Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)

The noble Lord has the sympathy of all of us who are barristers, because we have all had the experience of being handed a brief at the last minute and having to struggle with issues that we had not anticipated. I will raise some of the issues that concern me still, despite his brave efforts to deal with this important report. First, the Government are sticking to their old position that things are best investigated close to where they took place. That is a principle that we would all agree with, except in circumstances where there is no indication of that being possible, as in the places about which we are talking. We know that both Syria and Iraq have prosecuted no one. They have certainly arrested people and passed death penalties on people for being members of Daesh or ISIL, but there has been no investigation into, for example, the enslavement, the constant raping and the selling on of women, who are dealt with as commodities. There was an occasion when 19 women were put into a cage and set on fire because they refused to convert. There are all manner of instances about which there is clear evidence, and I believe that we can be satisfied that neither Syria nor Iraq have given any kind of resolution, particularly to the Yazidi people, for the crimes that were committed by the members of this jihadist organisation. Many members in Iraq have been rounded up; there is a very peremptory trial and they are given the death penalty, but there is no investigation into the nature of the crimes that were committed and no sense that the wrongs committed against the Yazidis were given any kind of airing. That is not what justice is about. The Minister mentioned Germany. There have been eight convictions in Germany, three for genocide and five for crimes against humanity. A number of those convictions were against women. Let us be very clear that these women were married to men who were the active service agents beheading people and doing the killing. The women were convicted of complicity in grievous crimes, where they were the orchestrators of the passing on of women to other men for their abuse to take place. Women are therefore involved in this. When the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and I met the police and the unit that deals with anything international, it became clear that for the people who were brought back and the 30 people who were convicted, as I mentioned, there was no question—the officers were frank—of the investigation involving interrogation of the kind that I mentioned in my opening address, asking what their domestic circumstances were, whether they were living with a wife or more than one wife. Often the additional women who were raped were referred to as being second and third temporary wives, and fourth, fifth and sixth wives. I am afraid that the women were complicit, too, in grievous crimes. It is why prosecution of crimes against humanity were successful. The lawyer who helped orchestrate the work in Germany was British, Amal Clooney. She was there showing how Germany’s system of law could be used because there was a willingness there to do it. There is no indication of there being a willingness in Britain to do it. That is what has concerned us in receiving the evidence in preparation for this report. As I say, in Iraq, there have been no prosecutions for international crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, rape or servitude. There have been none, nor in Syria. I am not sure that we can be confident at this moment that that is going to be a priority for the Syrian regime. These people were British citizens. They have returned. The skills were not present within the police to deal with this. It is not easy to recite what the normal processes would be, such as whether the police think that there might be something that they could refer to the Crown Prosecution Service, which would then decide whether there were appropriate crimes and so on. There was no question of the Crown Prosecution Service doing anything other than determining that there was evidence that these people went to Iraq and signed up to be part of ISIL and therefore were guilty of a crime under our law, but there was no investigation of whether more grievous crimes had been committed. The writ still runs. These people could easily be brought in and questioned tomorrow, but there is no indication of that happening. One of the ways in which you could do that is by accessing the evidence gathered. I can tell noble Lords that many organisations—community organisations, women’s organisations, investigative bodies—handed over information that they had received to the IIIM. UNITAD was the receiver and archiver of the evidence. That body has been dismantled, and the archive has been handed over and put into archives at the UN and in the United States of America. What is in that? Are there references to people? Are there incidents that could be investigated that would give testimonies that, within our law, could support prosecutions of these grievous crimes? The questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, are ones that I hope the Government will take away and think about in terms of transparency and proper review, but that is not happening. We were convinced that an inadequate review was taking place. Also, when we asked the police whether they had ever requested evidence from UNITAD? The answer was, “We do not think so”. It would be interesting to find out properly. Was UNITAD ever asked whether it had evidence that might link to British people, English speakers? The other question is why can we not deal with this business whereby we have put such a constriction around those who can be prosecuted under universal jurisdiction, thereby limiting it. Noble Lords heard from a colleague about the fact that when this originally came before this House, when I was a comparatively new Member, we managed to extend the legislation from citizens being the only people who could be prosecuted to people who had residence here. The United States had moved away from that. We should be making it clear that it should be possible to arrest anybody who ends up in this country, even those who are not citizens, although many of these people are, so that justice can be done, and they can stand trial before a court in this country. The Government should sign up to the Ljubljana-The Hague convention so that there is proper mutual assistance. I am disappointed, but I promise my noble friend Lord Katz that I am not holding it against him. I know he got the brief at the last minute, and many of us have been in his circumstances before more difficult tribunals than this one. I hope that the Government take this debate away and think about some of these serious questions.