‘It’s possible that Yazidi children were sold to Qatari or Saudi families’
Banner Icon Human rights A group that documented Nazi war crimes is now investigating whether massacres committed by Islamic State jihadists against Iraq’s Yazidi minority amount to genocide.
Three European researchers have embarked on the gargantuan task of establishing that the IS crimes aimed to systematically wipe out an ethnic group, in a bid to push the international community to halt the brutal crimes.
“We are not seeking to be sensational but to establish the stages of the criminal process for each category of the Yazidi — men, women, children — in order to back up the claim of genocide,” Andrej Umansky, criminal law specialist at Cologne University, told AFP.
The Yazidis are neither Arabs nor Muslims and have a unique faith which IS jihadists consider to be heretical and polytheistic. The Kurdish-speaking minority is mostly based around Sinjar mountain in northern Iraq.
When the jihadists made an unexpected push in August last year into parts of northern Iraq under Kurdish control, the Yazidis were the worst hit, with many massacred and abducted.
The small European team from Yahad In Unum — an association that collected evidence of Nazi slaughters of Jews and Roma in former Soviet areas — has travelled to collect evidence at a Kurdish refugee camp just 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the frontline where battle was raging with IS militants.
Since August, they have filmed 50 interviews with Yazidi men, women and children who have managed to flee the terror of IS.
While the witness accounts could be used to back up future legal proceedings, “our first aim is to stop this crime” which is still being perpetrated, said Umansky.
“Imagine if we had questioned the escapees of Auschwitz in 1942: reacting with legal procedures would not have been the priority.”
CHILD SOLDIERS, SEX SLAVES
The initiative began last year following a meeting in Belgium with three Yazidi refugees, said Costel Nastasie, a Belgian former police officer who specialised in investigations of crimes against the Roma.
The team’s small size and French foreign ministry backing helped open the doors to the Kurdish refugee camps.
The greatest challenge has been finding recent Yazidi arrivals who clearly recollect the crimes and are willing to talk about their traumatic experiences.
“Most people are very emotional, there have to be frequent breaks,” said Nastasie.
“And we have to explain to the victims’ family members why we have to be in a room alone with the person.
“Some women are willing to speak in front of us, but others would only remain with our Yazidi investigator.”
رابط الموضوع الاصلي:
تُتاح هذه الصورة أيضا في: العربية
