Hunting For Assets Worth IDR712 Billion Belonging To ISIS, UN Investigators Focus On Terror Shelter Camps

Ilustrasi ISIS. (Wikimedia Commons / aharan_kotogo)

JAKARTA - UN investigators believe they are close to finding a war chest or assets worth US$50 million, around Rp.

Unitad, the UN agency that investigates atrocities committed by ISIS, has found evidence identifying "core departments" of ISIS' financial system.

The investigative team, led by former German war crimes prosecutor Christian Ritscher, has examined more than two million pieces of data from cell phones left in mass graves in Iraq.

He has worked to find evidence to prosecute ISIS for its genocidal campaign against the Yazidis, finding more than 200 mass graves containing some 12,000 victims.

In its latest report, Unitad revealed that it had uncovered ISIS' financial footprints.

"The team has focused its financial investigations on the Bayt Al Mal (House of Money), ISIS' central treasury and the core department responsible for the collection, storage, management and transfer of its wealth," Ritscher said.

Illustration of ISIS members who surrendered and their weapons. (Wikimedia Commons/VOA/Mirwais Bezhan)

"Through this work, the team has uncovered evidence detailing the internal administrative functions of Bayt Al Mal and how the actions of this department directly support ISIS' ability to commit war crimes, crimes against humanity," he said.

"Further lines of investigation have revealed that the network of senior ISIS leadership also acted as trusted financiers, diverting wealth generated through acts of looting, targeting various ethnic and religious minorities across Iraq through theft and theft of property, and aiding and abetting crimes against humanity. from persecution," said Ritscher.

Meanwhile, former British ambassador and prominent UN terrorism monitor Edmund Fitton-Brown said the treasury had slumped since the group's terror peaked.

He said although reserves had fallen to around $50 million, investigators had seen money flowing through the camps.

"The eternal concern is the thousands of ISIS fighters and their family members who remain in detention or in refugee camps," he said.

"Financial flows in and out of this facility show that the risk of financing terrorism remains high," he said.

Al Hol and Al Roj, camps run by Syrian-Kurdish forces, currently house more than 60,000 people, two-thirds of them children, who are members of families linked to ISIS.

Ritscher said evidence linking several "business owners and operators" to ISIS financial flows had been submitted to authorities in Iraq.

Separately, Counter Extremism Project Director Hans-Jakob Schindler, who works on the UN Security Council unit that monitors ISIS and Al Qaeda, told The National he believes the terror group's treasury structure is still in place, although it has been reduced.

"During the existence of ISIS' physical caliphate, of course there was a whole administrative structure dealing with the money coming in and being spent by the organization," he said.

"This structure has overlapping responsibilities to ensure that money is not stolen from the organization. Nonetheless, some ISIS leaders have actually managed to get money from the treasury for themselves."

Illustration of ISIS members who surrendered and their weapons. (Wikimedia Commons/VOA/Mirwais Bezhan)

"Therefore, it seems very likely ISIS retains some centrally organized structure that deals with money, especially now that the physical side is gone. As the UN Security Council monitoring team has shown, the organization continues to have considerable assets and therefore It takes some organizational framework to ensure that these assets are protected and managed," he explained.

Schindler said there were still financial flows to the camps containing ISIS fighters and their families from supporters outside the camps who were then handed over to the terror group.

"This is certainly not a huge income for ISIS, but it is one of the financial flows that still exists. Furthermore, various ISIS affiliates outside of Iraq and Syria have developed their own revenue streams to finance their respective operations," said Schindler.

Ritscher said Unitad had also reached a 'potential turning point' in its efforts to provide justice for victims of ISIS crimes, and it was now possible to envision a new landscape in which criminals who previously believed themselves to be beyond justice could become held accountable in court.

"If we strengthen our unity in tackling the challenges inherent in the scale of ISIS criminality, I believe we have a chance to turn the tide from impunity to justice," he said.

To note, Unitad's work in Iraq has now uncovered evidence linking more than 350 ISIS fighters to war crimes. The unit has trained Iraqi investigative judges in developing case files for prosecuting ISIS members for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.