Amal Clooney: Daesh atrocities ‘the worst crimes of our generation’

Human rights barrister Amal Clooney has said that evidence of Daesh atrocities need to be collected urgently so justice is brought upon those who perpetrate “the worst crimes of our generation”.

“This is a test not just for the Iraqi government, but for the United Nations and international law.”

Clooney works for survivors of Iraq’s Yazidi community. In August 2014 thousands of Yazidis were forced to flee and take refuge up Mount Sinjar in northwest Iraq or face being slaughtered by Daesh. Some 5,000 were killed.

Read: Possible mass grave of Daesh victims found near Mosul

Massacres, gang rapes, forced child soldiers and slavery of the Yazidi people should not go unpunished, she told a conference for the accountability of crimes in Syria and Iraq.

Daesh was a “bureaucracy of evil”, she said, and has left evidence behind such as documents with the identity of foreign fighters and certificates of slave ownership. Tens of thousands of Yazidis who sought refuge in Germany can now testify.

Some 15,000 Daesh fighters have returned back home to countries that are members of the International Criminal Court and are therefore within its jurisdiction.