German court jails Iraqi couple over enslavement of Yazidi girls

A German court on Monday jailed an Iraqi couple who were members of the Islamic State group for keeping two Yazidi minority girls as slaves.

The court in Munich sentenced the man, previously partially named by prosecutors as Twana H. S., to life in prison. His wife, Asia R. A., received a sentence of nine and a half years.

The court found that the couple had been members of the Islamic State group between October 2015 and December 2017 and that they committed their crimes in Syria.

By late 2015, the couple had bought a five-year-old girl as a slave. They bought another girl, who was 12, in 2017. The court found that the couple forced the girls to do housework and look after their children.

The court also found that Twana H. S. raped both girls and beat the older girl with a broom handle. It found that Asia R. A. scalded the younger girl's hand.

The court said the couple suppressed the practice of the Yazidi faith in line with Islamic State ideology and ordered the girls to follow Islamic rules instead.

One of the girls attended the trial in person and cried during the sentencing. Judge Philipp Stoll read part of her testimony, in which she said dogs had been worth more than the girls and that her childhood had been suffering.

The source says the Islamic State group regarded Yazidis, who are Kurdish-speaking and follow a pre-Islamic faith, as heretics.

Stoll said the couple were not being convicted as representatives of Islamic State atrocities, but only for their own actions.

The couple left Syria in November 2017 after handing the two girls over to other Islamic State members. They were arrested in southern Germany in April 2024.