An ongoing digitization project by the UN’s investigation team into ISIS crimes in Iraq has resulted in the digitization “of the impressive amount of 8 million pages of ISIL [acronym for ISIS] documents from the holdings of the Iraqi authorities, including Kurdish authorities,” the team said in a report.
“In Iraq, there is no shortage of evidence on ISIL crimes, and with these innovative initiatives, Iraqi judges informed they are able to significantly improve response times in relation to case files and requests for information, signifying lasting change as a result of these innovative efforts,” it added.
ISIS swept through Iraq and neighboring Syria in 2014, imposing its so-called caliphate rule with extreme violence. Among the group’s crimes are “executions, torture, amputations, ethno-sectarian attacks, rape, and sexual slavery imposed on women and girls,” according to the UN body. Iraq in 2017 asked the UN to help collect and preserve evidence of ISIS crimes.
The team, titled UN Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Daesh/ISIL (UNITAD), has also overseen the exhumation process of Yazidis who were massacred by ISIS when the terror group overran the ethnoreligious group’s heartland, Sinjar (Shingal), and massacred over a thousand people.
Its mandate was extended by the UN Security Council in September.
“I can assure you that there is no shortage of evidence of ISIL crimes in Iraq,” UNITAD head Christian Ritscher said in the statement. “ISIL was a large-scale bureaucracy that documented and maintained a state-like administrative system.”
As such, UNITAD’s project to digitize ISIS crimes “aims to ensure that this evidence is accessible before any competent court, whether in Iraq or in other States where prosecution of Da’esh [Arabic acronym for ISIS] members for international crimes are taking place.”
While explaining the team’s digitization process, Ritscher said that UNITAD is establishing a central archive, “the unified repository for all digitized evidence against Da’esh,” which will be instrumental in prosecuting ISIS members in Iraq.
During its three-year reign of terror in the country, ISIS controlled about a third of Iraq’s territory.
While the group was territorially defeated in Iraq in 2017, it took two more years for its Syria caliphate to be declared devoid of territorial control. Despite lacking substantial control over land, the militants continue to pose a serious risk on both countries through abductions, hit-and-run attacks, and bombings.
The archive “could be a milestone to founding a comprehensive e-justice system in Iraq, which can be held as a leading example, not only in the region, but also globally,” Ritscher stated.
