Iraq: Authors of 2010 massacre of Christians in Baghdad set to die

Baghdad (AsiaNews/ Agencies) – Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council has upheld the death sentence imposed on three of the 15 people who carried out an attack that left scores of Christians dead in Our Lady of Salvation Syro-Catholic Church on 31 October 2010 that left 57 people dead and more than 70 wounded. The sentence is “final,” said Abdul-Sattar al-Birqdar, spokesman for the Supreme Judicial Council. The execution now must wait for a decree issued b the Justice Ministry and the president’s signature. All three convicts are Iraqi. The three were convicted on 2 August 2011.

The attack against Our Lady of Salvation Church was one of the bloodiest of terrorist operations since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. It was planned and carried out by a group of young terrorists linked to al Qaeda. On the morning of 31 October 2010, they stormed the church during Sunday Mass and took hundreds of worshippers hostage.

The slaughter began when Iraqi security forces began an assault. To avoid capture, the terrorists set off explosives to kill themselves and as many hostages as possible. Some, before detonating the bombs, opened fire directly at children and infants. The two priests officiating the Mass where among the 57 dead.

Before the fall of Saddam Hussein and the US occupation in 2003, Iraqi Christians numbered about 1.5 million. Now they are 500,000 because of insecurity and attacks by Muslim extremists against churches and christians.

Sources have told AsiaNews that a plan is being implemented to divide the country of 27 million along confessional lines, with Shia (61 per cent of the population) and Sunni (34 per cent) areas. Kurds, who are 17 per cent, would also get their region. However, Christians and Yazidis (4 per cent) would disappear.