Swedish woman Lina Ishaq convicted of genocide for IS crimes against Yazidis

A Swedish woman has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for committing genocide and war crimes against the Yazidi people after she joined jihadist group Islamic State (IS) in Syria.

Lina Ishaq, 52, was found guilty of holding three Yazidi women and six Yazidi children as slaves in Raqqa between 2014-2016 in September last year.

It is the first time IS crimes against the Yazidis, one of Iraq’s religious minorities, have been tried in Sweden.

Ishaq joined IS and moved her family to Syria in 2013. She is already serving jail sentences for taking her two year-old son to Syria and “failing to prevent” IS from using her 12-year-old son as a child soldier. He died in 2017, aged 16.

Ishaq forced her prisoners to wear a veil and practise Islam, and she physically assaulted them.

“The convicted woman was part of the large-scale enslavement system which IS introduced for Yazidi women and children,” said Stockholm District Court presiding judge, Maria Ulfsdotter Klang.

“She has acted independently in maintaining the enslavement and deprivation of liberty of the victims and contributed to trafficking them further.”

The Yazidis are an ancient religious minority based largely in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq.

In early August 2014 IS invaded Yazidi settlements in the Sinjar region launching a genocidal campaign against them.

Over a period of three years about 5,000 Yazidis were killed by IS and half a million people were displaced.

More than 6,000 women and children were taken captive and held as slaves. IS members tortured their detainees and subjected them to strategic sexual violence aiming to eradicate the Yazidi people, according to the UN.

Lina Ishaq was born in Iraq to a Christian family, who moved to Sweden when she was a child, Swedish media report. She converted to Islam prior to her marriage.

Along with around 300 other Swedish nationals, a quarter of them women, Ishaq joined IS in 2013.

When the so-called IS caliphate began to collapse in 2017, Ishaq fled Raqqa and escaped to Turkey. She was extradited to Sweden in 2020.

Sweden is now home to around 6,000 Yazidis.

Dawood Khalaf, chairman of the Yazidi association in Skaraborg has said Ishaq’s prosecution has helped build trust between the community in Sweden and local authorities.

“I know women who have been called for questioning by Swedish police who have not dared to testify for fear of being handed over to IS,” he told public broadcaster SVT. “After this indictment, the picture has changed.”

Ishaq’s lawyer Mikael Westerlund said Ishaq still denied the charges and would consider an appeal.