An Iraqi court on Monday sentenced to death a leader of the Islamic State (IS) group, believed to be “mainly responsible” for a double suicide attack that left 32 people dead and 110 injured at a market in Baghdad in January 2021.
According to the statement made by the Supreme Council of the Judiciary, the Baghdad criminal court sentenced the accused to death, accusing him of being “main responsible for the attack on the second-hand clothing market”.
On January 21, 2021, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in the Tayaran Square market among vendors and passersby. According to the report on the events made by the Ministry of the Interior at the time, a second exploded shortly after while those present were helping the victims.
The council added that during the investigation, “the culprit confessed to having belonged to ISIS since 2012” and “planned” the attack by “equipping two suicide bombers”.
The attack, claimed by ISIS, has caused turmoil as such attacks have become increasingly erratic after the terror group’s defeat in Iraq in late 2017.
Iraq applies the death penalty for cases of “terrorism” and voluntary manslaughter.
According to Amnesty International, with nearly fifty executions executed in 2020, it is the fourth most executed country in the world.
According to this NGO, most of those executed were accused of being members of ISIS.
In April, two courts convicted eight people to death, four to murder, and four to car bomb attacks.
The last major attack claimed by ISIS in Iraq was in an attack on a market in the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City in Baghdad in July 2021, killing around 30.
According to a UN report published in January 2022, ISIS “continues to carry out attacks on a regular basis”. The text says the organization still has between 6,000 and 10,000 fighters (…) on the porous border between Iraq and Syria. “builds and trains cells and agents”.
source: Noticias
