Allegedly Regarding ISIS, Lebanese Authority Left Cucu Saddam Hussein To Iraq

ISIS illustration. (Wikimedia Commons/VOA)

JAKARTA - Lebanese authorities handed over the grandson of former dictator Saddam Hussein to Iraq after he was accused of involvement in the massacre of Camp Speicher by ISIS militants in 2014, security sources said.

Abdullah Yasser Sabawi, the grandson of Saddam's half-brother, Sabawi Ibrahim Al Tikriti, was detained in Jbeil City, Lebanon, in August and extradited on November 9, a security official told AFP on condition of anonymity, as reported by The National News November 14.

"He was accused of being a member of ISIS and participating in the Speicher massacre", where as many as 1,700 air force cadets were executed by the terrorist group, the security official said.

Sabawi is reported to have lived in Lebanon for years.

The massacre at Camp Speicher, near Saddam's hometown, Tikrit, became a symbol of ISIS brutality as the terrorist group expanded its presence in Iraq.

Sabawi, born in 1994, was detained after Interpol's notice calling for his arrest on his alleged involvement in the killings, according to Lebanese judicial sources.

"Irakta asked for his extradition," the source said.

The Sabawi family has denied the allegations, saying he was in Yemen at the time of the massacre.

The 2014 fall of Tikrit was part of an ISIS attack that shocked Iraqi security forces and military, which melted as militants advanced and captured major cities in the country's north and west.

It is known that nearly 3,000 cadets from across Iraq were ordered by their superiors to change civilian clothes, leaving Camp Speicher after Mosul's fall in June 2014. Those carrying weapons were told to leave.

Many cadets were arrested by rebels, who took them to various locations around Tikrit and executed them one by one, in one of the worst atrocities committed by the group.

Video shows masked gunmen taking the victims to the edge of a concrete river covered in blood inside the presidential palace complex in Tikrit, shooting them in the head and then throwing them into the Tigris River.