Two Iraqis and a Moroccan suspect were sentenced to life yesterday for the killing of Iraqi businessman Ahmed Mawlood Muhammad in 2016.

Muhammad, who was in Turkey to set up a currency exchange office in Istanbul, was kidnapped by three suspects for ransom. They killed Muhammad and tossed his dismembered body on the roadside.

The three defendants, Farouk Abdullah Hmod al-Dulaimi, Mahmoud Khalaf Suleiman and Tariq Moutil, appeared before an Istanbul court Wednesday. They rejected charges but the court ruled for their imprisonment for murder as well as on charges of abduction and theft.

Three suspects convinced the victim to help him in setting up a business and kidnapped him after they met on July 3, 2016, the prosecutors said. The victim had resisted before the trio took him to a villa in the Istanbul's Büyükçekmece district and shot him. Muhammad was injured and bled to death in the villa while suspects kept him there and robbed him of his money. They also called his family back in Iraq and asked for a ransom of $10 million as the victim lay dead in the villa. The killers later dismembered the body and dumped it, the prosecutors said.