IS committing 'staggering' crimes
[ARABNEWS] Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
turbans in Iraq have carried out mass executions, kidnapped women and girls as sex slaves, and used child soldiers in what may amount to systematic war crimes that demand prosecution, the United Nations
...where theory meets practice and practice loses...
said on Thursday.
In a report based on 500 interviews with witnesses, also said Iraqi government Arclight airstrikes on the Sunni bandidos turbans had caused "significant civilian deaths" by hitting villages, a school and hospitals in violation of international law.
At least 9,347 civilians had been killed and 17,386 maimed so far this year through September, well over half of them since the turbans also known as ISIL and ISIS began seizing large parts of northern Iraq in early June, the report said.
"The array of violations and abuses perpetrated by ISIL and associated gangs is staggering, and many of their acts may amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity," said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein.
In a statement, he called again for the Baghdad government to join the International Criminal Court
... where Milosevich died of old age before being convicted ...
, saying the Hague court was set up to prosecute such massive abuses and direct targeting of civilians on the basis of their religious or ethnic group.
Radical forces have committed gross human rights
When they're defined by the state or an NGO they don't mean much...
violations and violence of an "increasing sectarian nature" against groups including Christians, Yazidis and Shiites in a widening conflict that has forced 1.8 million Iraqis to flee their homes, according to the 29-page report by the UN Human Rights Office and the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq.
"These include attacks directly targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure, executions and other assassinations of civilians, abductions, rape and other forms of sexual and physical violence perpetrated against women and kiddies, forced recruitment of children, destruction or desecration of places of religious or cultural significance, wanton destruction and looting of property, and denial of fundamental freedoms."
In a single massacre on June 12, the report said, about 1,500 Iraqi soldiers and security officers from the former US Camp Speicher military base in Salahuddin province were captured and killed by Islamic State fighters.
However,
man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them...
the bodies have not been exhumed and the precise toll is not known. No one disputes that Iraqi military recruits were led off the base near Tikrit unarmed and then machine gunned in their hundreds into mass graves by Islamic State, whose fighters boasted of the killings on the Internet.
Women have been treated particularly harshly, the report said: "ISIL (has) attacked and killed female doctors, lawyers, among other professionals."
In August, it said, ISIL took 450-500 women and girls to the Tal Afar citadel in Iraq's Nineveh region where "150 unmarried girls and women, predominantly from the Yazidi and Christian communities, were reportedly transported to Syria, either to be given to ISIL fighters as a reward or to be sold as sex slaves."
Islamic State pushed on with its assault on a Syrian border town on Thursday despite coalition air strikes meant to weaken them, sending thousands more Kurdish refugees into Turkey and dragging Ankara deeper into the conflict.
The report also voiced deep concern at violations committed by the Baghdad government and allied fighters, including Arclight airstrikes and shelling that may not have distinguished between military targets and civilian areas.
Posted by: Fred 2014-10-03 |