The detention of the married couple follows a resolution by the German parliament last year that recognizes crimes committed by IS against the Yazidi religious minority in Iraq as genocide. The intent of its authors was to facilitate prosecutions against such crimes in Germany’s courts.
“Twana H.S. and Asia R.A. were married according to Islamic law and were members of the foreign terrorist organisation ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria between October 2015 and December 2017,” the Office of the Federal Prosecutor said in a statement Wednesday that did not give the full names of the suspects, as is customary in Germany.
“They held a then five-year-old Yazidi girl as a slave since no later than late 2015. Since October 2017, they enslaved a then twelve-year-old Yazidi girl as well. Twana H. S. repeatedly raped both children,” the prosecutor said.
The suspects denied the girls the right to practice their own religion and beat them, before handing them over to other IS members, it added: “All of this served the organisation’s objective to destroy the Yazidi religion.”
The suspects were brought before an investigating judge, who ordered that they be placed in pre-trial detention.
Germany jailed an IS member for the first time in 2021 for involvement in genocide and crimes against humanity committed against Yazidis in Iraq and Syria — including the murder of a five-year-old girl.
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