This event will provide an update on recent European trials of ISIL members for crimes against the Yazidi community.

In 2019 and 2023, the LSE Middle East Centre published papers by Sareta Ashraph and Valeria Cetorelli on A demographic documentation of ISIS’s attack on the Yazidi village of Kocho and The Yazidi genocide: a demographic documentation of ISIL’s attack on Tel Qasab and Tel Banat. These papers were part of the Documenting Yazidi Victims of ISIS project run by the LSE Middle East Centre and supported by Gerald Gray, Institute for Redress & Recovery, Santa Clara University School of Law. This project employed rigorous demographic methods and individual-level data in order to identify every Yazidi victim.

One of the integral uses of this database was that it plays a significant role in achieving justice for ISIL’s crimes against the Yazidi community of Sinjar in northern Iraq. This event will provide an update on how this data has been used in recent European trials of ISIL members.

Meet our speaker and chair

Sareta Ashraph is a barrister specialised in international criminal law, with a focus on the gendered commission of genocide. For over a decade, she has been focussed on case-building in relation to ISIL crimes against the Yazidis. She served as the Chief of Investigations at the UN Investigative Team to promote accountability for crimes committed by Da'esh/ISIL (UNITAD) (2020-2022), as the Chief Legal Analyst on the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria (2012-2016) and, along with Dr. Valeria Cetorelli, founded the Yazidi Victims Demographic Documentation Project, supported by the LSE Middle East Centre. She is a Senior Consultant to the Center for Justice and Accountability, building cases and supporting universal jurisdiction prosecutions and has appeared as an expert witness in recent trials in Europe in which ISIL members have been charged with genocide and crimes against humanity committed against the Yazidis.

Roza Qaidi is a Yazidi justice advocate and researcher. Following ISIL's 2014 attack on the Yazidi community, Roza began to support humanitarian efforts within her own community in the IDP camps set up close to where she lived in northern Iraq. In 2015 and 2016, she and Sareta worked together on the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria report, "They Came To Destroy: ISIL Crimes Against the Yazidis". Since then, Roza has been involved in supporting justice efforts for her community and in 2023, received an LL.M in International Law from the European University in Frankfurt. She works as a consultant with the Center for Justice and Accountability on case-building for crimes committed by ISIL in Iraq and Syria.

Sana Murrani is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and an Associate Professor in Spatial Practice with a background in Architecture and Urban Design. She recently led an AHRC Impact Accelerator Fellowship project alongside multidisciplinary artist Kimbal Bumstead and a team of Yazidi researchers titled: Ruptured Atlas: Creative Mapping of Yazidi Odyssey of Home, Displacement, Migration and Return. The project was in partnership with Sinjar Academy, Yazda, IOM Iraq and the LSE Middle East Centre.