Iraq supports team investigating ISIS crimes

تاريخ تاريخ النشر 26/02/2019
The Iraqi government has pledged its full support to an international team tasked with investigating the crimes of the "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" (ISIS) and to facilitate its work.

The investigation should be relatively straightforward, according to Iraqi human rights officials, as there is an abundance of criminal evidence that clearly and unequivocally implicates the group.

An international investigative team has been established, pursuant to UN Security Council Resolution 2379 of 2017, to support Iraqi efforts to hold ISIS to account for its crimes.

The team, headed by British human rights lawyer Karim Asad Ahmad Khan, has been tasked with collecting, preserving and storing evidence in Iraq of acts that may amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed by ISIS.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council in a letter sent August 17th that the investigators would begin work on August 20th, AFP reported.

Guterres told the council that Khan, who was appointed in February, had made a first mission to Iraq from August 6th to 14th.

"Iraq supports the mission of the international team, whose evidence will be submitted to national courts so the perpetrators may be tried in accordance with Iraqi laws," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmad Mahjoub said in a statement.

The Iraqi government has promised to facilitate the mission of the international team and to help it to carry out its work, he said, adding that Iraqi courts have full judicial jurisdiction to prosecute the group’s crimes.