About 430 Americans of Yazidi background and Nobel laureate Nadia Murad have accused French conglomerate Lafarge of supporting brutal attacks on the population through a conspiracy with the Islamic State, according to a complaint reviewed by AFP, reports The Guardian.
The civil suit, filed in a New York court by attorneys that include human rights lawyer Amal Clooney references a $778m US Department of Justice fine and guilty criminal plea in October 2022 by Lafarge, which was acquired by Swiss company Holcim in 2015.
Yazidi plaintiffs asked the court to find Lafarge liable for violations of the US Anti-Terrorism Act and assess compensatory damages, plus attorneys fees.
Lafarge considers the matter “a legacy issue, which Lafarge SA is managing responsibly”, a Lafarge spokesperson said.
The lawsuit recounts horrors inflicted by Islamic State in a 2014 siege in which thousands of Yazidis were murdered and kidnapped, causing hundreds and thousands to flee and subjecting remaining Yazidi women to sales as sex slaves – a fate that befell Murad, who won the Nobel prize in 2018.
The Kurdish-speaking Yazidis are an ethno-religious minority found mainly in Iraq that has over time absorbed elements of Islam and Christianity. Jihadists view the population as heretics.
The Yazidis suit points to $6m in payments from Lafarge to Islamic State in 2013 and 2014 to purchase raw materials from a Lafarge cement plant in Syria that continued to operate during the Syrian civil war.