Baghdad, 12 June 2021 – Seven years ago, Da’esh fighters executed an estimated 1,700 Iraqi air force recruits at Camp Speicher near Tikrit, 140 kilometres northwest of Baghdad. Speaking today, the Head of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) program in Iraq, Alexander Hug, said it was “essential to continue the efforts of the National Team, the Mass Graves Directorate (MGD) and the Medico-Legal Directorate of the Ministry of Health (MLD), together with ICMP to account for those who are still missing as a result of the massacre and to bring those who were responsible to justice.”

Since 2016 ICMP has provided operational support to Iraqi experts in addressing ISIS crimes, by safeguarding and excavating gravesites in Sinjar and mass graves in Tikrit, including the graves at Camp Speicher. This has included providing training, guidance, and onsite operational support for the multi-agency work at Camp Speicher. ICMP supported three phases of fieldwork by the National Team in 2016 and 2017, during which…

The Hague, 8 June 2021 – The verdict handed down today by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (UNMICT) in the case of Ratko Mladić, following legal proceedings that have lasted for more than nine years, is an important affirmation of the rule of law, ICMP Director-General Kathryne Bomberger said.

The UNMICT upheld the conviction of Mladić for the genocide in the area of Srebrenica in 1995, war crimes and crimes against humanity.  Mladić, who was the Bosnian Serb commander during the conflict, has been sentenced to life imprisonment.

“Those who killed unarmed civilians and those who facilitated the conditions for these crimes, wrongly believed that they could erase their crimes through hiding the mortal remains of their victims, said Bomberger.

ICMP’s work, in particular scientific evidence establishing the identity of victims from the 1990s conflicts, contributed to an incontestable narrative of genocide and other war crimes. The evidence has contributed…