UN diplomats examine Islamic State alleged crimes 

Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani, Iraqi Minister of Human Rights, is pictured on a TV screen during a statement at the special session on Iraq of the Human Rights Council, at the UN’s European headquarters in Geneva

Iraq’s government asked the U.N.’s top human rights body yesterday to investigate alleged crimes against civilians committed by the Islamic State group in its rampage across northeastern Syria and northern and western Iraq.
Diplomats were weighing the request at a daylong special session of the 47-nation Human Rights Council on Iraq and the extremist group. A draft resolution put forward by Iraq would set up a U.N. fact-
finding mission to investigate alleged abuses by the group.
Such a mission would be carried out by U.N. staff, unlike the five independent commissions with outside experts appointed to investigate alleged crimes in Central African Republic, Eritrea, Gaza, Sri Lanka and Syria.
The Geneva-based rights council created all but one of them; the Security Council, the U.N.’s most powerful arm, authorized the one on Central African Republic.
The session was focused on the threat posed by the Islamic State group, which has seized cities, towns and vast tracts of land and carried out a number of massacres and beheadings.
Diplomats convened after the U.S. launched a series of airstrikes to prevent the group from advancing on the Kurdish regional capital of Irbil and to help protect members of the Yazidi minority who were stranded in Iraq’s northwest.
The U.S. also launched airstrikes near Iraq’s Mosul Dam, the country’s largest, allowing Iraqi and Kurdish forces to retake the facility from the Islamic State fighters.
In Geneva, U.N. officials expressed grave concern yesterday at the reported atrocities in Iraq, including executing detainees and shelling civilian areas.
“Systematic and intentional attacks on civilians may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity for individuals,” Flavia Pansieri, the U.N. deputy high commissioner for human rights, said of both sides fighting in Iraq. “The reports we have received reveal acts of inhumanity on an unimaginable scale.” AP

John Heilprin, Geneva