Woman who kept Yazidi women and children as slaves in Syria jailed by Swedish court

The 52-year-old woman was sentenced to 12 years in prison for committing acts of genocide, crimes against humanity and gross war crimes, Stockholm District Court said. (Oscar Olsson/TT News Agency/AP via CNN Newsource)

A woman who kept Yazidi women and children as slaves in Raqqa, Syria, during the rule of the terror group ISIS was on Tuesday jailed by a Swedish court on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and gross war crimes.

Six children and three women from the ethnic and religious Yazidi group were kept imprisoned by the woman for months in 2015, the Stockholm District Court said in a statement. The woman was not named by the court.

While being held as slaves, the victims were forced to participate in Islamic religious practices, forbidden to observe their own religion and culture, and ordered to perform domestic chores, the court said. Some of the victims were also “assaulted and molested,” it added.

ISIS considered Raqqa the capital of its self-proclaimed “caliphate,” seizing the city in 2014. Raqqa’s national hospital and stadium were turned into ISIS headquarters, and public executions were carried out in the city’s main square.

ISIS killed and enslaved hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Yazidis, capturing the women and children and murdering the men.

The group victimized by the woman sentenced on Tuesday were taken captive in August 2014, Stockholm District Court said, after ISIS carried out attacks on Yazidi villages in Northern Iraq’s Sinjar district. Their male relatives were killed in the attacks, the court said.

Before being imprisoned by the woman, the victims were kept as slaves by different male ISIS members, living “in very meagre conditions without food and clean water,” according to the court. The women were “subjected to systematic rape” by the male ISIS members, it added.

The victims were then moved to the woman’s home, where they were held and abused for up to five months, the court said. After this, she helped transfer the victims to be enslaved by other ISIS members.

Some of the victims were freed via smugglers a couple of months after they left the woman’s home, the court said, but three of the children did not become free until years later. One young woman has not been found, it added.

“The crimes do not only constitute an exceptionally serious violation of the life and integrity of specific individuals, but also of fundamental human values and humanity,” the court said.

“To exercise the powers attaching to right of ownership over another human being is a tremendous violation of the integrity of that person, as it deprives the person of their human dignity,” it continued.