You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
International-UN-NGOs
Yazidis urge ICC to open probe into IS atrocities
2015-09-26
[MAANNEWS] Iraq's Yazidi minority -- the target of brutal attacks from the 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....
group -- urged the International Criminal Court
... where Milosevich died of old age before being convicted ...
Thursday to launch probes into the Death Eaters for genocide and sexual slavery.

Two Yazidi groups handed over documents to the court which show "that ISIS has systematically committed atrocities amounting to genocide and that these crimes fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC," said Murad Ismael from the Yazda group.

Chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda earlier this year said IS has committed crimes of "unspeakable cruelty" including mass executions, rape and torture.

But she said she could not investigate as neither Iraq nor Syria are signatories to the court and her "jurisdictional basis... is too narrow."

The new report however specifically names some 20 imported muscle from countries who have signed the ICC's founding Rome Statute.

A Kurdish-speaking minority mostly based around Sinjar mountain in northern Iraq, the Yazidis are neither Arabs nor Moslems and have a unique faith which Islamic State Death Eaters consider to be heretical and polytheistic.

In August 2014, the jihadists made an unexpected push into areas of northern Iraq that had been under Kurdish control and were home to many of the country's minorities.

The worst-hit were the Yazidis, who were massacred and kidnapped in large numbers when IS entered the Sinjar area.

Tens of thousands scrambled up Mount Sinjar in a panic and remained stranded there for days with no food nor water.

'Despicable crimes'

"It is abhorrent that such despicable crimes should be inflicted upon innocent civilians anywhere on Earth," said Ismael in a statement.

"The Yazidi community has been shattered by the sick crimes of ISIS Lions of Islam who sought to annihilate the Yazidis on the basis of their religious distinctiveness," he added, using another name for IS.

According to figures from the Kurdish autonomous region, 1,280 Yazidis were killed in the IS offensive. Hundreds are still missing.

More than 5,800 were also kidnapped by IS, and although some 2,000 managed to escape, "more than 3,000 innocent women and kiddies remain captive... subject to systematic rape on a daily basis," said Ismael.

Eighty percent of the Yazidi population is now displaced and living in camps, he added.

"ISIL sought to annihilate the religious identity, traditions and the very existence of the Yazidis," Yazda and the Free Yazidi Foundation said in their report to the ICC.

Ismael, who traveled from Houston, Texas to present the report to the court in The Hague, told AFP he was "confident that once the court reads through the details" it will decide it has jurisdiction over the case.

Posted by:Fred

00:00