The government is collecting evidence of crimes committed by British nationals who have fought with the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq and Syria, in order to bring about prosecutions. It is understood that the Foreign Office wants to “gather evidence while it’s fresh”, and that prosecutions would not necessarily be limited to British courts.
Crossbench Catholic peer Lord Alton, who has been campaigning for the Government to recognise the actions of Islamic State's against Christians, Yazidis and other minority communities as genocide, told thetablet.co.uk that he has spoken to a senior figure in the Foreign Office’s War Crimes Unit and been assured that agents acting on behalf of the Foreign Office have been “diligently collecting evidence throughout the last 12 months”.
Lord Alton was speaking on the anniversary of a 278-0 vote in the House of Commons to declare that Islamic State’s actions against Christians and Yazidis amounted to genocide. That motion was put forward by Conservative MP Fiona Bruce, while a similar motion proposed by Lord Alton in the upper chamber narrowly failed.
Bruce’s motion called on the Government to make a referral via the Security Council to the International Criminal Court. “The same evidence can then be used when an international hearing takes place,” Lord Alton said.
He expressed frustration that in the year since the vote, little progress had been made in bringing Islamic State's fighters to justice. The Home Office and Foreign Office said: “Those who have committed criminal offences should expect to be prosecuted under the full range of existing counter-terrorism legislation.”
The Foreign Office does not want to bring a motion about Islamic State to the UN Security Council without linking it to alleged war crimes by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. However, it believes that Russia, which backs Syria, would veto any such move. “In my view you could have done one without the other, or do both and allow Russia to veto it and create a regional tribunal,” Lord Alton said.
Bruce challenged her party to keep the Conservative Government’s 2015 commitment to “stand up for the freedom of people of all religions … for example by supporting persecuted Christians in the Middle East”. In a blog for the Politeia website she called on the UN and aid agencies to abandon the policy of “non-discrimination” in the case of Middle Eastern Christians, as they “ have specific needs and vulnerabilities”.
"Right now Christians are encountering discrimination in what are often Sunni majority camps. Many Christians, of course, fearing persecution in the camps, do not enter them at all. There is a need for a concerted effort to help Christians in this situation, a need for independent translators, security personnel and separate accommodation within camps.
"The main blockage to this change is a policy, adopted and pursued by aid agencies, including the Department for International Development, that religious affiliation should not be a criterion for allocating help," Bruce wrote in a blog published earlier this month. Yet it precisely that affiliation which in many cases is the single cause of displacement, homelessness, hunger, and the refugee status of many
• Pope Francis has agreed to greet the Yazidi human rights activist Nadia Murad after his General Audience on 3 May. Murad was imprisoned and repeatedly raped after being imprisoned by IS jihadists, while six of her brothers and her mother were killed.
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