IS still ‘committing genocide’ against Yazidis: UN probe

“Genocide has occurred and is ongoing,” Paulo Pinheiro, head of the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) for Syria, said in a statement.“ISIS has subjected every Yazidi woman, child or man that it has captured to the most horrific of atrocities,” he added, using another acronym for the jihadist group.

The Yazidis are neither Muslims nor Arabs and follow a unique faith despised by IS.The Kurdish-speaking minority is mostly based around Sinjar mountain in northern Iraq.In 2014, IS jihadists massacred Yazidis in Sinjar, forcing tens of thousands of them to flee, and capturing thousands of girls and women as spoils of war to be used as sex slaves.

 The UN warned last year that the group appeared to be committing genocide against the Yazidis, but the COI’s report “They came to destroy: ISIS Crimes against the Yazidis”, published on Thursday, was more conclusive.

The evidence collected by the COI can serve “as a roadmap for prosecutions,” commission member Carla del Ponte told reporters.