Daesh Fighters Must Not Escape Justice In The UK

On May 13, 2025, the Joint Committee on Human Rights in the UK Parliament, a committee consisting of members of the upper and lower houses of the UK Parliament, published a report looking into the UK’s responses to Daesh atrocities, and in particular, to the Daesh fighters who returned to the UK. The report, which summarizes the findings of two years of inquiries spread across two Parliamentary sessions, stressed that despite hundreds of British Daesh fighters having returned to the UK, there have been zero successful prosecutions in UK courts for international crimes committed in Syria and Iraq by Daesh. The report further found that investigation and prosecution require better coordination, and for this, changes are needed.

Daesh is a non-state terror organization that emerged in Iraq in the early 2000s. Its campaigns included horrific atrocities targeting religious and ethnic groups, including the Yazidis, with the aim of destroying their identities. On August 3, 2014, Daesh launched a devastating attack on Sinjar, inflicting widespread atrocities on the Yazidi community. The terror group killed thousands, predominantly targeting men and elderly women, while abducting boys to forcibly conscript them as child soldiers. Thousands of women and girls were kidnapped and subjected to sexual slavery and violence. To this day, over 2,600 Yazidi women and children remain unaccounted for. Daesh’s crimes included murder, enslavement, deportation, and forced displacement. The group systematically imprisoned, tortured, abducted, exploited, abused, raped, and coerced women into marriages across the region. In the days following the Sinjar assault, Daesh expanded its campaign of terror to other communities in the Nineveh Plains, causing 120,000 people to flee in the dead of night in a desperate bid to save their lives.

The terror group flourished in their recruitment and use of foreign fighters, including those from the UK. It is estimated that approximately 850 British citizens and residents left the UK to join Daesh in Syria and Iraq. As the report confirms, an estimated 425 Daesh fighters have returned to the UK, but none have been successfully prosecuted for the international crimes they committed in Syria and Iraq. This is even though in August 2023, the UK Government finally recognized the Daesh atrocities against the Yazidis as genocide. The Joint Committee on Human Rights called for a change in the UK’s approach to ensure that the perpetrators of genocide are brought to justice. The Joint Committee further called on the Government to develop a coherent framework to ensure that the UK’s investigating and prosecuting bodies, including the Crown Prosecution Service and the police, are better coordinated in evidence gathering and carrying out investigations. Last, but not least, the new report called upon the UK Government to step up efforts to identify British nationals currently held in camps in Syria, and where there is sufficient evidence that international crimes were committed, to ensure their effective prosecution.

Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, Lord David Alton, commented on the report, stating: “This is not something the UK can simply wash its hands of because it happened overseas. We know that British nationals committed the most horrendous crimes in Iraq and Syria under the Daesh regime, and we have a duty to see them brought to justice. To date, no Daesh fighters have been successfully prosecuted for international crimes in the UK, and we find this unacceptable.” The UK Government will now have to respond to the report and recommendations, and address how the laws, policies and practices are to change to provide better responses to the atrocities committed against the Yazidis and any similar crimes in the future.

The report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights stresses the importance of ensuring justice and accountability for mass atrocities as those perpetrated by Daesh against the Yazidis – not only to punish those responsible, but also to establish the truth about gross human rights violations, and to use justice and accountability as means to prevent future atrocities.