Iraq vows to bring its own rights violators to justice
Iraqi government unreservedly condemns any human rights violation: Al-Bayati
GENEVA (AFP) - Iraq pledged Wednesday to probe all rights abuses committed in the conflict-torn country, including by its own security forces and pro-government militias, and bring the perpetrators to justice.
"Any person involved in any violation will be brought to trial," Iraqi Human Rights Minister Mohammed Al-Bayati told the United Nations Human Rights Council.
He was responding to a UN report which provided a long list of atrocities committed by Islamic State jihadists but also contained accusations of abuses by Iraqi security forces and affiliated militia.
"The Iraqi government unreservedly condemns any human rights violation," Al-Bayati said.
The report, presented to the council Wednesday by UN deputy human rights chief Flavia Pansieri, presented horrifying details of killings, torture, rape, sexual slavery and the use of child soldiers by the IS extremists.
Many of the abuses may amount to "crimes against humanity" and "war crimes", while IS s systematic attacks on the Yazidi minority likely constitutes "genocide", the report said.
"The window is closing fast to pull Iraq back from the brink of chaos," Pansieri told the council.
She and a number of country representatives reiterated calls for Iraq to join the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to ensure the court can try the perpetrators of the staggering number of abuses.
Al-Bayati said Baghdad had taken note of calls to refer the case to the ICC.
"This is being studied, and once the study has been completed, Iraq will take the appropriate decision," he told the council.
The UN report listed IS crimes against men, women and children that were "painful even to contemplate", Pansieri said.
It also charged that pro-government forces had carried out extra-judicial killings torture, abductions and forcibly displaced large numbers of people, in what could amount to "war crimes".
Al-Bayati said the crimes allegedly carried out by pro-government forces were "isolated individual actions", which "in no case can be compared to the systematic and transboundary terrorism" of IS.
US representative Peter Mulrean agreed.
"There should be no suggestion of equivalence between ISIL s atrocities and violations committed by the fight against ISIL, but all are deplorable," he told the council, using an alternate acronym for the jihadist group.
