Nadine K, a German woman was sentenced to more than nine years after being found guilty of enslaving a Yazidi woman and aiding and abetting war crimes and genocide as a member of ISIL (ISIS). The 37-year-old was convicted by the state court in the western city of Koblenz on charges of crimes against humanity, membership in a foreign terrorist organisation and being an accessory to genocide, German news agency dpa reported.
The defendant was a member of ISIL from December 2014 to March 2019. She travelled to Syria to join the group with her husband. The couple, who moved to Mosul in Iraq and then back to Syria, kept a Yazidi woman as a slave from April 2016. The Yazidi had been imprisoned by ISIL since 2014.
The woman faced sexual and physical abuse at the hands of Nadine's husband, with the defendant's knowledge. Nadine kept a close watch on the woman, to prevent her from fleeing and forced her to do housework and observe strict Islamic rituals-- she was 22 at the time.
“All of this served the declared purpose of IS (Islamic State/ISIL), to wipe out the Yazidi faith,” prosecutors said, Al Jazeera reported. The couple kept the woman enslaved and tortured her for three years.
Nadine was arrested in March 2022 after being brought back to Germany from a camp in northeastern Syria where suspected members of IS have been held, an AP report reads. The trial is the latest of several in Germany involving women who travelled to regions controlled by the IS group in Syria and Iraq.
In one case, a German convert to Islam was convicted in 2021 on charges that she allowed a 5-year-old Yazidi girl she and her husband kept as a slave to die of thirst in the sun. Her husband was subsequently convicted as well.
