Title: ACCOUNTABILITY FOR ISIS FIGHTERS
Author: Hawre Ahmed
Publisher: FAU
Release date: 2020
Hawre AhmedYear: 2020Download E-book VersionThe Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) emerged from the ash of unsolved political, religious and sectarian conflicts in the Middle East that motivated many extreme terrorists around the globe to join their ugly, savage, inexplicable, nihilistic, valueless, barbaric actions by using their self-interpretation and extreme verses of Quran, then became the greatest threat to the humanity in recent years. It started invading a big swath in Iraq and Syria and committing most core international crimes, including the crime of genocide against Yazidi community in 2014, war crimes, crimes against humanity, specifically sexual and gender-based violence, abduction, use of prohibited weapons, extrajudicial killings, torture, indiscriminate attacks, recruitment and use of children, attacks against religious and ethnic groups, displacing civilian people.
As a response to the threat of ISIS, the international community formed a global military coalition to defeat them in Sep 2014, and the United Nation Human Rights Council on 22 Aug 2011 established the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria (IICIS) to investigate all alleged violations of international human rights law since Mar 2011 in Syria, which since the emerging of ISIS, the Commission recorded the crime of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Then the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in 2017 created the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Daesh (UNITAD) to support domestic efforts to hold ISIS accountable by collecting evidences in Iraq of acts to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed by ISIS.
During the fighting against ISIS many ISIS fighters were captured by different states and authorities, the Iraqi and Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) judiciaries convicted at least 7,374 ISIS suspects, In northeast Syria, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) hold about 12,000 suspected of ISIS affiliation, including 4,000 foreigners from almost 50 different nationalities. Turkey holds 2,280 ISIS members, and many ISIS-linked suspects were arrested in western countries. All these individuals are being dealt differently according to different legal systems, but none has been convicted for committing core international crimes yet.This research aims to find answers to questions under the international criminal law jurisprudence which relate to the accountability for the fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and the possibility of prosecuting them before an international criminal tribunal for responsibility of core international crimes, specifically tried to find answers for two questions:
Did ISIS fighters commit core international crimes? if yes How can the ISIS fighters be brought into justice?[1]