The Babel High Criminal Court has sentenced 11 ISIS members to death for a deadly 2014 attack on a bridge in Jarf al-Nassir district, south of Baghdad. The latest verdicts are part of a series of trials and death or life sentences involving more than 18,000 terrorism suspects since 2005, according to the Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights (IHCHR). The media office of the Supreme Judicial Council issued a statement saying the provincial criminal court examined the cases of 11 “suspects who confessed being ISIS members.” The terrorists admitted to staging an attack they called “al-Fadhilyah raid” on a strategic bridge located in Jarf al-Nassir, previously known as Jarf al-Sakhr, north of Babel. The attack destroyed the bridge, and killed three security forces and injured 19 others stationed nearby, said the statement. The terrorists also confessed to committing other crimes at different locations and different times, according to the court. The court held a public trial in the presence of the public prosecutor, the lawyers of the defendants, and issued a sentence of execution by hanging against the 11 convicts. Jarf al-Nasr, which is about 40 kilometers from Karbala province, was a major stronghold of terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda and later ISIS. Since then, the area has been the subject of a dispute between Shiite and Sunni political parties. IHCHR member Ali al-Bayati said 18,306 people charged with terrorism have received death or life sentences by Iraqi courts. Bayati told Asharq Al-Awsat that more than 900 convicts have been executed since 2005. He expressed belief that the Iraqi authorities need to benefit from the international team approved by the United Nations to help Iraq in its investigations and sentences against elements accused of terrorism. In September 2017, the Security Council adopted Resolution 2379 to establish a UN Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by ISIS in Iraq and the Levant (UNITAD). In July, the head of UNITAD, Karim Asad Khan, told Council members that his team continued to work on collecting documentary and digital evidence, testimonies and forensic evidence of atrocities committed in Iraq. In the last two weeks of July, Khan revealed that UNITAD has gained access to more than 600,000 videos related to ISIS crimes relevant to investigative work, as well as over 15,000 pages of internal ISIS documents originally obtained from the battlefield by leading investigative journalists.