Karim Khan QC heads the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Daesh (UNITAD), which is now fully operational in Iraq. He said the team has gathered thousands of pages of material relating to 37 case files in cooperation with Mosul’s counter-terrorism court.
“In relation to the Yezidi community alone, we have identified over 160 perpetrators of massacres against the Yezidis,” he told the UN Security Council, saying that those identified will now be investigated in further detail.
UNITAD is now focusing on building solid cases against the militants that “may be presented to domestic courts...or any that are willing and able to hold Daesh members accountable,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
Those identified are mainly suspected to have committed crimes in Kocho, site of the largest single atrocity committed against the Yezidis and home of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Nadia Murad.
Almost the entire population of the village was killed, sold into slavery, or forced to fight for the caliphate following the fall of Shingal in August 2014.
UNITAD was established following a 2017 resolution and is primarily focusing on crimes committed in Shingal, Mosul and at Tikrit Air Cadet Academy, where more than 1,600 cadets were slaughtered by the terror group.
The Yezidi community was specifically targeted in a genocidal campaign intended to wipe them out as militants swept across Iraq and Syria five years ago. They remain one of groups most impacted by ISIS.
Khan, who recently visited survivors of ISIS atrocities in Duhok, told the assembly of the “heavy responsibility” of the international community to bring ISIS members to justice.
The council then heard testimony from a survivor of the mass killings in Kocho who lost 75 members of his family to ISIS.
“There is a heavy responsibility on all of us to ensure their cries, tears and suffering are met with purposeful action and credible investigations,” Khan said.
He added that the experience and needs of victims is placed at the centre of their work in an attempt to avoid paying “lip service” to survivors.
UNITAD has received three formal requests for assistance for domestic court cases abroad, Khan noted, with further requests for assistance from several other countries.
Progress abroad, however, remains slow. Although criminal cases are ongoing, no ISIS members have so far been prosecuted for the genocide committed against the ethno-religious community.
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