Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations

Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations

Statement by Deputy Permanent Representative Gennady Kuzmin at UNSC briefing with regard to the 7th report of the UN Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da'esh/ISIL

Mr.President,

We welcome Mr.Christian Ritscher in his capacity as Head of UNITAD. We trust that under new leadership, the Investigative Team will double its efforts to ensure objective and unbiased collection and analysis of evidence of ISIL’s crimes un Iraq.

We studied closely UNITAD’s 7th report, and we appreciate the meaningful briefing that was delivered.

We welcome the finalization of the case-brief regarding the mass killing of prisoners, Shia Muslims, at Badush Central Prison in eastern Mosul that had been captured by ISIL militants. The crimes that were committed there cannot be justified. All those guilty must be held duly accountable.

We welcome the good pace of investigation into development and usage of chemical and biological weapons by terrorists. There is no doubt that terrorists did use such weapons. ISIL militants acted similarly in countries other than Iraq as well.

The Russian delegation welcomes significant progress in investigations of crimes against the communes of Sunnis, Christians, Kakais, Shabaks, Shia Turkmens.

We wish to the UNITAD to keep its momentum going, especially since the latest technological tools that the Team employs allow doing so. However they need to make sure that the quality of work does not decline. UNITAD successfully collects and analyzes evidence, while using latest technologies like AI, machine learning, etc. The Russian Federation recognizes and encourages usage of state-of-the-art technological know-hows in investigations insofar as it does not violate the requirement of relevance and admissibility of evidence.

Hopefully, Iraqi authorities will soon be able to have access to the collected evidence, as envisaged in UNSC resolution 2379. This document defines the Iraqi authorities as the main recipients of the evidence collected by UNITAD. Lack of specialized national legislation should not affect the implementation of SC-endorsed mandate of the Investigative Team.

We are convinced that once Iraq is granted access to evidence, it will speed up the process of bringing to account those guilty of international crimes.

Thank you.