ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Almost 450 Islamic State (ISIS) prisoners are held in Kurdistan Region prisons, according to a Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) official.
“398 of the detainees have been tried and sentenced, 29 are teens and 23 are women,” Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) International Advocacy Coordinator, Dindar Zebari told reporters in a Tuesday press conference.
He added that 48 suspects were released “owing to a lack of evidence.”
ISIS took over swathes of Iraq and Syria in the summer of 2014, including Iraq’s second-largest city of Mosul. Although the group was declared territorially defeated in Iraq in December 2017, sleeper cells remain active across the country, particularly in areas disputed between Erbil and Baghdad – where militants can exploit a security vacuum.
Iraq’s Yezidi minority was particularly targeted by ISIS, which invaded the Yezidi heartland of Shingal in Nineveh province in August 2014, launching a genocide against the community. Thousands were killed and taken into captivity.
The KRG has helped rescue 2,877 Yezidi abductees, including 1,203 women, 339 men, 1,043 girls and 995 boys, Zebari said on Tuesday.
“The KRG gave official permission to an NGO to operate the first trafficking shelter in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region (IKR), and it continued to facilitate the release of several hundred Yezidis from ISIS,” Zebari said in a statement.
The KRG will coordinate with the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Daesh (UNITAD) to try ISIS suspects in mid-2021.
“The KRG has handed over a bulk of requested information directed from UNITAD to the KRG regarding ISIS Crimes and ISIS’ network,” said Zebari.
In Shingal, 72 mass graves have been found, 16 of which lie in and around Kocho village. Some of these human remains have been sent to Baghdad for identification.
Exhumation of mass graves by the Iraqi government recently resumed in Shingal with the help of the KRG and international organizations.
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