SULAIMANI (ESTA) — A U.N. team investigating atrocities in Iraq said Islamic State (ISIS) militants had committed crimes against humanity and war crimes a prison in Mosul in 2014.
Christian Ritscher told U.N. Security Council that evidence collected from mass graves containing the remains of victims of executions carries out at Badush Central Prison in June 2014, according to AP.
“Prisoners captured were led to sites close to the prison, separated based on their religion and humiliated,” AP cited him as saying on Thursday.
“At least 1,000 predominantly Shia prisoners were then systematically killed,” said Ritscher, head of the U.N. Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by ISIS in Iraq and the Levant.
He further said the investigators’ analysis of digital, documentary, survivors and forensic evidence, including ISIS documents, has identified a number of the group’s members, who were responsible for the crimes.
As a result of the investigations, he said the team had concluded that ISIS committed “crimes against humanity of murder, extermination, torture, enforced disappearances, persecution and other inhuman acts” at Badush prison.
The militant group also committed “war crimes of willful killing, torture, inhuman treatment, and outrage upon personal dignity,” he continued.
“We now have the chance, collectively, to make such prosecutions the norm, not a celebrated exception,” Ritscher said.
“In cooperation with Iraqi authorities and those of the Kurdistan region, together with survivors and with the support of this council, we are building the evidence that can deliver meaningful justice for all those who suffered from ISIL crimes in Iraq,” he added, using another acronym for ISIS.
Ritscher said evidence collected relating to the Badush prison attacks underlined the detailed planning by ISIS in carrying out their atrocities.
Islamic State controlled roughly a third of Iraq between 2014 and 2017, including the remote Makhmour region but also major cities including Mosul.
Iraqi forces, Kurdish troops and Iran-backed Shia militias defeated the militant group in 2017, but its members still roam areas of northern Iraq and northeastern Syria.
