Special Adviser Karim Khan QC Speech at UNSC, 26 November 2019

AS DELIVERED

It is indeed an honour to be able to present the third report (see S/2019/878) of the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh/Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (UNITAD).

Since my last briefing to the Council (see S/PV.8573), the Investigative Team has worked with some purpose and continued to ensure that the experiences and needs of the survivors of crimes committed by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), as well as their families and victims, are placed at the centre of our work — and not simply by paying them lip service, but through demonstrable action of members of the Team. All communities, whether Shabak, Kaka’i, Shia, Sunni, Christian, Turkmen or Yazidi, have suffered the unbelievable brutality and cruelty of the most unIslamic State called Da’esh. It is, of course, essential that their voices and experiences be heard as we conduct our investigations to build credible cases in order to ensure accountability.

In the past six months since my last report (see S/2019/407), I have visited and met with tribal leaders throughout Iraq, family members and survivors — not only in Baghdad, but in Erbil, Tall Afar, Mosul, Ninawa Plains, Diyala and elsewhere in Iraq — to ensure that those accounts are recorded and that the interactions of the Investigative Team can be as informed as possible in order to understand the experiences of the victims and witnesses and to ensure proper investigations.

Last week, I visited two displacement camps in Dohuk and I saw women and children who had suffered awful slavery and sexual abuse., as well as men, trying to live with dignity in very difficult conditions. The effects of Da’esh still linger. Not only have the crimes been endured, but communities are still grappling with the aftermath. The courage of the survivors gives one pause for thought because in their engagement with us, they had to speak and relive hell on Earth, which is what they experienced. They spoke with such engagement and willingness that it put into sharp relief the heavy responsibility that lies with all of us to ensure that their cries, their tears and their suffering are met with purposeful action and credible investigations.

It is, of course, the responsibility of all of us — the Security Council, me and the Team — to ensure that not only are words spoken, but that we have the collective stamina and focus to make sure that proper investigations and accountability are realized in practice.

As reflected in my report, over the past six months, the Investigative Team has sought to draw on this imperative for urgent action in the delivery of its mandate. One year after our deployment to Iraq, I am pleased to inform the Council that the Team is now fully operational. We had about five staff members when we first deployed in Iraq, and we now have 107 members. I am delighted that, as we have grown, we have managed to maintain a good gender balance — 53 per cent of our substantive and support staff are women, and more than 50 per cent of our senior leadership positions are occupied by women. At the same time, I am glad to say that we have achieved geographical diversity — all regional groups of the United Nations continue to be represented in our Team.

The establishment of that core infrastructure has provided a basis for significant progress in the collection, gathering and analysis of digital, testimonial and forensic evidence with respect to the three core areas that I adumbrated in my previous report, namely, crimes in Mosul, in Sinjar and in Speicher — the Tikrit Air Academy. At the same time, we have ensured that we have a responsibility to meet quickly and meaningfully the requests that we have received from third States and other domestic courts.

By using the trust fund, we have also ensured that we have expanded the scope of investigations to make sure that all the diverse communities — regardless of race, religion, tribe or ethnic origin — that were targeted by Da’esh will have investigations carried out that focus on the crimes that they endured in order to ensure criminal responsibility based on evidence. The breadth of the field work conducted by the Team during the reporting period has been reflected in key evidence-collection activities, even in recent weeks. We have managed, for example, to complete 3D laser scanning of crime scenes, which will help bring to life, by way of modern technology, scenes that may be known in Iraq or unknown in third countries. It is also a very useful aid when one is speaking to a witness, who can, without going into areas that may still be dangerous and traumatic, actually position themselves in that 3D modelling in a way that will bring clarity to their accounts and hopefully assist domestic courts in assessing criminal responsibility.

We have continued to collect evidence and interview witnesses, including witnesses who endured sexual and gender based-violence, rape or slavery, as well as other witnesses, from Dohuk and elsewhere. We have managed to do that with full respect for international standards — as the Council requires of us — by way of our witness protection unit and our clinical psychologists, who we recruited with the kind assistance of the Netherlands. We have also garnered together the successful use of social media and reviewed some of the social media to put forward the photographs of individuals who appear in the Da’esh propaganda videos and elsewhere. We have received thousands of responses that have helped us identify the names of those protagonists, which will further inform the investigations of the Team. We have also worked hand in glove with the Iraqi domestic authorities to continue to gather DNA samples from the remains of mass gravesites so that hopefully we can build cases, as well as identify the remains and, together with the mass graves directorate of Iraq, return them to their loved ones for burial, in accordance with their religious and cultural practices.

As I address the Council today, we have two field-based missions that are actively conducting investigations in the Ninawa governorate. In fact, at this moment they are investigating crimes that targeted in particular judges, religious clergy, journalists and health-care professionals — because, as we see, among many other aspects, Da’esh seems to have targeted some of the leaders, some of the informers of Mosul, when they strangled that city and then suffocated it when they took over completely. Based upon those activities, the Investigative Team has identified a number of individual ISIL members as primary targets for further investigations in relation to each of the areas that we have previously identified — the three investigative priorities that were detailed in my previous report. For example, just in relation to the crimes that targeted the Yazidi community alone, we have identified more than 160 perpetrators of massacres against the Yazidis, particularly in Kojo, and elsewhere, and we are focusing our work to build solid cases, hopefully, in relation to each of those that may be presented to domestic courts — Iraq, of course, is the primary intended recipient — but any courts that are willing and able to hold members of Da’esh accountable.

