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| Terror Networks |
| 'Our duty is to record ISIS crimes against Kurdish Yezidi' |
| 2015-04-08 |
| [RUDAW.NET] The Kurdistan Regional Government has established a special commission to document the crimes of 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 Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... against Kurdish Yezidi civilians in the Shingal area and other Kurdish enclaves outside the Kurdistan region. The commission will draw on crimes committed in Kosovo, Rwanda and Darfurin order to prevent the mistakes of the past, said Judge Ayman Mostafa, who since September has been chief of the Investigation and Evidence Commission in the Kurdish city of Duhok. Mostafa, 38 , studied in forensic criminology in the UK and public policy in South Korea. After 15 years as a criminal investigator, he is now a judge of Deralook First Instance Court. As Mostafa pointed out, the Anfal campaign carried out against the Kurds by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has not been officially declared a genocide by the international community because of lost evidence and procedural errors. But this time, he said, the KRG aims to have the Islamic State's crimes against the Yezidis recognized for what they are. Rudaw: What is the Investigation and Evidence Commission doing exactly? Ayman Mostafa: We are working to gather and document the evidence that recognizes and identifies the crimes committed by Daesh [the Arabic acronym for Islamic State] members against the civilians in Shingal and surrounding areas, everything that might be identified as genocide and crimes against humanity. As we are not a court, we do not determine whether genocide has been committed. We depend on the statements of victims and eye witnesses. The victims come to register a complaint against Daesh members and we record the details of their suffering during the abductions, attempted murder, sexual enslavement, rape, displacement, forced conversion to Islam and child soldiers. When victims mention names of people who were with them, those can be used as witnesses. These are people who have been imprisoned together, or given as gifts or sold to Daesh members, or have been in sexual slavery together. The victims fill out an application form. We take their statement, and if they need a medical checkup we send them to hospital. We have a psychological unit that listens to the stories and makes a recommendation about further medical treatment needed. In Azadi Hospital [Dukok] a team of psychiatrists will then follow the victims. The medical and psychological reports and documents can all be used as evidence. How many people have you seen up to now? We cannot give numbers [and] because it is a very sensitive, we work in secrecy. We can say that we have more than 200 people who have finished all the procedures. We have about 300 people waiting in the queue. We work slowly, in order not to leave out any details of crime. We don't have a time limit or even a deadline. How did the commission develop its methods of work? We don't have our own system. We get benefit from the experiences in Rwanda, Kosovo and Darfur [where genocides were committed]. We are following some of the procedures that have been proven there to be useful. We are working for the High Commission for Identification of Genocide Crimes in Erbil, headed by Mahmmud Haji, the minister of Martyrs and Anfal, and monthly report to them. If we face an obstacle, we ask them to solve it. Last month, we had information about possible sites of mass graves. As our commission does not have the tools or the staff, the ministry sent its specialized team. We have dozens of remains of bodies at the scene of the crime. They are collected and sent to Azadi Hospital for DNA tests to identify them. |
| Posted by:Fred |