Abstract

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (hereinafter ‘the ISIS’) as an extremist organization had and continues to commit several crimes against the Yazidi Kurds as an ethnic component since 3/8/2014 in Iraq. The crimes took the forms of systematic killing, pillage, enslavement, captivity, rape, displacement and destruction of villages in the area. The facts and evidence obtained, indeed, prove that these crimes do not fall under the Iraqi national law only, but also fall under international law. The reason is that the nature of the crimes committed are in violation of the statute of the International Criminal Court, international criminal law and international humanitarian law, as well as many relevant international agreements and protocols. At national level, these crimes are also in violation of the applicable criminal laws in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, such as the Penal Code and the Anti-Terrorism Law. In addition to these crimes, this component’s sufferings were worsened due to the absence of prompt justice to hold most of the arrested members of the ISIS accountable in front of the law until the moment writing this research. The main dilemma in this context is associated with the difficulty of filing a complaint against the ISIS members before the International Criminal Court since Iraq is not a party to the Rome Statute, and it has not accepted temporary jurisdiction of this court for these crimes. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government did not take any step forward to bring the case against the ISIS members before the Iraqi judiciary, which seems to be due to political and many other legal reasons. This research addresses these legal aspects and analyses them within the scope and subject of research.