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Former ICC prosecutor pushes to open case into 'Yazidi genocide' in Iraq

By REUTERS

SEPTEMBER 3, 2015 02:00

Updated: SEPTEMBER 3, 2015 01:59

ERBIL - The former chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC) is pushing for a case to be opened into the "ongoing genocide" against Iraq's Yazidi community at the hands of Islamic State militants.

Luis Moreno Ocampo said he was approached in the United States recently by Yazidi activists who are seeking justice for the systematic slaughter, rape and enslavement of thousands of members of the religious minority in northern Iraq.

"It's a very clear case. It's an ongoing genocide because there are still people in captivity," Ocampo told Reuters in an interview in Erbil, capital of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, late on Wednesday.

"It's up to us to provide information that allows the ICC to understand, yes, we have jurisdiction in this case in this way," said Ocampo, who launched many of the ICC's highest-profile cases, including against Saif al-Islam, son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and is now a professor at Harvard University. "It's difficult to predict who will be prosecuted because this is the beginning."

It could take years for such a case to be brought to trial, however, given the legal, political and practical hurdles.

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