Mr. Nawaf Ashur is a Yezidi activist from Sinjar, Iraq currently based in Lincoln, Nebraska. He is an aluminum of R eagan-Fascell Fellowship with National Endowment for Democracy. He is also an aluminum at the American University of Iraq–Sulaimani (AUIS), where he majored in business and minored in journalism. From 2015 to 2016, he served as a business development officer for the International Organization for Migration. Before graduating from the American University of Iraq–Sulaimani (AUIS), he founded several youth-based civic education initiatives in the Sinjar district of Ninewa province, where he sought to strengthen the principles of pluralism through regular workshops in local villages. As an activist, he has discussed issues related to sectarian conflict and democratization in several major and he published in local news outlets, including 1001Iraqithoughts, CIMA, Iraq Oil Report, and Niqash. He was featured in Iowa Review Magazine NPR, PRI, al-Jazeera, The New Yorker and the Vogue.
Simon Minks is a National Senior Public Prosecutor of the Netherlands, specialising in counter terrorism and war crimes. Since 2015, he has (also) resumed position as Liaison Magistrate with the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY, now MICT: Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals), and the Embassies. As sole liaison magistrate in the Netherlands dealing with a host of international situations involving conflict of interests, Minks has an established reputation as an expert accomplished in highly effective diplomatic skills. Previous to his position as (senior) public prosecutor, he was a practising lawyer for ten years and a (substitute) judge in Haarlem for three years.
Simon Minks’ list of successful prosecutions (most of them in the appeal stage) includes five members of the terrorist group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for their role in the armed conflict in Sri Lanka (April 2015). In December of that year, nine members of an international terrorist group related to Syria and Iraq, which included recruiters and fighters for IS and Jabhat al-Nusra were also brought to trial. Also in 2016 he prosecuted foreign terrorist fighters and is currently dealing with new cases. He is also one of the two prosecutors investigating the suicide of the ICTY convict Mr Praljak who took his life at the premises of the YCTY in November 2017. Three years in near succession, he prosecuted (in appeal) Somali pirates.
Trafigura, the world’s third largest private oil and base metals trader involved in several scandals, was successfully prosecuted (in appeal) by Minks in 2011 for exporting illegal toxic chemical waste to Ivory Coast causing death and injury to more than 30,000 inhabitants. Prosecuted in appeal, seven members of a terrorist organisation known as the Hofstad group were convicted by the court of appeal and sentenced to 13 years imprisonment. An extremely sensitive, complicated and highly controversial case worth mentioning is Minks’ involvement as one of the prosecutors in the decision not to prosecute three former UN Dutchbat commanders for their role in the Srebrenica massacres. According to the Court of Appeal, the prosecutors had made the right decision.
Earlier, in 2004, one of his most noteworthy prosecutions was the arrest of Frans van Anraat, the first man convicted in connection with alleged war crimes committed against Kurds in Iraq and Iran. Following an international investigation, Anraat was found guilty of supplying Saddam Hussein with chemicals in the full knowledge that they would be used in the manufacture and deployment of chemical weapons.
In 2013, 2014 and 2017 he attended as expert speaker an UN expert meeting in Geneva, which dealt with the prosecution of companies accused of human rights violations. Minks gives workshops, training sessions/ presentations for prosecutors, judges and police/public officials about prosecuting warcrimes and terrorism both national and international. Equipped with significant expertise in legal forensic matters, Minks attended as participant and trainer at a mock trial for nuclear global experts, organised by the Dutch Forensic Institute. Currently, he is a member of the Master of Forensic Science Advisory Board of the University of Amsterdam.
Amanda Posson is a non-profit organization executive with 10 years of experiencing overseeing the development and implementation of federally and privately funded services for refugees/immigrants and survivors of trafficking. Amanda served as the Vice President of Programs at Refugee Services of Texas (RST), a state wide organization, where she worked for nine years in a variety of roles supporting the organization’s growth and strategic trajectory. Amanda’s passion for displaced families’ well-being developed into aptitudes for: fundraising, program management & evaluation, and organizational development. Amanda currently works at a Texas based research, policy and advocacy organization where she is pleased to focus her efforts on systemic, fact-driven change through public policy and resource development. Amanda received a Masters of Arts in Latin American Studies with a focus on migration and human geography from the University of Texas.
Dr. Sheila R. Salama, MD, is a board-certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist in practice since 1974. Sheila graduated from Downstate Medical School in New York City, including completion of an internship in medicine, residency in psychiatry, and fellowship in child psychiatry.
She has held several different positions throughout the years as well as maintaining a small private practice. Sheila has worked with a health insurance company in New York for more than 30 years, where she has treated patients of all ages with varies pathologies. Her use of psychopharmacology has always been very conservative.
Over the past 25 years, she has focused on learning and applying various modalities to release patients from the traumatic events that affect their lives. This has become her specialty. She is training and certified in Somatic Experiencing Trauma Renegotiation (SE), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and various Energy Psychology methods such as Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) and variations of this modality. In addition, Sheila is an EMDR consultant and facilitator and also teaches EFT.
Sheila has incorporated sound and light healing modalities in her work, as well as healthy sleep patterns nutrition, and other essential aspects to facilitate healing and wellness. She has worked for a long time with veterans struggling with severe war trauma and women who have been chronically and gravely sexually abused from a young age.
Dr. Sheila Salama, MD, was born in Egypt and has also lived in France and the United States. She speaks English, French, Italian, and understands several other languages, including Spanish, Arabic, and Hebrew
FYF works to support the most vulnerable members of the Yezidi community by providing them with education, economic empowerment, post-trauma treatment, and access to justice. If you want your donations to have a real impact on the lives of women and children affected by conflict, please consider giving to FYF today.
