Amal Clooney advocates for justice on behalf of 400+ plaintiffs in Yazidi genocide lawsuit
Amal Clooney represents 400+ Yazidi-Americans in a lawsuit accusing Lafarge SA of aiding ISIS The French conglomerate had previously pleaded guilty in a DOJ case
Renowned human rights attorney Amal Clooney has filed a lawsuit in New York on behalf of more than 400 Yazidi-Americans, alleging that French conglomerate Lafarge SA conspired to provide material and funds to support ISIS terrorist campaigns against the ethnic minority. The lawsuit, filed under the Anti-Terrorism Act in the Eastern District of New York, aims to hold Lafarge accountable for its admitted criminal conspiracy with ISIS and to obtain justice for the Yazidi people, according to a news release from Amal Clooney Media.
Marwan, 11, weeps into the crook of his grandmother's neck after reuniting with his family for the first time in 3 years.
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ISIS slaughtered my Yazidi community. We dont want your pity - we want justice.
Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking ethnic and religious group with large communities in Iraq and Syria, were found by a 2021 UN investigation to have suffered systematic persecution by ISIS. This included forced conversion to Islam, as well as the killing and enslavement of thousands of Yazidis, which has been classified as genocide.
According to a news release, Lafarge has confessed to a conspiracy to aid ISIS by providing millions of dollars in cash and supplying cement for the construction of underground tunnels and bunkers used by ISIS to shelter members and hold hostages, including captured Yazidis.
Nadia Murad, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 2018 and a prominent advocate for Yazidi human rights, is the primary plaintiff in the case.
The other 426 plaintiffs are all American citizens of Yazidi and Iraqi origin, and their "families are survivors of a systematic genocide against the Yazidi people that began in Sinjar, Iraq in 2014," according to the news release.
During a Sunday interview with CNNs Fareed Zakaria, Clooney described the case as "truly shocking." She highlighted the irony of a company that had been funding ISIS for a year ramping up its support just as the Yazidi genocide began in Iraq. The factory operated by Lafarge in Syria was only 52 miles away from Raqqah, the center of the slave trade that the Yazidis, particularly women and young girls, were subjected to.
Clooney added compensation for the victims will allow them to "rebuild their lives and also to be able to go back" to their homes in Iraq after being displaced.
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"This is the first meaningful chance for compensation for these victims of ISIS," she said.
In August 2014, the United Nations reported that over 400,000 Yazidis were forced to flee their homes in Iraq due to ISIS, recognized as a terrorist organization by the United States.
Murad informed CNN that it was crucial for her to persist in sharing her story "in order to bring attention to the appalling crimes committed against Yazidis by ISIS and to prevent such atrocities from occurring again."
She stated that ISIS killed her mother, four brothers, and other relatives during the genocide. Murad has also shared her experience of being taken as a sex slave and passed around to different ISIS militants, and she added that thousands of women and young girls are still missing.
The complaint claims that Lafarge's support for the terrorist campaign continued and even grew stronger during the peak of ISIS's violence in the Middle East, "as ISIS publicized beheadings of U.S. citizens and journalists and began its campaign of executions, rape, and terror against Yazidi civilians," states the news release.
The news release also states that the large group of plaintiffs includes individuals "who were injured by ISIS, owned land and homes that were destroyed, or had family members who were displaced, injured, kidnapped, or killed by ISIS." Clooney told CNN that a significant number of the plaintiffs are Yazidi-Americans who relocated to Nebraska.
The lawsuit accuses Lafarge of continuing to pay ISIS even as the genocide against the Yazidis escalated.
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Lafarge SA previously pled guilty in DOJ case
Lafarge SA, a worldwide manufacturer of building materials, pleaded guilty in 2022 to conspiring to provide material support to foreign terrorist organizations in a case prosecuted by the United States Department of Justice. In the case, Lafarge SA confessed to paying almost $6 million to ISIS and the Al-Nusra Front in exchange for permission to run a cement plant in Syria from 2013 to 2014, according to the DOJ press release.
Upon entering a guilty plea, Lafarge consented to paying around $777 million in criminal fines and forfeiture to the United States. Nevertheless, as stated in the news release, none of these funds have been allocated to compensate the victims.
