News Center - The United Nations Investigative Team to promote accountability for crimes committed by ISIS (UNITAD) Head Karim Ahmad Khan concluded war crimes were committed by the Islamic State group against predominantly Shiite unarmed cadets and personnel from the Tikrit Air Academy who were captured, tortured, and subjected to mass execution in June 2014.

“This was manifest in the ISIL ultimatum applied to all Yazidis “to convert or die” and led to thousands killed, “either executed en masse, shot as they fled, or dying from exposure on Mount Sinjar as they tried to escape”, Khan said, “Thousands more were enslaved, with women and children abducted from their families and subjected to the most brutal abuses, including serial rape and other forms of unendurable sexual violence.”

Khan also said that the evidence collected by UNITAD details how the militant group used laboratories at Mosul University as the epicenter of its chemical weapons program, drawing on the expertise of scientists and medical professionals from Iraq and abroad.