Prosecute ISIS fighters for murder, rape, slavery, torture not just terrorism, expert says

To stop the flow of recruits to ISIS, Canada and its allies need toput captured members of the group on trial for each crime they commit rather than lumping their offences under the generic term of terrorism, says the Canadian head of a group investigating atrocities in Iraq and Syria.

Bill Wiley, executive director for the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, has been working with investigators on the ground to tie crimes such as systematic murder, rape, slavery and torture to the ISIS leadership.

He says that while putting captured ISIS fighters on trial for terrorism may be easier than prosecuting them for slavery, genocide and the persecution of minorities, it will not cut off the flow of recruits to the militant group.

How to hold ISIS accountable for war crimes?

8 years ago

Duration 9:55

'If you prosecute an IS member as a terrorist, it may incite others to join,' says Bill Wiley, executive director of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability.

"It's a relatively quick way to prosecute individuals, but with a lot of possible joiners of these groups, if you prosecute an [ISIS] member as a terrorist, it may serve as an incentive to others to join because they'll say: 'Well, if we're terrorists, what about George Bush, what about Tony Blair and so forth,'" Wiley told CBC's Power & Politics.

"We really feel that this counterterrorism effort needs to be coupled with a criminal prosecutorial effort, which reveals groups such as the Islamic State to essentially be criminal syndicates engaged in murder, narcotics trafficking, sexual slavery and so forth to leave aside the terrorist label wherever possible," Wiley said.

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Wiley, a lawyer and former Canadian Forces officer, has worked on war crimes investigations with the Department of Justice Canada and the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

During an appearance before a parliamentary committee last November, Wiley told MPs that his group's annual operating budget stands at about $10.5 million and that Canada had provided the group with $3.3 million in funding over the previous 18 months.

Other donors to the group include the United Kingdom, Germany and the European Union.

"Canada is the most generous donor at the present time, or perhaps it's tied with the European Union," Wiley told the committee. "The problem is not that Canada should give more; the problem is states, including states that draw very heavily on our material, that give nothing."

Crimes against humanity

The group has about 150 staff, with about half that number working as investigators on the ground in Syria and Iraq. Their research has identified several dozen ISIS actors that have been directly engaged in planning and executing crimes such as slavery, rape and murder.

He says that ISIS designated the Yazidi population, which largely lives in Iraq, as subhuman and therefore not deserving of life.

"Men and boys over the age of roughly 10 were given the option of converting to Sunni Islam. Where they refused, they were summarily executed," Wiley told Power & Politics. "And as far as we can tell, the vast majority of males, in fact, did not convert and paid the price.

"Women and girls were set aside to be sorted for slavery. Women over a certain age we believe the cut off was about 40 years of age again were executed. We don't believe they were given the opportunity even to convert to Sunni Islam.They were simply shot out of hand, having been deemed too old for slavery."

New court

Women under 40 were trafficked into Syria, Wiley said, where they were "distributed" to members of the ISIS leadership or sold in the "active" slave market in Raqqa.

Going forward, Wiley says his group is working with its donor nations, the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Authority in Northern Iraq to create a type of war crimes court that would expose ISIS's crimes in detail, rather than allow the groupto perpetuate its freedom-fighter image to potential recruits.

"We're making some progress in that respect but there is still some way to go," Wiley said. It will take "more resources and more time but Canada is very much behind that effort there's no question about that."