The Islamic
State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) emerged from the ash of unsolved political, religious
and sectarian conflicts in the Middle East that motivated many extreme
terrorists around the globe to join their ugly, savage, inexplicable,
nihilistic, valueless, barbaric actions by
using their self-interpretation and extreme verses of Quran, then became the
greatest threat to the humanity in recent years. It started invading a big
swath in Iraq and Syria and committing most core international crimes,
including the crime of genocide against Yazidi community in 2014, war crimes,
crimes against humanity, specifically sexual and gender-based violence,
abduction, use of prohibited weapons, extrajudicial killings, torture,
indiscriminate attacks, recruitment and use of children, attacks against
religious and ethnic groups, displacing civilian people.
As a response
to the threat of ISIS, the international community formed a global military coalition
to defeat them in Sep 2014, and the United Nation Human Rights Council on 22
Aug 2011 established the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on
Syria (IICIS) to investigate all alleged violations of international human
rights law since Mar 2011 in Syria, which since the emerging of ISIS, the
Commission recorded the crime of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against
humanity. Then the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in 2017 created the
United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes
Committed by Daesh (UNITAD) to support domestic efforts to hold ISIS
accountable by collecting evidences in Iraq of acts to war crimes, crimes
against humanity and genocide committed by ISIS.
During the fighting
against ISIS many ISIS fighters were captured by different states and
authorities, the Iraqi and Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) judiciaries convicted
at least 7,374 ISIS suspects, In northeast Syria, the
Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) hold about 12,000 suspected of ISIS
affiliation, including 4,000 foreigners from almost 50 different nationalities. Turkey holds 2,280 ISIS members, and
many ISIS-linked suspects were arrested in western countries. All these
individuals are being dealt differently according to different legal systems, but none has
been convicted for committing core international crimes yet.
This research
aims to find answers to questions under the international criminal law jurisprudence
which relate to the accountability for the fighters of the Islamic State of
Iraq and Syria and the possibility of prosecuting them before an international criminal
tribunal for responsibility of core international crimes, specifically tried to
find answers for two questions:
Did ISIS fighters commit core international crimes? if yes
How can the ISIS fighters be brought into justice?