UN Team Unearths 12 Mass Graves in Iraq

Date: 21 May 2019 - 21:34

News ID: ۶۶۲۲۵

BAGHDAD (Dispatches) – A UN team investigating the massacre of Iraq's Izadi minority and other atrocities has excavated 12 mass graves and is collecting witness accounts that could be used in Iraqi and other national courts, according to a UN report seen by AFP.
The Security Council agreed in 2017 to establish the UN probe to ensure the Daesh terrorist group faces justice for war crimes in Iraq and Syria -- a cause championed by Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad and international human rights lawyer Amal Clooney.
In the report sent to the council, the head of the team, British lawyer Karim Asad Ahmad Khan, said efforts were focused on three initial investigations: the 2014 massacre of Izadis, crimes committed in Mosul from 2014 to 2016, and the mass killing of Iraqi military recruits in the Tikrit area in June 2014.
The team began work in October, with the first mass grave containing Daesh victims unearthed in March and April in the Murad's home village of Kojo in Sinjar in northwest Iraq.
Ahmad Khan said "progress had been slower than hoped" in the investigation and stressed the need to establish "clear and effective channels" to use the evidence in Iraqi proceedings.
In 2014, Daesh committed what the UN concluded was a possible genocide of Iraq’s Izadi community during its offensive against the northern region of Sinjar. The offensive forced tens of thousands of Izadis to flee the Arab country.
‘Harrowing accounts of suffering’
The 48-member team is also collecting witness accounts that could be used in Iraqi and other national courts.
According to the report, the investigators have "engaged first-hand with survivors and witnesses” and have implemented a witness protection program.
"In Mosul, Tikrit, Dohuk, and elsewhere in Iraq, victims have told harrowing accounts of their suffering, of entire communities erased and of women and girls taken as slaves,” it said.
The report further said that the team was negotiating pacts with Iraqi authorities to hand over evidence and was ready to provide material to other courts to hold Daesh terrorists accountable for their crimes.
Daesh began a terror campaign in Iraq in 2014, overrunning vast swathes of land. In December, 2017, the Iraqi state declared victory over the terrorist group. Pockets of Daesh terrorists remain active in the country, however.