Thousands of Yezidis were trapped in the Sinjar mountains as they tried to escape from Daesh after ... [+]
In December 2023, more than 400 Yazidis, members of an ethno-religious minority group, filed a lawsuit against Lafarge S.A., a global building materials manufacturer, for conspiring to provide material support to a campaign of terrorism conducted by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Daesh, also known as IS, ISIS, ISIL) against the Yazidi population. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in the Eastern District of New York under the civil provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act, seeks to hold Lafarge accountable for its conspiracy with Daesh and to obtain justice for the Yazidi people. In 2022, Lafarge pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support and resources in Northern Syria from 2013 to 2014 to Daesh and the al-Nusrah Front (ANF).
The atrocities refer to the targeted attack against the Yazidis. On August 3, 2014, Daesh, a non-state actor with unprecedented support from foreign fighters, attacked Sinjar, Iraq, and unleashed prohibited acts against the Yazidis, an ethno-religious minority group in Iraq. Daesh fighters killed hundreds if not thousands of people. As part of the same campaign, Daesh fighters abducted boys to turn them into child soldiers and women and girls for sex slavery. More than 2,700 women and children are still missing and their fate is unknown. The atrocities have been recognized as meeting the legal definition of genocide by the governments of the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands, several parliaments, the European Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), and bodies of the United Nations.
Nobel Prize winner and human rights activist Nadia Murad is the lead plaintiff in the case filed in the U.S. The group of 427 plaintiffs includes Yazidis who were injured by Daesh, owned land and homes that were destroyed or had family members who were displaced, injured, kidnapped, or killed by Daesh.
Among them, Dakheel Zandinan was 28 years old when Daesh invaded his village in Sinjar. He fled with his family, including his wife and children towards Sinjar Mountain but they were stopped at a Daesh checkpoint and ordered to gather with other Yazidis in the village of Wardia. Terrified, Dakheel and his family hid until their captors, distracted, let their guard down and Dakheel and his family were able to flee to Sinjar Mountain. They stayed trapped on the mountain, starving and dehydrated, until they were finally able to escape to Kurdistan. Dakheel’s sister’s family was captured by Daesh – her husband was shot and her daughter was taken by Daesh and is still missing. Daesh poured gasoline on Dakheel’s sister and her other children and threatened to set them alight, but they managed to escape and flee to an internally displaced persons (IDPs) camp in Kurdistan. Dakheel and his family fled with nothing – they lost their house and everything in it – and he and his family continue to suffer the effects of the invasion today.
Another plaintiff, Nawaf Sulaiman was 42 years old at the time that Daesh invaded Sinjar. He had left Iraq in 2013, but his daughters and siblings were still in Iraq at the time of the genocide. When Daesh invaded, most of them fled to Sinjar Mountain, but one of Nawaf’s sisters and her family were captured by Daesh. Her husband was killed, and she was taken to Raqqa, Syria and kept in a cell underground. Her son was also taken to Syria and trained as a Daesh child soldier. After two years, Nawaf’s sister and her son were able to escape and fled to Kurdistan to a camp for IDPs. Two of Nawaf’s nieces are still missing almost ten years after the genocide. Nawaf and his wife watched in horror as their family lived through the unimaginable. They continue to suffer from trauma and ongoing medical issues following Daesh’s invasion of Sinjar.
The plaintiffs are represented by renowned human rights lawyer, Amal Clooney, and former Ambassador Lee Wolosky, the co-chairman of litigation at global law firm Jenner & Block LLP.
As outlined in the complaint, the plaintiffs are suing Lafarge under the Anti-Terrorism Act, a U.S. law designed to hold accountable those who provide support to, or aid and abet, foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) such as Daesh. Daesh has been designed as a terrorist organization in the U.S. since May 2014.
In 2022, Lafarge admitted to a conspiracy that aided Daesh by providing millions of dollars in cash to Daesh and is alleged to have provided Daesh with cement to construct underground tunnels and bunkers used to shelter Daesh members and hold hostages, including captured Yazidis. The complaint alleges that by paying millions of dollars to these two terrorist groups, they knowingly funded their acts of coordinated violence.
As part of its guilty plea in 2022, Lafarge agreed to pay over $777 million in fines and forfeiture to the United States. None of this money, however, has been used to pay compensation to the victims. The new lawsuit is to change that and ensure that victims and survivors are provided with some form of compensation for the atrocities suffered.
