The exhumation of mass graves of crimes committed by the Islamic State (#ISIS# ) during their brutal reign in parts of Iraq is a “top priority” for the United Nation’s investigation team into the terror group’s crimes, the team’s head said on Sunday.

“The finding of the remains and the excavation and exhumation of mass graves is a top priority,” Christian Ritscher, head of the UN Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Daesh/ISIL (UNITAD), told Rudaw’s Nma Nabaz. “The sheer number of mass graves is one of the problems we are facing in terms of the exhumation of particularly Yazidi remains.”

ISIS swept through Iraq and neighboring Syria in 2014, imposing its so-called caliphate rule with extreme violence. Among the group’s crimes are “executions, torture, amputations, ethno-sectarian attacks, rape, and sexual slavery imposed on women and girls,” according to the UN body. Iraq in 2017 asked the UN to help collect and preserve evidence of ISIS crimes.

According to Ritscher, UNITAD has so far participated in the exhumation of 37 mass graves containing the remains of Yazidis, an ethnoreligious community which bore the brunt of ISIS atrocities.

“What we need to see in the end are trials before competent courts on charges of international crimes,” he said, adding that UNITAD consistently pursues evidence of the terror group’s crimes obtained from mass grave exhumations but stressing that the process of obtaining the evidence is lengthy and requires patience.

Ritscher also commended an ongoing digitization campaign launched by the UN which seeks to establish a central archive of millions of digitized documents of ISIS crimes in Iraq, saying that his team has supported the Iraqi judiciary “to digitize more than nine million pages of evidence.”

UNITAD’s mandate was extended by the UN Security Council in September.

During its three-year reign of terror in the country, ISIS controlled about a third of Iraq’s territory.

While the group was territorially defeated in Iraq in 2017, it took two more years for its Syria caliphate to be declared devoid of territorial control. Despite lacking substantial control over land, the militants continue to pose a serious risk on both countries through abductions, hit-and-run attacks, and bombings.

“The prosecution of international crimes committed by ISIL will go on until the last perpetrator is found or is dead. It can take decades and it will probably take decades of work to bring the perpetrators to justice, but we are working hard and are very dedicated to these investigations,” Ritscher stressed.[1]