BAGHDAD - An Iraqi court sentenced 40 captured members of Islamic State to death on Thursday for the killing of hundreds of soldiers after their capture by the ultra-radical militant group as it swept across northern Iraq in 2014, a judicial spokesman said. The slaughter of 1,700 soldiers after they fled from an ex-U.S. army base outside the northern city of Tikrit has become a symbol of Islamic State's brutality and the Sunni insurgent group's sectarian hatred of Iraq's Shi'ite Muslim majority. A Baghdad criminal court issued the death sentences based on what Abdul-Sattar al-Birqdar, spokesman for Iraq's Supreme Judicial Council, said were convictions on terrorism charges. Seven defendants were acquitted and freed for lack of evidence.
