BAGHDAD: An Iraqi court Wednesday sentenced 24 men to hang over the June 2014 massacre by extremists and allied militants of hundreds of mostly Shiite military recruits in Tikrit.

The central criminal court in Baghdad handed 24 of 28 defendants the maximum sentence over the “Speicher” massacre, which was named after the base from which the victims were captured before being executed.

“After deliberations, the court finds that the evidence collected is sufficient to convict 24 defendants,” the judge said. 

“The court decided they will be executed by hanging.”

All 24 denied any involvement in the massacre, committed during the first days of the ISIS-led offensive in Iraq. The other four defendants were acquitted.

Around 600 bodies of victims have been exhumed from burial sites in the Tikrit area. 

Footage released by ISIS last year shows some of the captured recruits were shot and pushed into the Tigris river.

The defendants were brought into the courtroom blindfolded, handcuffed and chained by their feet.

Proceedings were conducted expeditiously and rights groups criticized a trial they said was far from meeting international standards and did not do justice to the scale of the crime.

A court-appointed defense lawyer spoke briefly to ask for leniency but did not challenge the evidence, which consisted mainly of confessions which the defendants themselves claimed were obtained under torture.

The judge showed one defendant a grainy printout of a grab from the video footage of the massacre.

“Is that you?” he asked. The accused answered in the negative, as did several fellow defendants when the judge flashed confession documents and asked them to confirm their authenticity.

Some defendants swore they were not even close to Tikrit on June 11 last year, others that they never saw a lawyer.

“We are still looking at the full details of the case, but the Speicher trial bears the hallmark of unfair trials that have seen thousands of those accused of terrorism in Iraq sentenced to long prison terms or to death,” Amnesty International said in a statement to AFP.

“Often confessions extracted under torture and denied by the defendants in court were used to secure convictions. Today’s trial seems to continue that pattern despite statements these men will get a fair trial,” it said.

The highest estimated death toll from the Speicher massacre is 1,700. Tikrit was retaken from ISIS in April and the exact circumstances of the massacre have yet to be established.

“The speed of the trial is highly dubious,” said Cristoph Wilcke, Iraq researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“This is different from an ordinary crime; proceedings have to be even more detailed, transparent and fair. It is clear that this trial did not meet those standards,” he told AFP.