[Al Arabiya Latest] A court sentenced 11 Iraqis, including al-Qaeda militants, on Thursday to death by hanging for planning and carrying out massive truck bombings in Baghdad last August that killed 95 people and wounded more than 1,000.The trial was the first to convict suspects arrested in the wake of three major attacks in the second half of 2009 that saw insurgents defy the war-torn country's fledgling security forces and penetrate the heart of the capital. "They are sentenced to death for the crime they planned," Ali Abdul Sattar, president of the criminal court, said at a hearing in the Iraqi capital.
The Aug. 19 attacks just minutes apart outside the ministries of finance and foreign affairs caused massive destruction, killed 106 people and wounded around 600 others.
Those convicted included Salim Abed Jassim who confessed that he received funding for the attacks from Brigadier General Nabil Abdul Rahman, a senior army officer during the rule of Saddam Hussein now living in Syria.
Also sentenced to death by hanging were Ishaq Mohammed Abbas, an al-Qaeda in Iraq leader and his brother Mustapha, the court official told AFP. Both men had once been detained but were later released from Camp Bucca, a now closed U.S.-run prison in the southern city of Basra. "These men were the brains behind the attacks in August," a security official involved in an investigation into the Aug. 19 attacks told AFP on condition of anonymity. "The others bought the explosives and transported them into Baghdad," he added.
The Aug. 19 truck attacks on what dubbed "Black Wednesday" was marked Iraq's worst day of violence in 18 months and prompted outrage among citizens at how the bombers had been able to commit such atrocities.
The government, which blamed the bombings on al-Qaeda and Saddam loyalists from the executed dictator's outlawed Baath party, admitted at the time that negligence at checkpoints allowed the attackers to enter the capital. Despite outrage over the Aug. 19 atrocities, bombers managed to commit similar carnage in October and December, when they again struck government buildings in attacks that killed at least 280 people and wounded 1,000 more.