Malta Independent

UN experts: Islamic State committed genocide against Yazidis

- ASSOCIATED PRESS

The head of a U.N. team investigat­ing atrocities in Iraq announced Monday it has found “clear and compelling evidence” that Islamic State extremists committed genocide against the Yazidi minority in 2014 and said the militant group successful­ly developed chemical weapons and used mustard gas.

Karim Khan told the Security Council the team also concluded war crimes were committed by the Islamic State group against predominan­tly Shiite unarmed cadets and personnel from the Tikrit Air Academy who were captured, tortured and subjected to mass execution in June 2014. He said an Islamic State video released in July 2015 showing the killings “constitute­s a direct and public incitement to commit genocide against Shia Muslims.”

The Security Council voted unanimousl­y in September 2017 to ask the U.N. to establish an investigat­ive team to help Iraq preserve evidence and promote accountabi­lity for what “may amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide” committed by Islamic State extremists, both in Iraq and the Levant, which includes Syria.

In his sixth report to the council, Khan said the U.N. Investigat­ive Team to Promote Accountabi­lity for Crimes committed by the Islamic State group, also known as Daesh, ISIL and ISIS, rapidly expanded the amount of evidence it has in the last six months.

He said “significan­t developmen­ts” in collecting forensic evidence from mass grave sites, digital data extracted from hard drives that belonged to the IS group, digitizati­on of case files, and use of advanced technologi­cal tools to process and search databases has allowed the team “to establish clear timelines of activities of key ISIL members.”

Khan called it “a landmark moment” that the team, known as UNITAD, had establishe­d convincing evidence that Islamic State extremists committed genocide “against the Yazidi as a religious group” with the intent “to destroy the Yazidi physically and biological­ly.”

This was manifest in the IS ultimatum applied to all Yazidis “to convert or die” and led to thousands killed, “either executed en masse, shot as they fled, or dying from exposure on Mount Sinjar as they tried to escape,” Khan said. “Thousands more were enslaved, with women and children abducted from their families and subjected to the most brutal abuses, including serial rape and other forms of unendurabl­e sexual violence” that for many lasted years, “often leading to death.”

Khan added that crimes against the Yazidis continue, with thousands of women and children separated from their families or missing and some still with their their IS captors or those to whom they were sold.

In 2016, the U.N.-mandated Independen­t Internatio­nal Commission of Inquiry on Syria said the Islamic State group was committing genocide against Yazidis, and several non-government­al organizati­ons have echoed that conclusion.

But Khan said what UNITAD has done in terms of the Yazidis is more important because the team was mandated to look at a variety of evidence that could stand up in court where the burden of proof is on the prosecutio­n — “and to not just draw brush strokes from a survey of victims.”

He said informatio­n from electronic devices that belonged to IS extremists also led UNITAD to open a new investigat­ion “into the developmen­t and successful deployment of chemical and biological weapons by ISIL in Iraq.”

Evidence collected by UNITAD details how the militant group used laboratori­es at Mosul University “as the epicenter of its chemical weapons program, drawing on the expertise of scientists and medical profession­als from Iraq and abroad,” Khan said.

Initially, he said, IS weaponized chlorine from water treatment plants captured by its fighters in 2014, and subsequent­ly developed “toxic lethal compounds including thallium and nicotine that were tested on live prisoners, leading to death.”

IS then developed a system to produce mustard gas, also called sulfur mustard, “that was deployed in March 2016 through the firing of 40 rockets at the Turkmen Shia town of Taza Khurmatu,” Khan said.

Khan, who will become chief prosecutor at the Internatio­nal Criminal Court on June 15, said this investigat­ion is rapidly progressin­g, with initial results anticipate­d to be completed within five months. By the end of the year, he said, the team also anticipate­s initial results “addressing crimes against minority Christians, Kaka’i, Shabak, Shia Turkmen and Sunni communitie­s in Iraq, as well as the massacre of predominan­tly Shia inmates at Badush prison.”

Khan said the next step is to use the informatio­n and evidence collected by UNITAD “to meet the expectatio­ns of survivors” and put it before national courts to prosecute those responsibl­e for these “horrific crimes.”

He expressed hope that Iraqi legislator­s will adopt a legal basis to prosecute IS members for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. He welcomed legislatio­n presented to Parliament in the Kurdistan region last week to establish a court with jurisdicti­on over internatio­nal crimes committed by IS.

“We must make sure that we don’t become this archive, this library,” Khan said of the team’s evidence.

He said every member of the internatio­nal community should “feel this sense of urgency” for justice as if their own mother, father or child had lost their life or was not accounted for.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad, a Yazidi forced into sexual slavery by IS fighters who killed her mother and six brothers, urged the Security Council to refer the genocide against her people to the Internatio­nal Criminal Court or establish a court to prosecute those responsibl­e for the atrocities.

“I ask you to start a new chapter — legal accountabi­lity for ISIS crimes would dramatical­ly impact every action of my community’s recovery,” she said. “It is time for the internatio­nal community to do, more than listen. It is time to act. If world leaders have the political will to act on this evidence, then justice is truly within reach.”

 ??  ??
 ??  ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Malta