks, some of them wearing civilian clothes to hide their military uniforms. Most of them are lying on the ground, with their jeans stripped to reveal camouflage uniforms underneath. Some of the prisoners were forced to defame Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, while others were forced to shout "long live the Islamic State". Some of them lined up as a cadet was beaten to death with a rifle. The killing methods varied, from shooting the cadets one by one to shooting them while lying down many times to ensure death.[7] Some cadets were shot and thrown into the Tigris river.

Memorial for dead of the Camp Speicher massacre at the location of the incident at the presidential palaces in Tikrit

The Iraqi government claimed that 57 members of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party had taken part in the massacre.[10] Although pictures showed that every armed man was from ISIS, the government stated "Without any doubts and suspicion, all of these criminals are from the banned Ba'ath Party."[4] The minister of defense, Sa'dun al-Dulaimi, stated that the massacre was not sectarian in nature.[11] Although the spokesman of the Iraqi Armed Forces, Qasim Atta, stated that there were almost 11,000 cadets and soldiers missing from Camp Speicher; he also stated that thousands were executed in or near the presidential palaces, the al-Bu Agail region, and the Badoush prison by sectarian violence.[12]

On 2 September, more than 100 members of the families of the killed and missing cadets and soldiers broke into the Iraqi Parliament and hit three of the security guards.[13] After a day, a session started in the parliament with the attendance of representatives of the families and Sa'dun al-Dulaimi, along with other military officials to discuss the massacre.[14]

On 16 September, the Kurdish Asayish arrested four people suspected to be involved in the massacre in southern Kirkuk.[15] An unnamed security source stated, "The operation was executed by relying on intelligence information to arrest them."[16]

On 18 September, the Iraqi Human Rights ministry stated that as of 17 September, the total number of missing soldiers and cadets was 1,095,[17] denying the most popular figure of 1,700 soldiers having been killed. The ministry added, "The ministry relied in its statistics on spreading forms on the families of the missing people in Baghdad and the other governorate within its quest to document the crimes and violations that the terrorist group of the Islamic State is committing towards our people."[18] The Iraqi government ordered them to pay 10 million Iraqi dinar (equivalent to US$8,600) to the families of the missing cadets.[18]

Following the Iraqi forces' victory over ISIL in Tikrit in early April 2015, mass graves containing some of the murdered cadets were located and the decomposed corpses began to be exhumed.[19] Two of the alleged perpetrators of the massacre were arrested in Forssa, Finland, in December 2015. The suspects were identified from ISIL propaganda videos in which the executions of 11 men took place. Police did not disclose whether the men had made applications for asylum in Finland.[20] On 13 December 2016, the 24-year-old twins were charged with murder and committing a war crime for allegedly killing unarmed cadets, as well as "aggravated assault with terrorist aims".[21]

In August 2016, 36 men were executed by hanging for their part in the massacre.[22] On 6 September 2016, three mass graves were found by the Kata’ib al-Imam brigade containing the remains of over 30 people killed in the massacre.[23] In August 2017, 27 people were sentenced to death for the involvement in the massacre, and another 25 men were released because of the lack of evidence.[24]