Clooney seeks IS woman’s transfer to US
NEW YORK: Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney said yesterday she was requesting the transfer of a female member of the Islamic State extremist group to face justice for crimes against women from Iraq’s Yazidi minority and American hostage Kayla Mueller, who was killed in 2015.
Clooney represents Yazidi women and girls who were held in the house of Umm Sayyaf, the wife of Islamic State financier Abu Sayyaf. Mueller, a humanitarian aid worker, was also held there for a time.
Clooney, the wife of actor George Clooney, told a UN Security Council meeting on sexual violence in conflict the Yazidis were raped by IS men and Mueller ‘‘was held in brutal conditions for over 18 months and raped repeatedly’’ by the militant group’s leader, Abu Bakr alBaghdadi.
She said Umm Sayyaf locked the women in a room and instigated their beatings.
‘‘I am requesting her transfer to the US to face justice for those crimes,’’ she said.
Meanwhile, a US threat to veto UN Security Council action on sexual violence in conflict was averted yesterday after a longagreed phrase was removed because President Donald Trump’s administration sees it as code for abortion, diplomats said.
A Germandrafted resolution was adopted after a reference was cut referring to the need for UN bodies and donors to give timely ‘‘sexual and reproductive health’’ assistance to survivors of sexual violence in conflict.
The US veto threat was the latest in a string of policy reversals some UN diplomats say has been driven by US Vicepresident Mike Pence, a conservative Christian. — AP/Reuters