German Court Convicts Iraqi Couple for Enslaving Yazidi Girls
A court in Germany has convicted an Iraqi couple for enslaving two Yazidi girls while they were in Iraq.
The Munich Higher Regional Court also found them guilty of membership in the Islamic State group (IS).
The man, who is known only as Twana H.S. in line with German privacy rules, was given a life sentence on charges including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and severe sexual abuse of children.
His wife, Asia R. A., received a nine‑and‑a‑half‑year sentence. The pair were arrested in Bavaria in 2024.
The Yazidis, a Kurdish‑speaking minority, were persecuted by IS after the jihadist group seized large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq starting in 2014.
Thousands of men were killed and women and children were enslaved and raped when IS fighters stormed into the ancestral heartland of the Yazidis in northern Iraq.
Germany recognises these acts as genocide. The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office accused the two defendants of participating in this systematic campaign, describing it as “the Islamic State’s objective to destroy the Yazidi religion.”
Twana H.S. came to Germany in the early 2000s as an asylum seeker, worked as a hairdresser in Munich, and had a child. According to Der Spiegel, he was denied asylum but was allowed to stay as a parent of a German child.
After becoming radicalised at a Munich mosque, Der Spiegel reports he returned to Iraq in 2015.
Prosecutors say Twana H.S. and Asia R. A. were married there and became members of the Islamic State between October 2015 and December 2017.
Asia R. A. was under 21 when the crimes were committed.
Prosecutors alleged that early in autumn 2015 Twana H.S. bought a five‑year‑old Yazidi girl as a slave at a bazaar in Mosul at the request of his wife. The couple also bought a twelve‑year‑old Yazidi girl in early October 2017.
The couple was accused of repeatedly raping both children, while the wife was said to have applied makeup to one of the girls and prepared her room.
They allegedly forced the girls to perform household work and childcare work, forbade them from practising their own religion, beat them with solid objects, and on one occasion scalded the younger girl’s hand with hot water.
During the trial, the court heard harrowing testimony from the eldest Yazidi girl, describing beatings, forced labour and repeated rapes. The second girl is still missing.
The pair stood trial in Germany because of the legal principle of universal jurisdiction, allowing prosecutions for alleged war crimes, including genocide, that occurred overseas.
In her final statement, Asia R.A., now separated from Twana H.S., apologized, saying, “I’m sorry.” Twana H.S. declined to speak in court.
