UN Investigation: Daesh Committed Genocide Against Shias, Izadis

Date: 11 May 2021 - 21:42

News ID: ۹۰۱۱۴

NEW YORK (Dispatches) – A United Nations team investigating atrocities in Iraq found "clear and compelling evidence” that the Daesh terrorist group "committed” genocide against Shias and the Izadi minority in 2014, its head has said.
In a report to the UN Security Council on Monday, Karim Khan said the team had also concluded that Daesh committed war crimes against predominantly Shia unarmed cadets and personnel from the Tikrit Air Academy who were captured, tortured and subjected to mass killings in June 2014.
He said a Daesh video released in July 2015 showing the killings "constitutes a direct and public incitement to commit genocide against Shia Muslims”.
The Security Council voted unanimously in September 2017 to ask the UN to establish an investigative team to help Iraq preserve evidence and promote accountability for what "may amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide” committed by Daesh, in Iraq and the Levant region, which includes Syria.
In his sixth report to the council, Khan said the Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Daesh rapidly expanded the amount of evidence it has over the past six months.
He said "significant developments” in collecting forensic evidence from mass grave sites, digital data extracted from hard drives that belonged to Daesh, digitization of case files, and use of advanced technological tools to process and search databases has allowed the team "to establish clear timelines of activities of key ISIL (Daesh) members.”
Back in August 2014, Daesh terrorists overran Sinjar, killing, raping, and enslaving large numbers of Izadi Kurds.
The region was recaptured in November 2015.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad, an Izadi woman who was enslaved and raped by Daesh, urged the UNSC to refer the genocide against her people to the International Criminal Court (ICC) or create a special court.
Referring to the report of the UN team, Murad said, "The Council must now prioritize and accelerate concrete action to address the findings.”
Khan is a British lawyer who is due to become the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor next month.
The report of the team, which started work in 2018, also found the "repeated deployment of chemical weapons by ISIL (Daesh) against civilian populations in Iraq between 2014 and 2016, as well as the testing of biological agents on prisoners.”
Iraq declared victory over Daesh in December 2017 after a three-year counter-terrorism military campaign.
The terror outfit’s remnants, though, keep staging sporadic attacks across Iraq, attempting to regroup and unleash a new era of violence.