The United Nations judicial investigation into the crimes committed by the Islamic State (IS) organization in Iraq confirms the genocide of the Yazidi minority. The UN Special Investigation Team (Unitad) collected the “Clear and convincing evidence that genocide was committed by IS against the Yazidis as a religious group”, the head of the investigation, Karim Khan, told the Security Council on Monday (May 10). After the capture of Mosul by ISIS and the proclamation of the caliphate at the end of June 2014, the Yazidi minority in the Sinjar region in northern Iraq had been targeted, with men slaughtered and women subjected to the ‘sexual slavery. Investigators have identified 1,444 alleged perpetrators, including eighteen senior officials, but their names remain confidential.
Invited to speak alongside Karim Khan, survivor Nadia Murad recalled that “ISIS has never sought to hide. Decrees were issued, manuals codified the auction of Yazidi women and these auctions still take place online ”. She added that 2,800 women would still be in the hands of ISIS. The Islamic State “Left many traces” of his crimes, assured Karim Khan. In February, a ceremony for the return of the bodies of 103 Yazidis was organized in the schoolyard of the village of Kocho, where the villagers had been sorted by the jihadists, women on one side, men on the other. .
Chemical Weapons
UN investigators also closed the file on the massacre at Camp Speicher, in Tikrit, identifying 20 senior officials for these crimes committed in June 2014. At least 875 Iraqi cadets from the air school and soldiers had been massacred, their bodies found in eleven mass graves. At the end of May, investigators will also begin exhumations at the Badouche prison site, where up to 600 Shiites were targeted and murdered in June 2014, near Mosul. Other files are open on crimes committed against Christians, Kakai, Chabak, Turkmen and Sunni communities. Karim Khan also announced in New York the opening of a new investigation into the use of chemical weapons. According to the report submitted to the UN, ISIS used the University of Mosul to store and test chemical weapons – some of which have been tested on prisoners – and carried out mustard gas attacks.
Mandated to collect evidence of IS crimes in Iraq and allow the trial of their perpetrators, Unitad has already sent documents to fourteen countries, mainly European. At the Security Council, Nadia Murad called for “International tribunals to take into account the universal scale of crimes committed by ISIS”. With her lawyer Amal Clooney, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate had, at this same forum, five years ago, asked “To seize the ICC [Cour pénale internationale] of this genocide, or to create, by a treaty, a tribunal. We had received empty promises, she said today, justice has been rejected ”.
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