Sweden tries woman for war crimes against Yazidis in Syria
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Swedish authorities charged on Thursday, Sep. 19, a woman with genocide, crimes against humanity, and serious war crimes against Yazidi women and children in Syria in a first of its kind trial in Sweden.
In a statement, senior prosecutor Reena Devgun announced that Lina Laina Ishaq, a 52-year-old Swedish citizen, committed the crimes against the Yazidi minority under the rule of the Islamic State group (ISIS) in Raqqa between August 2014 and December 2016.
In a news conference, Devgun explained that prosecutors identified Ishaq using information provided by UNITAD, a U.N. team that investigates crimes in Iraq.
Ishaq is suspected to have detained several Yazidi women and children in her home in Raqqa for up to seven months and treated them as slaves, while also abusing some of them.
She is also believed to have engaged in selling individuals to ISIS while being aware that those individuals faced the threat of death or severe sexual abuse as a result.
In 2014, ISIS attacked Yazidi communities, one of Iraq’s oldest religious groups, in Sinjar, abducting women and children. The women were subjected to sexual slavery, while boys were taken to be indoctrinated into jihadi ideology.
In 2017, as ISIS began to lose territory, Ishaq fled from Raqqa and was captured by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). She later escaped to Turkey, where she was arrested along with her son and two other children she had with a Tunisian ISIS fighter. Ishaq was then extradited from Turkey to Sweden.
Ishaq was convicted in Sweden for bringing her 2-year-old son to Syria in 2014, into territory controlled by ISIS, and was sentenced to three years in prison.
Moreover, the court announced that Ishaq’s trial is set to begin on Oct. 7, and is expected to last about two months.