The progress achieved by the Team in the past six months has continued to build on our relationship of mutual support and collaboration with the national authorities of Iraq, and their support and assistance has been exemplary. I used that word when I had the honour of delivering my second briefing to the Council. I am glad to say that that has continued to be the case. Without the support and the real, meaningful assistance of the Government of Iraq, this hope and prayer for justice would fall on fallow ground. Only by that hand guiding us step by step can we achieve on the promise of justice that we all wish to see. Since my previous report, over the past six months we have conducted 203 fieldbased investigative activities with the direct support of the Iraqi authorities. These missions are planned and facilitated with the support of the National Operations Centre within the Office of the Prime Minister. Once again, without that support, which has been critical, we simply could not move outside of Baghdad.

Our engagement with the Iraqi judiciary has been essential. I think, personally, that it is one of the key aspects that the Team has managed to move forward as dynamically as it has done. While I must pay my thanks to the Chief Justice, all the judges of Iraq who we have dealt with have made meaningful contributions to allow UNITAD, together with the Government of Iraq, to meet the requirements of justice. An example of that is in Mosul, where we have had quite extensive discussions with the Counter-Terrorism Court in Tallkayf. We have gathered thousands of pages of material pertaining to 37 case files, and further volumes of evidence are also being digitized. That will be an advantage and an asset to UNITAD, and it is also of mutual benefit to the Iraqi investigative judges, so that they can actually access the material that they have once it is digitized.

Similarly, in relation to Camp Speicher and the awful massacre of mostly Shia cadets at Tikrit Air Academy, we have had unbelievable support from the national investigative commission that the Republic of Iraq established to look into that. I will come back to that a little bit later with regard to how we have managed to work together and build cases. Following the unanimous renewal of the mandate of the Investigative Team in September, I have also reached out and tried to ensure even closer communication and understanding with the Government of Iraq. I am delighted to say that, after the renewal, the Office of the Prime Minister set up a new national coordinating committee within his Office — it is a new composition — and includes a representative of the Kurdish Regional Government. I think that the Government of Iraq should be applauded for that foresight as well. The mandate repeatedly talks about the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq, and it is important that we have representatives from the entire territory of Iraq to make sure that we speak and work with one voice as effectively as possible. I met that new committee on 4 November in Baghdad and will meet with it again on my return on 10 November.

Our recruitment is moving at a good pace. We have completed a competitive recruitment process in accordance with United Nations rules, identified candidates for the posts that are to be occupied by Iraqi candidates and now we are at a working group-level stage of mutual consultations with the Government of Iraq to make sure that the Iraqi experts that we recruit have the confidence of the Government of Iraq and, again, that we work together in concert to the greatest possible extent. That unity of purpose in terms of collaboration and cooperation on logistics and support for the investigations has been mirrored by the cooperation and assistance given by the President and the Prime Minister of the Kurdish Regional Government. In the same way, I can only describe their support as exemplary, which is extremely positive. They have also set up an intergovernmental task force, which was created in order to hopefully ensure the effective transmission of requests from the Investigative Team and an effective receipt of information as we try to ensure accountability.

A technical assistance programme has also been pursued. The mandate, of course, repeatedly emphasizes that we are required to share knowledge with the Iraqi members of the Team, who work on an equal footing with us, but also to share our technical knowledge and enhance some capacities. We have done so through a number of measures — not only exhumations and the identification of victims, but also with other trainings and assistance, whether related to drones, 3D laser scanners or rapid DNA machines. We have conducted trainings for all of those.

We have an important aspect coming up: we have received funding from the European Union. Together with the Government of Iraq, we hope to create a digitization programme that allows Iraq to have a digitized version of its records and information that are relevant to Da’esh crimes. It will also allow UNITAD to harvest those and build cases in accordance with international standards. In my previous report, I intimated that UNITAD would imminently be feeding into domestic courts, which we have done.

I am glad to report that we received a request from Finland, which had a case relating to the Camp Speicher massacre. It was before the court of appeal. With the full support and knowledge and real meaningful assistance of the Iraqi authorities — particularly the judiciary — we managed to have eight witnesses give evidence from the UNITAD headquarters in Baghdad straight into the court of appeal in Turku, Finland, in complete accordance with international standards. We saw not only prosecution witnesses, but also defence witnesses. It is a very real credit to my brothers and sisters in Iraq and the Government that it even extended to transferring people from custody to the UNITAD headquarters. The authorities in Finland have formally expressed their thanks to the Government of Iraq for that facilitation.

Through this engagement, UNITAD has demonstrated its ability and willingness to respond to a requirement in the mandate to feed into courts in Iraq or those of third States. We are currently in receipt of three further formal requests from States to feed into domestic prosecutions that they are conducting in relation to Da’esh crimes. We have also received an assortment of additional inquiries from other States that believe that, with the assistance of the Government of Iraq, we may be able to move forward. Over the past six months, we have also received commitments of support from Australia, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Philippines, Sweden and Uganda. Again, without both the assistance of Government-provided personnel and contributions to the trust fund, the operational activities of UNITAD would be severely circumscribed.

The past six months have been characterized, in my view, by a real move forward from start-up to real operations. We have assisted in building case files and fed into third-country courts. We are refocusing our commitment to bring our communication with the Government of Iraq ever-closer, while maintaining the independence of our investigations, which, of course, is absolutely essential. I am profoundly grateful for the support not only from the Government of Iraq, but for the support and the trust that we are fostering and that we have been so generously given by survivors. I am pleased that today, at the initiative of the United Kingdom — and I thank you, Madam President — the Council will have an opportunity to hear from a survivor — Mr. Kachi — who is on screen at the moment. I would humbly suggest that this precedent is a very good one. I hope that, in future briefings, by the leave of the Council, other survivors from other communities in Iraq will also have the chance and the honour to address the Council for a few moments.