UN Team Collects Evidence on Chemical Weapon Use by Islamic State
A UN investigative team is compiling evidence on the development and use of chemical weapons by Islamic State extremists in Iraq, the head of the team, Christian Ritscher, told the UN Security Council on Wednesday.
Ritscher said he has prioritized the investigation of chemical weapons used by Islamic State after visiting the town of Taza Khurmatu in northeastern Iraq earlier this year. Taza Khurmatu, a mainly Shia Turkmen town, is believed to be the site of the first chemical attack by the extremist group, in March 2016. UN investigators said that within days of exposure, more than 6,000 residents of the town were treated for injuries and two children died, and many survivors continue to suffer chronic and ongoing effects.
Islamic State “weaponized several chemical agents and deployed these as chemical rockets and mortars, as well as improvised explosive devices, in the vicinity of Taza Khurmatu,” Ritscher said.
The extremist Islamic State group seized about a third of Iraq in 2014 and declared a caliphate in a bloody rampage in which tens of thousands of people were killed, before being defeated in 2017. Ritscher heads the UN Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes committed by the Islamic State group, known as UNITAD, which was established by the Security Council in 2017 to collect evidence, in cooperation with the Iraqi authorities, to be used against Islamic State perpetrators at criminal trials.
There was “no shortage of evidence” about Islamic State crimes in Iraq, as it had a large bureaucracy and state-like administrative system, Ritscher said. His team had led efforts that have so far digitized 8 million pages of Islamic State documents held by the Iraqi authorities, and the next step would be to establish a central archive of all the digitized evidence against the group.
Ritscher said UNITAD is also prioritizing “persons of interest” living in other countries and is supporting criminal proceedings against alleged members and supporters of Islamic State in 17 countries.
