Mahdi Army leader gets death over Karbala killings

An Iraqi court on Saturday condemned to death a senior leader of the Mahdi Army Shia militia over a killing spree last year that left 52 people dead in the central shrine city of Karbala. The Karbala appeals court sentenced Ali Sharia, the local chief of radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's militia wing, to death by hanging, a statement read out by the court said.
"The evidence against the defendant was abundant," said presiding judge Abed Alnour al-Fatlawi. "He also confessed to the crimes."