German court convicts Iraqi couple of enslaving Yazidi girls

A court in Germany has convicted an Iraqi couple of enslaving two Yazidi girls in Iraq.

The Munich Higher Regional Court also found them guilty of membership of the Islamic State group (IS).

The man, named only as Twana H.S. in line with German privacy rules, was sentenced to life imprisonment on charges including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and severe sexual abuse of children.

His wife, Asia R. A., was handed a juvenile sentence of nine and a half years. The couple was arrested in Bavaria in 2024.

The Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking minority, were persecuted by IS after the jihadist group seized large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq beginning 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 having been part of this systematic campaign, “the Islamic State’s objective to destroy the Yazidi religion.”

Twana H.S. first came to Germany in the early 2000’s as an asylum seeker. He worked in Munich as a hairdresser and had a child. According to Der Spiegel magazine, he was denied asylum but was given permission to stay as the parent of German child.

After becoming radicalised at a Munich mosque, Der Spiegel says he return to Iraq in 2015.

Prosecutors say Twana H. S. and Asia R. A. were married there according to Islamic law and became members of Islamic State between October 2015 and December 2017.

Asia R. A. was under the age of 21 when the crimes were committed.

They said that in the autumn of 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 bought a twelve-year-old Yazidi girl, in early October 2017.

Prosecutors said Twana H. S. “repeatedly raped both children.”

They said his wife “put make-up on one of the girls” and prepared the room for him.

The couple were accused of forcing them to do household work and childcare, and forbade them to practise their own religion.

The children were beaten, sometimes with solid objects.

On one occasion, Asia R. A. “scalded the younger girl’s hand with hot water,” prosecutors said.

During the trial, the court heard harrowing testimony from the eldest Yazidi girl, who described beatings, forced labour and repeated rapes, BR News reported.

The second girl is still missing, it said.

The pair stood trial in Germany because of the legal principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows prosecutions for alleged war crimes, including genocide, occurring overseas.

During the trial, Asia R.A , who is now separated from Twana H.S., apologised. In her final statement, she said “I’m sorry”.

Twana H.S. declined to speak in court.