[Rudaw] Stockholm’s District Court on Tuesday convicted a 56-year-old woman to 12 years in prison for crimes against humanity, genocide, and gross war crimes committed against Yazidi women and kiddies in Syria’s northern province of Raqqa.
The woman was found to have had "a strong ideological inclination to destroy members of a religious group," according to a statement by Stockholm’s District Court. In total, nine victims, including seven children, suffered severe mental harm as a result of the convicted woman’s actions "which will affect them for the rest of their lives," the statement added.
In 2014, the Islamic State
 ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
(ISIS) launched an assault on the predominantly Yazidi region of Shingal (Sinjar) in northern Iraq, abducting some 6,417 Yazidi women and kiddies. Many of these victims were subjected to forced labor and sex slavery.
The Yazidi women and kiddies involved in the case in Sweden were held captive and enslaved by ISIS gunnies for around five months before being transferred into the custody of the convicted woman. There, she "imprisoned and treated them as property for a period of, in most cases, five months," the statement explained.
The Yazidis were subjected to various types of abuse by their captors who forced them to adhere to Islam, forbade them from using their native language, and subjected them to sexual assault and molestation. Additionally, they were forced to do chores "in a slave-like manner," and their freedom was severely restricted.
Stockholm’s District Court emphasized that the comprehensive enslavement of members of the Yazidi community by ISIS members was one of the key components in the perpetration of the genocide against them. "The enslavement of Yazidi women and kiddies was a precursor for forced labour, conversion [to Islam], and sex slavery," said the Court.
The convicted woman was sentenced to 12 years in jail for her involvement in crimes against humanity, genocide, and gross war crimes committed in Raqqa. The injured parties were awarded 150,000 SEK (almost $14,000) each, in compensation.
Accused of keeping Yazidi women and children as slaves at her home in Syria in 2015, Lina Ishaq
… Ms Ishaq returned from Syria in 2020. She was the first person charged and convicted in Sweden for aiding in the recruitment of her minor son, age 12, as a child soldier. The boy died in Syria when he was sixteen, in 2017… was convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, the Stockholm district court said in a statement.
The crimes warranted a sentence of 16 years, but taking a previous sentence into account it ordered her to spend 12 years behind bars, the court said. Prosecutors had demanded a life jail sentence.
The woman, a Swedish citizen, had already been sentenced to six years imprisonment in 2022 for allowing her 12-year-old son to be recruited as an IS child soldier.
Prosecutor Reena Devgun said she was happy with the convictions but she would likely appeal against the sentence.
“These are very, very severe crimes, and compared to other Swedish jurisprudence or Swedish sentencing traditions, I do think that there is room for a more severe sentence,” she told AFP.
The court said the case concerned nine Yazidi, six of whom were children at the time.
All the plaintiffs were captured by IS in attacks on Kurdish-speaking Yazidi villages that began in August 2014 in Sinjar, Iraq. Their male relatives were executed and thousands of women were taken.
After about five months of captivity, they arrived at Ishaq’s home in Raqqa.
“The woman kept them imprisoned and treated them as her property by holding them as slaves for a period of, in most cases, five months,” the court said.
– FORCED CONVERSION –
Their movement was restricted, they were made to perform chores and some were photographed in preparation to be transferred to other people as slaves.
“Given the fact that she participated in the onward transfer of the injured parties, she is also responsible for enabling their continued imprisonment and enslavement,” the court said.
Ishaq also forced the Yazidis, who practice their own religion, to “become practising Muslims” by making them recite Koran verses and pray four or five times a day.
She also called the injured parties “demeaning invectives such as ‘infidels’ or ‘slaves'”, the court said.
The court stressed “that the comprehensive system of enslavement” was one of “the crucial elements” implemented by IS in “the perpetration of the genocide, the crimes against humanity and gross war crimes that the Yazidi population was subjected to”.
As such, the court said “the woman shared the IS intent to destroy a religious group”.
Ishaq’s lawyer Mikael Westerlund said the woman had not decided whether to appeal, but said they were pleased the court had not handed down a life sentence as requested by the prosecution.
“It was important for the prosecution to sentence her for life,” he told AFP.
Around 300 Swedes or Swedish residents, a quarter of them women, joined IS in Syria and Iraq, mostly in 2013 and 2014, according to Sweden’s intelligence service Sapo.
Ishaq grew up in a Christian Iraqi family in Sweden but converted to Islam after meeting her late husband and Islamist Jiro Mehho, with whom she had six children, in the 1990s.
She travelled to Syria with her children in 2013. Mehho died in August 2013, and Ishaq moved to Raqqa in 2014 and re-married.
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...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling 
...
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling 
...
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling