UN investigators to help Iraq files war crimes cases against ISIS


The UN and Iraq will file war crimes cases against ISIS, under a resolution the Security Council approved, the Jamaica news reported Friday.

Iraq, council members, and some human rights advocates portrayed the measure as a key step toward bringing the ISIS group to justice for atrocities.

But some major rights groups say it's one-sided and overlooks abuses by Iraqi and other forces fighting the ISIS terrorists.

The council voted unanimously to ask the UN to establish an investigative team to help Iraq preserve evidence "that may amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide" committed by ISIS.

"This means justice for those people who have been victimized by ISIS," Nadia Murad, a former ISIS captive in Iraq, said in a Facebook Live video after attending the council vote with well-known human rights lawyer Amal Clooney.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari called it "a victory for justice, a victory for humanity and a victory for the victims."

ISIS seized parts of Iraq in 2014 and proclaimed it a caliphate state. It soon became a realm of horrors, including mass killings, beheadings, and rapes.

US-backed Iraqi forces retook the country's second-largest city of Mosul from the extremists in July.

The forces have now driven ISIS from most of the land it had seized in Iraq, retaking all the major urban areas, although the group still controls some pockets in Iraq as well as territory in Syria.

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