Iraq executed three people responsible for the tragic attack in the center of Badgad that left 320 dead in 2016

Iraq today executed three of those responsible for one of the worst suicide attacks of this century, which left around 320 dead in a market in downtown Baghdad in 2016 and was claimed by the Islamic State terrorist group, the Iraqi government reported.

“Last night and this morning the just punishment was imposed and the death sentence was carried out against three of the main convicted for participating in the terrorist attack,” the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al Sudani said on X (formerly Twitter). The statement did not reveal the names of those executed.

The head of the Executive made the announcement during a visit to the families of the victims of the attack, which took place in the central neighborhood of Karrada in early July 2016, a year before the Islamic State was territorially defeated in Iraq and in amidst a spiral of sectarian violence in the Arab country.

Likewise, he affirmed that the Government will work to implement any judicial sentence “delivered against those convicted of terrorism” that contemplates the death penalty.

On July 3, 2016, in the midst of the festivities for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, members of the Islamic State carried out a coordinated attack and detonated a car bomb in Karrada, a neighborhood whose inhabitants are predominantly Shiites, the branch of Islam against which the jihadists direct most of their attacks.

The action left hundreds injured, while a good part of the fatalities were minors, the Iraqi police reported at the time.

In mid-October 2021, the Iraqi authorities announced the capture in an unidentified country of Ghazwan al Zobaie (nicknamed Abu Ubaida Baghdad), one of the main architects of the attack.

The Iraqi justice system was also looking for him for considering him responsible for supervising and participating in four other attacks between 2016 and 2017 in Baghdad, all of them with car bombs prepared by himself and detonated by suicide bombers.

Executions in Iraq are carried out by hanging, but many of the death sentences handed down by Iraqi courts are not carried out, requiring a lengthy administrative process and ratification by the country’s president.

According to Amnesty International, Iraq executed 11 people in 2022, numbers far removed from those of its neighbors Iran (576) and Saudi Arabia (196).