Netherlands, Belgium join inquiry on crimes against Yazidis in Syria, Iraq
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Amid persistent European efforts to persecute returning foreign militants for crimes against Yazidis, Netherlands and Belgium joined an international investigation into atrocities carried out against the community in Syria and Iraq.
The European Union’s judicial cooperation agency said on Monday that the Netherlands and Belgium have joined an international investigation into crimes against the Yazidi minority in Syria and Iraq.
In October 2021, with the support by the Hague-based Eurojust, the Joint Investigation Team was established by France and Sweden to identify and prosecute extremists who targeted Yazidis during the armed conflict in Syria and Iraq.
Crimes committed against the Yazidi community, according to the UN, mounted to genocides.
On August 3, 2014, a few months after the proclamation of the so-called “caliphate” by Islamic State (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIS fighters converged on the Yazidi’s largest community in Iraq’s Nineveh Province, close to the Syrian border. Within hours, Yazidis were displaced en masse, a majority of which sought shelter on top of nearby Mount Sinjar.
According to official figures, more than 6000 Yazidis were abducted when ISIS attacked the Yazidi Sinjar. Over 2000 remain missing.
After only three days, ISIS controlled most of the Sinjar region. Only the mountain itself remained beyond reach. On its barren peaks, thousands of people were trapped without food, water or shade from the scorching summer sun. However, for those remained behind, a darker story was about to be told.
In the villages which dot the landscape east and south of Mount Sinjar, a massacre was ensuing. The elderly – men and women alike – were killed on the spot. Yazidi girls were taken to be sold as “sex slaves,” while boys were forced to join the “Cubs of the Caliphate” – ISIS’ minor training program.
In January, deputies in the German federal parliament, the Bundestag, passed a motion to officially recognize the 2014 crimes perpetrated by the ISIS against the Yazidis in Sinjar (Shengal), as a genocide.
A German court sentenced 37-year-old Nadine K to nine years and three months for her role in crimes against humanity and abetting genocide. She and her husband enslaved a young Yazidi girl, Naveen Rasho, for five years.