Nadine K., 37, was sentenced to nine years and three months in prison by the Koblenz Higher Regional Court for “aiding and abetting war crimes and genocide.” She stood trial after being ‘accused of enslaving’ a Yazidi woman during her time with the so-called Islamic State in Syria and Iraq,” German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) said.
The accused is believed to have traveled to Syria in December 2014 from Germany alongside her husband to join ISIS, residing in ISIS-occupied territory for a year before moving to Mosul, Iraq when the terror group captured the city.
“In early 2016, the couple were accused of enslaving a 22-year-old woman from Iraq’s Yazidi minority. The Yazidi woman was abducted by IS members in 2014, after the jihadi group attacked her home village in the Iraqi Sinjar region,” DW said in January.
Prosecutors said that the couple kept the Yazidi woman as a “household slave” and contributed to ISIS efforts “to wipe out the Yazidi faith.”
She was arrested by authorities upon arrival at Germany’s Frankfurt airport in March 2021.
Yazidi activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad hailed the sentencing later on Wednesday, saying that all abusers deserve accountability.
“I am heartened to see Nadine K held to account for the appalling part she played in the Yazidi genocide, and the enslavement and sexual abuse of a Yazidi woman,” Murad said in a press release.
Murad herself was held captive by ISIS and survived the terror group after escaping captivity.
“Germany is showing the world that ISIS can be prosecuted, and I urge other countries to follow its lead,” she added.
ISIS swept through vast swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014 and declared a so-called caliphate in a brazen offensive that saw the terror group take control of around a third of Syria’s territory as well as several Iraqi cities, including the second largest northern city of Mosul. It was declared territorially defeated in 2017.
During its brutal reign, the group committed heinous atrocities, such as genocide, sexual slavery, and massacres, against non-Muslims, especially the Yazidi ethnoreligious group. Shiite Muslims were also a target of the jihadists’ terror.
The couple returned to Syria in 2016 and brought the Yazidi woman along, staying in the country until Kurdish-led forces dismantled ISIS’ so-called caliphate in 2019 and arrested the couple, freeing the Yazidi woman in the process.
The Yazidi woman was present and testified at the trial, recognizing the accused.
More than 6,000 Yazidis were abducted when ISIS overran the community’s heartland of Sinjar in 2014. Around 2,700 remain missing, with little done to bring solace to the rescued.
The Wednesday ruling marks the third time an ISIS member has been convicted for genocide against the Yazidi community in Iraq and Syria since 2014.
In January, the German parliament recognized the 2014 crimes against the Yazidi community by ISIS as “genocide.” Berlin has been an essential member of the US-led global coalition against ISIS.
In September, a German public prosecutor pressed war crimes charges against a German national who married several ISIS members, including one that had allegedly kept a Yazidi woman as a slave.
In 2021, a Bavarian court handed a 10-year prison sentence to a German convert to Islam for leaving a five-year-old Yazidi girl who she and her husband kept as a slave to die of thirst in the sun.
Germany frequently prosecutes those who committed serious crimes abroad, such as crimes against humanity, on the legal principle of “universal jurisdiction,” giving Berlin the green light to prosecute international crimes regardless of where they were committed.
