Members of the Collection and Documentation of Shingal Case Board say Baghdad has made little progress in bringing evidence before an international court with the authority to prosecute ISIS perpetrators.
Many in the international community have acknowledged the need for an international court to address the crimes of ISIS, including the murder and kidnap of thousands of Yezidis, the destruction of world cultural heritage sites, and other war crimes committed across both Iraq and Syria.
Yezidi survivor and Noble laureate Nadia Murad and human rights lawyer Amal Clooney are leading efforts to build an international case against the group.
Murad has also called on the Iraqi government and the international community to help Yezidis return to their homeland of Shingal, to provide basic services, and to treat Yezidi women and girls psychologically damaged by their time in captivity.
In the wake of the brutal ISIS takeover of Shingal in August 2014, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) launched the evidence gathering committee in Duhok in order to pressure the international community to recognize the massacre as genocide.
“The aim of the establishment of this board was to help recognize the genocide Yezidis experienced,” Judge Aiman Mustafa, head of the board, told Rudaw on Wednesday.
“To meet that end, we needed to collect documents [testimonies]. We have so far collected 4,608 documents.”
However, Mustafa says the federal government in Baghdad has not submitted the evidence to an international court.
“Unfortunately, since Kurdistan is not a state, we cannot directly submit the documents to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and this work can be done only through Baghdad,” Mustafa said. “They are not helping.”
“The registered documents include kidnapping, capture, separation, enslaving, rape, and forcible religious conversion,” Mustafa said. He has personally sat down with many of the survivors to document their experiences.
Related: Justice after ISIS
One of the testimonies which impacted him most was that of a nine-year old girl who was raped by ISIS militants.
Such a case cannot be brought before the ICJ because Iraq is not a signatory to the global court, Dr. Kirmanj Osman, a member of the KRG’s High Committee for the Recognition and Documentation of Islamic State Atrocities against Yezidis and Other Components, told Rudaw.
Instead, Osman says Baghdad “could call on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to make some international decisions including the establishment of an international court to work on the genocide of the Yezidis, just like the one formed for Rafic Hariri”.
Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon, was assassinated in a truck bombing in 2005. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) was established to carry out the investigation and prosecution of those responsible.
The STL is an international court based in Leidschendam, on the outskirts of The Hague, but applies Lebanese criminal law. It is unique among international criminal tribunals as it may hold trials in absentia and it is the first to deal with terrorism as a distinct crime.
Osman is pessimistic about Baghdad taking the lead.
“Iraq is not willing to work on this as it does not want Kurds take advantage of it,” he said. “If an international court is established it will commit Iraq to compensating the Yezidis, something Iraq does not want.”
“Iraq is afraid that if such an international court is established, Kurds will rally for independence,” he added.
Putting the Yezidi case before an Iraqi court would not bring the survivors justice, he warned, “because if the trial is held in Iraq, it will lose its international significance and it will be dealt as a domestic matter”.
A decision will be made on whether to launch a case domestically or internationally when the UN-led team investigating mass grave sites in Shingal completes its work. The United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Daesh/ISIL (UNITAD) is expected to finish its survey in September.
On the fifth anniversary of the genocide, Yezidi groups called on the KRG and the Iraqi government to “take all necessary steps to hold those responsible accountable for the crimes committed against the [Yezidis].”
“This includes the necessary forms of justice against citizens of all countries who joined the ISIS and participated in committing these crimes, while pursuing a discourse that openly acknowledges the nature of the Yazidi genocide,” said human rights group Yazda.
Hana Salim, a survivor who managed to escape the clutches of the group in December 2015, told Rudaw he doubts the Yezidi case will be recognized as genocide nor will they be compensated.
“We are fed up with telling our stories,” Salim said. “It is now time for action.”
As a survivor, he urged the Iraqi government to take into account their concerns.
“What Shingal endured cannot be solved by the KRG alone. We need assistance from the Iraqi government and the international community.”
When ISIS attacked the Yezidi homeland of Shingal in the summer of 2014, thousands of Yezidis fled to the Kurdistan Region, Mount Shingal, and to Kurdish areas in northern Syria, also known as Rojava.
Those who were unable to escape were murdered by the jihadists. Thousands of women and children were taken captive for use a slaves and as child soldiers.
There were an estimated 500,000 Yezidis in Iraq before the genocide. Around 100,000 have left Iraq and 360,000 remain internally displaced.
Of the 6,417 Yezidis believed to have been abducted from Shingal, 2,992 remain missing, according to KRG figures.
Additional reporting by Nasir Ali
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