Nadia Murad Basee Taha

The extremist group "Islamic State" attempted to wipe out the Yazidis. Many thousands died, and survivors tell horrific tales of abuse and enslavement. Now, German investigators have taken up the fight for justice.

"Germany must not be a safe haven for war criminals." It is a sentence police inspector Klaus Zorn repeats several times with conviction. He and his team are determined to collect as much evidence as possible ready to be used for any future prosecutions.

Zorn sits in a high-security concrete building in the quiet town of Meckenheim in southern North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state. The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has operated a field office here since the late 1970s, when Germany was still a divided country. At the time, the force's main purview was investigating terrorist activity carried out by the left-wing extremist Red Army Faction (RAF).

Zorn, too, investigates terrorists. He serves as deputy head of the War Crimes Unit, more officially known as the Central Office for Combating War Crimes under International Criminal Law (ZBKV). Currently, the detective and his colleagues are busy gathering evidence for history's latest genocide: The mass killing of the Yazidis by the "Islamic State" (IS).

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