UN: Iraq Christians Were Victims of Daesh War Crimes

By Staff, Agencies

Evidence collected in Iraq strengthens preliminary findings that Daesh [Arabic for ‘ISIS/ISIL’] terrorists committed crimes against humanity and war crimes against the Christian community after they seized about a third of the country in 2014, a UN investigative team said.

The report to the UN Security Council, circulated Thursday, said crimes included forcibly transferring and persecuting Christians, seizing their property, engaging in physical abuse, enslavement and other “inhumane acts,” such as forced conversions and destruction of cultural and religious sites.

In addition, the team said it has identified leaders and prominent members of the Daesh terrorist group who participated in the attack and takeover of three predominantly Christian towns in the Nineveh plains north of Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul, in July and August 2014 -- Hamdaniyah, Karamlays and Bartella. It also started collecting evidence on crimes committed against the Christian community in Mosul.

The Daesh terrorists seized Iraqi cities and declared a self-styled caliphate in a large swath of territory in Syria and Iraq in 2014. The group was formally declared defeated in Iraq in 2017 following a three-year bloody battle that left tens of thousands dead and cities in ruins, but its sleeper cells continue to stage attacks in different parts of Iraq.

The 26-page report was submitted by the UN Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes committed by Daesh.

The team updated its investigations into the extremists’ development and use of chemical and biological weapons, attacks on the Yazidi and Sunni communities, the mass execution of prisoners and detainees at Badush prison near Mosul in June 2014, and crimes in and around Tikrit.