A 45-year-old Iraqi migrant man has been condemned to a life-long prison sentence, after being found guilty of enslaving two Yazidi girls, as well as being a member of the terrorist group Islamic State. His wife received a sentence of nine-and-a-half years. Her much lesser sentence is because, at the time the crimes were allegedly committed, the woman was not yet an adult.

The judge at the Higher Regional Court of Munich added that in the case of the woman, the fact that she was not yet an adult when she married the man, that her mother had died early in her life, that she had previously been married to someone else before being married to the Iraqi man on trial, and that her father had been arrested all contributed to the fact she was tried as a youth, although she is now 30. Both sentences are subject to appeal.

Their substantial sentences were due to the very serious allegations they were found guilty of, including genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, serious sexual abuse of children and allowing that to happen in the case of the wife, reported the German press agency dpa.

The judge added that he advised that although he had handed a 'life-sentence' to the man, he shouldn’t be considered for parole before at least 19 years and three months, reported the French press agency Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The trial of the couple lasted for over a year, and they have since separated from each other. The woman now claims she was also a victim of the man.

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What happened in Iraq?

The judge told the press that for someone to be convicted of the crime of genocide, an actual killing was not needed. It was enough that the man had taken a child violently from the group of Yazidis to which it belonged and forced them into another ethnic and religious group.

The trial examined what might have happened between 2015 and 2017 when the couple was living in a house in Iraq, on the edge of the Syrian desert. They first lived in Iraq and later moved to Syria, stated a press release from the Munich court, released on July 13. According to information from the court, the man had previously worked as a hairdresser in the Bavarian capital Munich but was then allegedly radicalized in a mosque in Munich.

According to a report in the German public media news show Tagesschau, the man, known as Twana H.S., was born in Iraq in 1981 and arrived in Germany in 2002, was working as a hairdresser and had children. AFP added that prior to being radicalized, he was known to "enjoy parties."

After being radicalized in 2013, in a Salafist Mosque he then traveled back to Iraq in 2015. It was there that he married his wife, named as Asia R.A., apparently because of pressure from his family. In Iraq, stated the court press release, the man was an IS fighter, a fact known by the wife. Guns were held in the house, added the court.

During the trial, the man said that his wife had asked him to buy two children as slaves from a market in Iraq. The first, a five or six-year-old Yazidi girl, was bought in 2015, and a 12-year-old in 2017. Both children were raped by the man, said prosecutors. The rapes were also "supported" by the wife, according to court documents.

The court press release adds that the woman gave the youngest child another name, forbade her from speaking her mother tongue and forced her to pray to Islam five times a day. The girls were not allowed to leave the house unless accompanied and were given "very little food." An atmosphere of violence pervaded the house.

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'Monstrous violence'

A representative of German prosecutors told the press: "This monstrous violence is so far from humane that it comes across as unbelievable." However, according to the trial, one of the aims of IS is to eliminate the Yazidi race, and so actions like this are being seen as part of that wider philosophy.

The wife, who is now 30, said she was sorry in court and expressed regret, but her former husband did not say anything during the trial.

One of the two Yazidi girls bought as slaves by the couple took part in the trial and was often seen in tears during the hearings. As one of the plaintiffs in the trial, the woman also gave evidence. Judge Philipp Stoll read out part of her testimony in court: "We Yazidis were treated as slaves, even dogs had a higher value than us." She said her whole childhood was full of pain and sorrow.

Before being bought, the girl had been living "for years" in a refugee camp in northern Iraq, reported dpa. She added that she was "deliberately burnt with hot water… physically punished, sworn at and insulted."

She remembers that when she was on sale in the market, "before he bought me, he looked at me. He took my veil off and looked at my hair. He and his IS friends were insulting me and one said 'buy her, she hasn’t been raped yet.' I was just a child, my whole childhood was full of violence."

