An Iraqi court sentenced four security force members to death on Wednesday for the country's bloodiest bank robbery, in which eight police guards died. The robbers seized US$3.8 million in a pre-dawn raid on a branch of the Al-Rafidain bank late in July.
The money was later recovered and the evidenes implicated two former guards of Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdel Mahdi. "You are sentenced to hang until death," the judge told the four men, according to AFP. They were named as Ahmad Khalaf, found to have killed six of the police guards; Ali Eidan, Basheer Khalid and Ali Ouda. The men have 30 days in which to appeal.
The sentencing Wednesday took only a few minutes.
Ouda testified that Jafar Lazim Eshkaya al-Timimi, a captain in the Presidential Guard, and his nephew Lieutenant Amin Karim, who also previously served in the unit, had masterminded and carried out the robbery. The duo have not been traced and were not sentenced on Wednesday.
The two other suspects not in court are a high-ranking army officer named Mohannad Abdel Saheb, and a safe-breaker, known only as Hussein.
