German court convicts Iraqi couple of enslaving Yazidi girls for IS
Image: BBC News
A court in Germany has convicted an Iraqi couple of enslaving two Yazidi girls in Iraq, in a case that reaches into one of the darkest chapters of the Islamic State era.
The Munich Higher Regional Court also found them guilty of membership of IS. The man, identified only as Twana H.S. under German privacy rules, was sentenced to life imprisonment on charges including genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the severe sexual abuse of children. His wife, Asia R.A., received a juvenile sentence of nine and a half years.
The Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking minority, were persecuted by IS after the group seized territory across Syria and Iraq from 2014. Thousands of men were killed, and women and children were enslaved and raped when fighters stormed the community's heartland in northern Iraq.
Germany recognises those acts as genocide. Prosecutors said the couple were part of IS's systematic campaign "to destroy the Yazidi religion." Twana H.S. had first come to Germany in the early 2000s as an asylum seeker, worked as a hairdresser in Munich and had a child — but after becoming radicalised at a local mosque, returned to Iraq in 2015, where he and Asia R.A. married and joined the group.
Why it matters: The verdict is part of Germany's campaign to pursue IS atrocities through its courts, offering a measure of justice to a community still searching for missing loved ones. Landmark rulings like this keep the world's attention on crimes that many survivors say have never been fully accounted for.
Asia R.A. was under 21 when the crimes were committed, which is why she received a juvenile term. The couple were arrested in Bavaria in 2024.
What's next: With the sentences handed down, prosecutors and Yazidi advocates will hope the case adds momentum to broader efforts to hold IS perpetrators accountable — and to finally establish what happened to those who vanished.