German Court Sentences Iraqi Man to Life for Enslaving and Raping Yazidi Girls

A German court convicted an Iraqi couple of enslaving two Yazidi girls in Iraq and of membership in the Islamic State group. The Munich Higher Regional Court sentenced Twana H.S. to life imprisonment on charges including genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and severe sexual abuse of children.

His wife, Asia R. , received a juvenile sentence of nine and a half years. The couple was arrested in Bavaria in 2024. BBC News reported that Twana H.S. first entered Germany in the early 2000s as an asylum seeker, worked as a hairdresser in Munich, was denied asylum but allowed to stay as the parent of a German child, and was later radicalised at a local mosque before returning to Iraq in 2015.

Prosecutors said the pair married there under Islamic law and joined Islamic State between October 2015 and December 2017. In autumn 2015, Twana H.S. bought a five-year-old Yazidi girl as a slave at a Mosul bazaar at his wife's request, according to the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office.

The couple purchased a twelve-year-old Yazidi girl in early October 2017. Prosecutors stated that Twana H.S. repeatedly raped both girls and that Asia R. A. prepared one girl with make-up for him. The couple forced the girls into household work and childcare, beat them and forbade them from practising their religion.

Asia R. A. once scalded the younger girl's hand with hot water. The eldest Yazidi girl testified in court about the beatings, forced labour and rapes, BR News reported. The second girl remains missing.

Asia R. A. " Twana H.S. declined to speak. The trial proceeded in Germany under the principle of universal jurisdiction for alleged war crimes and genocide committed overseas.