Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether evidence of atrocities committed by individual UK citizens as members of Daesh is being collected; if so, whether this is being done as part of an investigation into sexual violence in the Middle East; and who is collecting this evidence.

We are doing everything we can to assist in the gathering and preservation of evidence that could be used in future by judicial bodies to make a judgement on Daesh crimes. We are providing financial support to a specialist organisation to conduct investigations in Syria and build prosecution ready criminal case files against the high level perpetrators, in accordance with international standards. These cases are built for international prosecution should a referral to the International Criminal Court be forthcoming or should individuals be subject to litigation by hybrid, specialised or national courts.

We are also funding a project through our Human Rights and Democracy Programme, aimed at improving the documentation of sexual violence and other gender based cases in a victim sensitive way, in several areas of Iraq. The project is training a team of human rights defenders to document sexual violence and establish a database of cases across a two year period to inform policy development in the government of Iraq.

As a first step in the 'Bringing Daesh to Justice' campaign, we are working with the government of Iraq to bring a proposal before the United Nations on evidence gathering and preservation in Iraq. It is vital that this is done now, before evidence is lost or destroyed.