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'He got a stick and beat me on the soles of my feet'

According to the girl, the wife had apparently urged her husband to take the second girl as a slave to avoid him taking a second wife. During the trial, prosecutors explained that the woman presumably felt it was easier to resell a slave than to have a second wife move in. The girls were expected to clean and wash up in the house of the couple, and then at night they were raped.

"He got a stick and beat me on the soles of my feet," said the girl. "He forced me to sleep with him." When the second girl came, she was also forced to sleep with him and was "not older than seven [at the time]."

The second Yazidi girl provided video testimony, saying that her experience had been "horrific," adding that IS had tried to eliminate the Yazidis, a crime that has been classified as genocide in Germany.

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Severely traumatized

One of the girls told the trial that the wife had dressed them up and put makeup on them and then tied them up so her husband could rape them. Both of the Yazidis, reported AFP, are severely traumatized due to their experiences and enslavement. They were not allowed to practice their own religion as children, and were forced to follow IS diktats.

Judge Stoll underlined that his sentencing was not about trying all IS members and their attempts at genocide, but at the specific crimes carried out by the couple in the dock. Both husband and wife were already convicted of being IS members in an earlier trial in April 2024. He added that in the light of this case and similar cases in Germany, the role of radicalization in Germany’s mosques ought to be examined and addressed.

The youngest of the victims is said not to be able to speak her mother tongue anymore and now needs a translator to speak to her mother. She has also reportedly lost connection with her own religion. The judge explained that these actions and behavior towards the two girls on the part of the couple were part of the genocidal plan of the IS group.

Both girls were sold on by the couple in 2017, stated the court documents.

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Attacks on Yazidis

The actions of the couple happened a year after IS attacked the Yazidi Sinjar region in northern Iraq in August 2014. Around 400,000 Yazidis fled to the neighboring Kurdistan region of Iraq, tens of thousands of others took refuge on the mountain, where they faced near starvation. The rest were killed, abused or enslaved by IS and their supporters.

According to IS beliefs, Yazidis, who follow their own religion, were classed as infidels. Germany’s Protestant church explains that the Yazidi religion can trace its roots over 4,000 years to an ancient Iranian society. There are around one million Yazidis and their communities were mostly concentrated in northern Iraq, north-east Syria, south-east Turkey and west Iran. There are also small communities of Yazidis in Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine and Russia.

One of the biggest diaspora communities of Yazidis is now in Germany, with around 200,000 members living here. There are also diaspora communities in the USA, France, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and Austria.

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Similar cases

In 2021, another Iraqi man, Taha Al-J and a German woman, Jennifer W, who had also been a member of ISIS, were sentenced to life and ten years in prison, respectively, after being found guilty of genocide and enslaving and starving a five-year-old Yazidi girl to death in Iraq. Later, in a fourth instance, Jennifer W.’s sentence was increased to 14 years and confirmed as final in 2024.

In 2023, another German court in Koblenz convicted a woman named as Nadine K for aiding and abetting genocide. She was found guilty of treating a 21-year-old Yazidi woman as private property, forcing her into domestic labor and allowing her husband to rape the victim, noted a press release from UNITAD (UN Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh / ISIL) in that year.

Christian Ritscher, who now works in the office of the Federal Prosecutor General in Germany but was at the time Special Adviser and head of UNITAD, told the press in 2023: "This conviction is an example of what meaningful justice means to survivor communities of ISIL heinous international crimes. The key witness in this case traveled from Iraq to Germany to confront her perpetrator in court. She participated as a co-plaintiff in the proceedings and testified before the court for over 6 days. This is the kind of justice victim communities are questing, and the kind of justice UNITAD is designed to seek, in Iraq as well as throughout the world."

Nadine K., a German national, joined ISIL with her husband in 2014. She was also sentenced to nine years and three months in prison for her part in the terrorist organization abroad, as well as other international crimes, including aiding and abetting genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes for the enslavement and abuse of a young Yazidi woman.

With dpa and AFP

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