ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Vice president of Karkh’s Appeal Court Ali Hussein Jafat said on Wednesday that captors and abductors of Yazidi women will not be granted amnesty under the General Amnesty Law that was recently passed by the Iraqi parliament.

 

“The perpetrators of the crimes of kidnapping and captivity of Yazidi women were not covered by the General Amnesty Law No. (27) of 2016, especially the recent amendment passed by the House of Representatives on 21/1/2025,” Jafat said.

 

Jafat went on to explain that "Article (9/I) of the Yazidi Survivors Law No. (8) of 2021 stipulates that the perpetrators of the crime, abduction and captivity of Yazidi women are not included in any general or special amnesty."

 

The Iraqi parliament passed the second amendment to the General Amnesty Law on January 21, a measure designed to promote reconciliation and provide second chances to individuals convicted of specific offenses, and one of the key requests made by Sunni factions when they decided to join Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani in forming his cabinet.

 

The General Amnesty bill was one of three controversial bills passed by the Parliament, the amendments were declared “constitutional” by the Iraqi Federal Supreme Court on Tuesday after being suspended following a coalition of 10 lawmakers legal complaints to the top court, calling for suspending the implementation of the bills, as they claimed that the voting procedures during the parliamentary session in which they were passed were “not sound.”

 

Following an ISIS attack on Iraq’s Sinjar in August 2014, thousands of Yazidis were forced to flee their homes in hopes of escaping the militant group’s atrocities.

 

The extremist group killed around 5,000 Yazidi men, some of whom were put into mass graves. Around 7,000 women and girls were enslaved.  

 

While the group took the Yazidi women and children, the Yazidi men in Sinjar were mass murdered at the hands of the terror group.