After overrunning the air force academy at Camp Speicher where thousands of cadets were being trained, the Sunni extremists of IS separated out the Shiites and Christians among them and gunned them down one by one before dumping their bodies in mass graves or in the nearby Tigris River.
The interior ministry identified the suspect as Abdelkhalek Khazaal Soltan and said he had been arrested in a joint operation by the federal intelligence services and counter-terrorism police in Sulaimaniyah, second city of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.
Ministry spokesman General Saad Maan alleged that after joining IS in 2013, Soltan "took part in several operations targeting the security forces... and participated in the Camp Speicher massacre of which he was one of the perpetrators".
The massacre sparked a wave of revulsion around the world and prompted thousands of Shiite volunteers to join the fightback against the jihadists which culminated in a victory declaration in December 2017.
In a 2021 report to the Security Council, UN investigators found that the massacre of the "predominantly Shia unarmed air cadets" and their instructors involved the "war crimes of murder, torture, cruel treatment and outrages upon personal dignity".
It also found that a video of the killings released by IS in July 2015 constituted a "direct and public incitement to commit genocide against Shia Muslims".
The Iraqi courts have handed down dozens of death sentences against those convicted of taking part in the massacre.
In January, 14 people were sentenced to death for their part in the massacre. In 2016, Iraq hanged 36 men convicted of carrying out the killings.
Anti-IS coalition helicopter crashes in Iraq 'mishap'
Arbil, Iraq (AFP) July 27, 2023 -
A helicopter belonging to the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq crashed Thursday, a Kurdish security official said, after what the coalition described as an "in-flight mishap".
"There were no coalition casualties nor damage to coalition or civilian infrastructure. The coalition aircraft was damaged," the coalition said in a statement, adding that the incident occurred at 12:15 pm (0915 GMT).
A security official in Iraq's northern autonomous Kurdistan region told AFP the helicopter crashed due to a "technical problem" near Al-Gwair, a town about 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of the Kurdish capital Arbil.
The official confirmed that the two crew members escaped unharmed.
The US-led coalition helped defeat IS after it grabbed swathes of Iraq and neighbouring Syria and declared their "caliphate" in 2014.
The jihadist group was defeated in late 2017 in Iraq after the last of its territory was retaken, but its fighters have continued to hide out in remote, mountainous areas, launching sporadic deadly attacks.
Baghdad in late 2021 announced the end of the coalition's combat mission, though some troops remain in Iraq with a mandate to train and advise local security forces.
Roughly 2,500 US troops and 1,000 from other member countries in the coalition remain in the country, stationed at bases run by Iraqi forces.
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