Afghans have submitted 1.17 million statements to the International Criminal Court in the three months since it began collecting material ago for a possible war crimes case involving their homeland.
The statements include accounts of alleged atrocities not only by groups like the Taliban and the ISIS, but also Afghan Security Forces and government-affiliated warlords, the US-led coalition, and foreign and domestic spy agencies, said Abdul Wadood Pedram of the Human Rights and Eradication of Violence Organisation.
Based in part on the many statements, ICC judges in The Hague would then have to decide whether to seek a war crimes investigation. It is uncertain when that decision will be made.
The statements were collected between 20 November 2017 and 31 January 2018, by organisations based in Europe and Afghanistan and sent to the ICC, Mr. Pedram said.
Because one statement might include multiple victims and one organisation might represent thousands of victim statements, the number of Afghans seeking justice from the ICC could be several million.
The ICC was established in 2002 with a mission to investigate war crime allegations across the globe. The body can only look into cases in Afghanistan that allegedly occurred after May 2003, when the country accepted ICC jurisdiction.
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