UN investigative team in Iraq ‘digitizing’ ISIS war crimes evidence to support prosecutions

UNITED NATIONS (AA): The UN investigative team is ”digitizing” ISIS war crimes evidence to support prosecutions of perpetrators, according to an official.

Christian Ritscher, the head of UNITAD, said his team is assisting the Iraqi judiciary to organize and access “considerable volumes of ISIS records and battlefield evidence, via a mega digitization project.”

”Digitization operations have been launched at five courts in Iraq and two further courts will follow in the coming months,” he told the UN Security Council. ”As of now, the impressive amount of 8 million pages of ISIS documents from the holdings of the Iraqi authorities, including Kurdish authorities has been digitized.”

He said his team will establish a central archive that would be the unified repository of all digitized evidence against ISIS in the coming days.

”The central repository will play a key role to support prosecutions of ISIL (ISIS) perpetrators for the international crimes in Iraq,” he said. ”It could be a milestone to founding a comprehensive e-justice system in Iraq which can be upheld as a leading example not only in the region, but also globally.”

Ritscher said his team also works closely with competent investigative judges in Europe, who fully support their investigations.

ISIS seized vast swathes of territory in Iraq in Syria and declared a self-styled so-called “caliphate” in 2014.

The group suffered key losses in 2017 but remains a threat with an estimated 10,000 fighters operating in the area, according to the UN.