A German woman has been sentenced to over nine years in prison for, among other things, keeping a Yazidi woman as a slave, for aiding and abetting war crimes and genocide.
The 37-year-old woman – who was a member of the Islamic State (IS) terror group between 2014 and 2019 – was also found guilty of crimes against humanity and membership of a foreign terrorist organization, according to the court in Koblenz in Rhineland-Palatinate.
The woman traveled with her husband to Syria to join the jihadist group. The couple lived for a while in Iraq and then moved back to Syria.
From 2016, the couple held the Yazidi woman, who was then 22 years old, as a slave. She had been held captive by IS since 2014.
Forced to work and raped
The convicted woman kept watch to prevent the other woman from escaping and forced her to do housework and follow Islamic rituals. Her husband raped and abused the Yazidi woman regularly, with the wife’s knowledge.
– The German woman was like a guest. I would do all her work and even take care of her children. She didn’t want to clean the room she slept in, the Yazidi woman told Sky News.
– All this served IS’ stated purpose, to wipe out the faith of the Yazidis, the prosecutor said earlier during the trial.
Genocide was committed
The Yazidis are a minority found primarily in northern Iraq, but are also found in Syria and Turkey. In 2014, IS took over large parts of Iraq and Syria, killing around 1,200 Yazidis and enslaving up to 12,000 women and girls. The women were tortured, raped and forced to work for IS, according to Sky News.
The UN investigated the massacre and concluded that there was convincing evidence that genocide had been committed. In 2021, a German court issued the first judgment in the world that recognized IS terrorist acts against Yazidis as genocide.
The convict was arrested in March last year when she returned to Germany.