Security

Germany provides one million euros to UNITAD to help its investigations into ISIS financing

"Accountability for the crimes committed by ISIL (ISIS) must include identifying and prosecuting those who enabled and profited from these acts."

Wladimir van Wilgenburg 2021/10/27 09:22

Iraqi authorities excavate a mass grave site in the Anbar Governorate (Photo: UNITAD)

Iraq UNITAD ISIS Yezidi Genocide

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Germany renewed its support to the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by ISIS (UNITAD) by providing it with an additional one million euros in funding for its investigations into how Islamic State (ISIS) crimes were financed.

“This support is central to UNITAD’s overall investigative efforts, as it seeks to uncover the financial mechanisms that supported or enabled perpetrators to profit from ISIL’s grave violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law,” UNITAD said in a press release on Tuesday.

“Accountability for the crimes committed by ISIL (ISIS) must include identifying and prosecuting those who enabled and profited from these acts, and Germany’s contributions will be crucial in supporting UNITAD’s efforts in pursuing accountability for such crimes,” said Sareta Ashraph, UNITAD Director of Investigations.

The statement also said that the unit investigating ISIS finances “will broaden its focus to cover the economic aspects of ISIL crimes.” Also, UNITAD will “continue to investigate the role of ISIL’s financial support network.”

It will expand investigations to focus on ISIS elements that “engaged in the persecution of ethnic and religious groups through theft and widespread pillage across Iraq.”

“Only by exposing the roots of the financial sources of Da’esh (ISIS), we will be able to overcome the threat of Da’esh (ISIS0 and achieve long-lasting stability in Iraq,” said Martin Jäger, Germany’s Ambassador to Iraq.

“Cooperation with Iraqi and international partners in the banking and private sector, as well as law enforcement and prosecutorial entities, remains instrumental to accountability efforts for those who financially supported ISIL and facilitated the crimes committed by its members in Iraq,” the UNITAD statement concluded.

UNITAD is currently led by former Federal Public Prosecutor Christian Ritscher from Germany, who was appointed in September.

Ritscher was the head of the German War Crimes Unit S4 responsible for prosecuting and charging individuals in Germany in relation to crimes that they may have been committed outside Germany, including Iraq and Syria.

This also included prosecutions against alleged ISIS members for their role in the genocide committed against the Yezidi community in Iraq in 2014.

This week, Jennifer W., a German ISIS member, was sentenced to ten years in jail in Germany for letting a five-year-old Yezidi child die of thirst in Iraq.