Iraq court delivers death, prison sentences in terrorism cases

Shafaq News – Baghdad

On Tuesday, the Al-Karkh Criminal Court sentenced a defendant to death for killing five people in Al-Anbar province, the Iraqi judiciary announced.

According to the judiciary’s statement, the convict, identified as a member of ISIS, carried out the 2024 attack with his group to terrorize civilians.

Iraq’s Military Intelligence Directorate announced last week the arrest of six members of ISIS in Nineveh province.

Although the group lost its territorial strongholds more than a decade ago, security experts warn it may exploit Iraq’s political divides and porous borders to reemerge as an insurgency, particularly as the September 2025 deadline for US troop withdrawals approaches.

Read more: After US withdrawal: Why experts warn of an ISIS resurgence in Iraq.

The court also sentenced a man to six years in prison for promoting the ideology of the banned Baath Party. The judiciary said leaflets found on his mobile phone contained material propagating Baathist ideas in Baghdad.

The Baath Party, established in the 1940s with an Arab nationalist and socialist agenda, rose to power in Iraq following the 1968 coup led by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr. Saddam Hussein later tightened his grip on the state, presiding over years of authoritarian rule, the Iran-Iraq War, and the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Separately, the Central Criminal Court issued a death sentence against a defendant convicted of killing the leader of the “Awakening of the Sons of Al-Madaen” in 2013 with his faction. The group, a local Sunni tribal force in the town of Al-Madaen south of Baghdad, was allied with US and Iraqi forces against al-Qaeda in Iraq.