The Camp Speicher massacre occurred on 12 June 2014, when the Islamic State killed between 1,095 to 1,700 Iraqi cadets in an attack on Camp Speicher in Tikrit,

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...

. At the time of the massacre, there were between 5,000 and 100,000 unarmed cadets in the camp, and ISIL fighters selected the Shias and non-Muslims for execution. It is the second deadliest act of terrorism in history, only surpassed by the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...

. The

Iraqi government The federal government of Iraq is defined under the current Constitution, approved in 2005, as an Islamic, democratic, federal parliamentary republic. The federal government is composed of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, as w ...

blamed the massacre on the Islamic State.

Attack

Several survivors later testified that their senior officers in the camp had forced them to leave the camp. Hassan Khalil, one survivor, who managed to escape by pretending to be dead under another corpse and fleeing at night, said: "Our chief officers are the reason behind the killings. They forced us to leave Speicher. They assured us there was a safe passage, that it was guarded by the tribes, and told us not to wear uniforms." "They sold us to ISIS" he added. The Iraqi government and national television denied that story. They said the cadets forced their way out of the camps after the military had already dispatched special forces to the dangerous camps' area to secure them, and that they'd been warned against leaving. 400 cadets ordered to leave Camp Speicher before the attack were arrested by government forces and are missing. 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. SISand other abusive forces should know that the eyes of Iraqis and the world are watching". 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 grave A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of execution, although an exact ...

s 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 ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' following his escape from the massacre. 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 Civilians under international humanitarian law are "persons who are not members of the armed forces" and they are not " combatants if they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war". It is slightly different from a non-combatant ...

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 were 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. Some cadets were shot and dumped into the

Tigris The Tigris () is the easternmost of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of the Armenian Highlands through the Syrian and Arabian Deserts, and empties into the ...

river.

Aftermath

The

said that 57 members of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party had taken part in the massacre. 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." The Minister of Defense, Sa'dun al-Dulaimi, stated that the massacre was not sectarian in nature. 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. 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. 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. On 16 September, the

Kurdish Kurdish may refer to: *Kurds or Kurdish people *Kurdish languages *Kurdish alphabets *Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes: **Southern Kurdistan **Eastern Kurdistan **Northern Kurdistan **Western Kurdistan See also * Kurd (dis ...

Asayish arrested four people suspected to be involved in the massacre in southern Kirkuk. An unnamed security source stated, "The operation was executed by relying on intelligence information to arrest them." 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, 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 Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon. I ...

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." The Iraqi government ordered them to pay 10 million

Iraqi dinar The Iraqi dinar () (Arabic: دينار; sign: ID in Latin, د.ع in Arabic; code: IQD) is the currency of Iraq. It is issued by the Central Bank of Iraq and is subdivided into 1,000 fils (فلس), although inflation has rendered the fils obsolet ...

(equivalent to US$8,600) to the families of the missing cadets.

Fall of ISIS

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. Two of the alleged perpetrators of the massacre were arrested in

Forssa Forssa is a town and municipality of Finland. It is located almost in the centre of a triangle defined by the three largest major cities in Finland (Helsinki, Turku and Tampere), in the Tavastia Proper region, and which is crossed by Highway 2 ...

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

, 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 Asylum may refer to: Types of asylum * Asylum (antiquity), places of refuge in ancient Greece and Rome * Benevolent Asylum, a 19th-century Australian institution for housing the destitute * Cities of Refuge, places of refuge in ancient Judea ...

in Finland. 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". They were acquitted by the Pirkanmaa District Court in May 2017. After the prosecution appealed the ruling they were again acquitted by the Turku Court of Appeal in February 2020 due to lack of evidence for the involvement of the brothers in the massacre. In August 2016, 36 men were executed by hanging for their part in the massacre. On 6 September 2016, three mass graves were found by the Kata’ib al-Imam Ali brigade containing the remains of over 30 people killed in the massacre. In August 2017, 27 people were

sentenced to death Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

for their involvement in the massacre, and another 25 men were released due to lack of evidence.

Gallery

File:Camp Speicher massacre Location after Fall of ISIS 13.jpg, Memorial visitors. File:Camp Speicher massacre Location after Fall of ISIS 04.jpg File:Camp Speicher massacre Location after Fall of ISIS 14.jpg File:Camp Speicher massacre Location after Fall of ISIS 07.jpg File:Camp Speicher massacre Location after Fall of ISIS 11.jpg File:Camp Speicher massacre Location after Fall of ISIS 12.jpg, Memorial of martyrs of the Camp Speicher massacre in Saddam Hussein's Presidential palace.

References

{{Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant , state=collapsed 2014 murders in Iraq Iraqi Air Force Islamic terrorist incidents in 2014 June 2014 crimes in Asia June 2014 events in Iraq Kidnapping in the 2010s Kidnappings in Iraq Massacres in 2014 Massacres of the War in Iraq (2013–2017) perpetrated by ISIL Religiously motivated violence in Iraq Saladin Governorate Terrorist incidents in Iraq in 2014 Violence against Shia Muslims in Iraq Shia–Sunni sectarian violence