eight million pages on Isis crimes filed in Baghdad

A historical memory made thanks to the efforts of the United Nations and destined to be kept in the offices of the Superior Council of the Magistracy. Digitized documents that prove the atrocities of the Islamic State and crucial for future trials. Six young Yazidis kidnapped in 2014 by jihadists returned to their families a few days ago.

Baghdad () – A huge central archive containing the crimes committed by the Islamic State (IS, former Isis) in Iraq. At least eight million pages that testify to the “bureaucratic” element together with the violence and atrocities perpetrated by the jihadist group that, between 2014 and 2017, conquered nearly half of the territory – as well as in neighboring Syria – imposing a Brutal blood-based domain. A historical memory that is about to be completed thanks to the efforts of the United Nations and that will be kept in the offices of the Supreme Council of the Iraqi Magistracy.

Millions of digitized documents, collected in a single central archive, that prove the crimes committed by Isis. Unitad, the body created by the UN to deepen investigations, began its field work five years ago in an attempt to bring to justice the leaders and co-responsibles of the Islamic-inspired radical movement. “It is absolutely clear to us that only if we work hand in hand with the Iraqi authorities, in particular with our counterparts in the judiciary, [la investigación de la Unitad] can succeed,” said Christian Ritscher, chief investigator for the United Nations.

The former prosecutor of German origin delved into a myriad of atrocities perpetrated by the men of the “Islamic caliphate”, such as murder, torture, gang rape, slavery and genocide. The goal is to prosecute the perpetrators of “heinous international crimes” through trials “based on evidence and before competent courts.” And for this to be successful, “admissible and reliable evidence” is needed, which, moreover, according to the magistrate, “is not lacking.” “Isis was a large-scale bureaucracy, which documented and maintained a state administrative system,” he explained, and for this reason Unitad has launched a huge project to digitize the documents so that they are “admissible” in any competent court in Iraq or abroad.

So far, at least eight million pages of documents in the possession of the Baghdad authorities have already been digitized and are ready to be used by investigators. The next step will be to “create a central archive that will be the single repository for all digitized evidence,” Ritscher added. It would be published “in the next few days” in the Supreme Council of the Magistracy and will be a “milestone” for the system, which will become a model and example “not only in the region, but throughout the world.”

Also these days, more than five years after the military defeat of Isis, six Yazidi women kidnapped by Isis militants in 2014 were reunited with their families in northern Iraq, four days after the rescue announced by the Nobel laureate of the Peace Nadia Murad. The Yazidis, considered “heretics” by the caliphate, were one of the main victims of the jihadist massacre, and the women, kidnapped and held as sex slaves or forced wives, as well as their children. From Iraq, the woman says, the six young women “ended up in Syria” when they were still “little more than girls or adolescents.” Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey were decisive for his release, according to Murad’s own account. Her reunion with her relatives took place in a park in Dohuk. “I’m very happy,” said one of them, “I haven’t seen them since I was nine years old.”