Iraqi court sentences ISIS member to death for massacring Yezidis
"The convicted man committed the massacre of a number of civilian men and women in Sinjar [or Shingal] district as well as fighting against the security and military forces in Mosul," Abdul-Sattar Briqdar, spokesperson for High Legislative Council, said in a statement on Wednesday, reported by the state-owned Iraqi News Agency (INA).
The convict carries the nome de guerra “al-Muhajir.”
Iraq established a Judicial Investigation Board for Crimes Against Yezidis. The goal of the board is to receive claims from Yezidi victims regarding killings, abduction, and rape.
The board, however, has no budget or location and Yezidi activists expressed objections to the fact that all the judges assigned to the body are Muslim and the board lacks expertise to examine forensic evidence from mass graves.
ISIS declared its caliphate in Mosul city in 2014 and then attacked the Yezidi city of Sinjar and its village two months after they overran Mosul in 2014.
The terror group killed thousands of the Kurdish Yezidi minority in the Shingal district. Others were displaced to the Kurdistan Region and Rojava in Syria. Their women were sold in the market as slaves.
More than 6,000 members of the religious minority were taken captive by ISIS when they swept through northern Iraq, committing genocide against the Yezidis. Nearly half of the abductees remain unaccounted for.
According to the Ministry of Religious Affairs of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), some 360,000 Yezidis were displaced and approximately 100,000 fled abroad.