The Bangladesh High Court on Monday upheld the death sentence of 139 former soldiers convicted for killing of 74 people, including 57 Army officers, during a mutiny in 2009, AFP reported.

The court commuted the death sentences of eight people to life imprisonment, and acquitted four of all charges. It, however, upheld the 10-year life imprisonment terms of 182 people, The Dhaka Tribune reported.

“It was the most heinous, brutal and barbaric carnage of our history,” Justice Md Abu Zafor Siddique, member of a three-judge division bench, said while delivering the verdict. The judges said that the mutiny was “an attempt to destroy a trained and skilled professional force through conspiracy”, reported PTI.

Army personnel were shot, hacked to death and burned alive by the rebels during the massacre at Dhaka’s Pilkhana headquarters of Bangladesh Rifles, which is now known as Bangladesh Border Guard.

The appeals were filed before the High Court after a lower court in Dhaka awarded the death sentence to 150 former soldiers and two civilians on November 5, 2013, and sent 160 others to prison for life, reported The Daily Star. The High Court began to hear the cases from January. The verdict is now most likely to be appealed in the Supreme Court.

The mass trial, in which thousands were rounded up and tried in special military courts, was criticised by Navi Pillay, who then the United Nations human rights chief. Pillay had said that it did not meet the basic standards of due process. It came at a time when the newly-elected government of Sheikh Hasina was trying to regain control in a country that has a history of military coups, AFP reported.