Nadia Murad, a human rights activist and recipient of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, and Yazidi-Americans filed a civil lawsuit against French industrial company Lafarge in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York on Thursday. The complaints are under civil provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act, intending to obtain compensation from Lafarge for its criminal conspiracy with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Yazidis are a Kurdish-speaking religious group living in parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran, and the majority of them reside in Iraq today. In the mid-2010s, the Islamic State carried out brutal attacks against the Yazidi people in the Sinjar area of northern Iraq, destroying the religious community of 400,000 people through killings, sexual slavery and other actions.

Karim Khan, former special adviser and head of UNITAD, reported in 2016 that there is clear and convincing evidence that these crimes targeting Yazidis constituted genocide. The US lawmakers in 2016 also passed a resolution to label Islamic State crimes as genocide.

In 2022, French conglomerate Lafarge S.A., the world’s largest cement manufacturer, pleaded guilty in a New York federal court for paying $5.92 million in support of the terrorist groups ISIS and the al-Nusrah Front (ANF) between 2013 and 2014. Therefore, the civil lawsuit filed in federal court in New York requires that Lafarge “must pay compensation to the survivors.”

Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney and veteran US diplomat Lee Wolosky represent the plaintiffs in this case. Amal Clooney has called for a formal investigation into the Islamic State for the crime of genocide and demands justice for the Yazidi people. In a statement, Wolosky said: “While last year’s guilty plea was unprecedented, it is not enough. Lafarge needs to be held to account by those harmed by its unlawful conduct.”

Correction: The article has been updated to reflect the fact that Karim Khan no longer leads UNITAD’s investigative team.