Roundup: UN report says IS may have committed crimes against humanity, genocide

The UN Human Rights Office on Thursday issued a report claiming that the Da'esh group, or IS, may have committed the most serious international crimes -- war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Yazidi minority in Iraq.

"The report, compiled by an investigation team sent to the region by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights late last year, draws on in-depth interviews with more than 100 people who witnessed or survived attacks in Iraq since last June," Farhan Haq, the deputy UN spokesman, said at a daily news briefing here.

The Da'esh group was also known as the terrorist Islamic State, reported by the world media as IS, ISIL or ISIS. "Da'esh" is the pronunciation of the acronym for ISIS in Arabic -- read as Dawlat Al Islam fi Iraq Wa al-Sham.

In February, the UN Security Council has strongly condemned the "ongoing barbaric terrorist acts" committed by militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and reaffirmed its determination in defeating the extremist group.

"The report finds that widespread abuses committed by Da'esh include killings, torture, rape and sexual slavery, forced religious conversions and the conscription of children," Haq said. "All of these, it says, amount to violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. Some may constitute crimes against humanity or may amount to war crimes."

"The report says that the pattern of the attacks against the Yezidi community pointed to the intent to destroy the Yezidi as a group and 'strongly suggests' that Da'esh may have perpetrated genocide," he said.

"The investigation team also received information from numerous sources who alleged that Iraqi Security Forces and affiliated militia had committed serious human rights violations during their counter-offensive operations against Da'esh," said Haq. "It called on the Iraqi government to investigate all crimes outlined in the report and bring the perpetrators to justice."

The Da'esh militants took control of a northern Iraqi city of Mosul in Jun 2014 before unconditional by tools of a country's Sunni Arab heartland. Militants had progressing prisoner in some areas in adjacent Syria.

More than 100 people who witnessed or survived the attacks in Iraq between June 2014 and February 2015 helped the investigation team compile its report, which cites brutal and targeted killings of hundreds of Yezidi men and boys in the Ninewa plains in August 2014.

Yezidi populations were rounded up, with men and boys over the age of 14 separated from the women and girls. The males were led away and shot by ISIL, while the women were abducted as the " spoils of war."

"In some instances," the report said, "villages were entirely emptied of their Yezidi population."

Yezidi female escapees described being openly sold or handed over as "gifts" to Da'esh fighters. Witnesses described rapes of girls as young as six and nine years old and a scene where ISIL members sat laughing as two teenage girls were raped in the next room.

Boys between the ages of eight and 15 also described horrific experiences, as they were separated from their mothers, transported to locations in Iraq and Syria and forced to convert to Islam. They were subjected to religious and military training, including how to shoot guns and fire rockets, and were forced to watch beheadings.

Christians, Kaka'e, Kurds, Sabea-Mandeans, Shi'a and Turkmen also suffered brutal treatment at ISIL's hands, said the report, citing the thousands of Christians uprooted from their homes in June last year, when ISIL ordered them to choose between conversion, taxation or displacement.

Among the victims were the 600, mostly Shi'a prisoners who were massacred by ISIL members, said the report.

An Iraqi government investigation into that incident and another into an ISIL massacre of more than 1,500 cadets from Speicher army base have yet to reveal their conclusions publicly, the report noted, calling for investigations into all crimes detailed in the report, including those alleged to have been committed by government forces.

Retreating Iraqi forces allegedly set fire to an army base in Sinsil, where several dozen Sunni prisoners were held, and in another incident, at least 43 prisoners were allegedly shot dead in the al-Wahda police station in Diyala.

Villagers reported being rounded up and taken to al-Bakr airbase at Salah-ad-Din where, the report said, torture is allegedly routine. Endite