Lawyers led by Amal Clooney have filed a civil lawsuit against French cement company Lafarge over the company's secret payment of millions of euros to terrorist groups including Daesh in Syria between 2011 and 2015 to allow the company to continue running a local cement plant.
Saying she was "honored" to represent the Yazidi women in the case, Amal, spouse of Hollywood actor George Clooney, characterised the lawsuit as "an opportunity to establish that ISIS, and all those who assisted them, will be held to account for their crimes, and that victims will be awarded just compensation."
According to the lawyer, the case "sends an important message to corporations that are complicit in the commission of international crimes that they will face legal consequences for their actions."
Lafarge has maintained that the company as a whole is not guilty of any wrongdoing.
Daesh considers the Yazidi minority 'devil worshipers', and staged massacres of Iraqi and Syrian Yazidis beginning in 2014 as part of its campaign of conquest in Iraq and Syria. The terror group killed thousands of men and kidnapped thousands of women and girls, subjecting them to sexual enslavement, torture and rape. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Syrian Yazidis fled their homes in Iraq and Syria, and their plight was used as one of the justifications for the US coalition's intervention against Daesh in 2014. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights characterised Daesh's campaign against the Yazidis as genocide in a March 2015 report.
*A terrorist group outlawed in Russia and many other countries.