German Woman Sentenced to 9 Years for Crimes Against Yazidi Woman

The Koblenz court on Wednesday sentenced Nadine K to nine years in prison for crimes including enslavement, abetting rape, and membership of a foreign terrorist organisation. The court said her actions had been motivated by a "fundamentalist-Islamic world view" and had caused the Yazidi woman "considerable suffering". The judge said the accused had acted "based on a deeply-entrenched anti-Yazidi ideology". The court heard that Nadine K and her husband had forced the victim to convert to their own interpretation of Islam. They also forced her to wear a burqa and forbade her from going outside unaccompanied. The defendant was also found guilty of helping her husband to beat and rape the Yazidi woman. The Koblenz court noted that it was the first time a German court had found a defendant guilty of crimes against humanity for actions committed outside of Germany. The judge said Nadine K had played a "significant role in the persecution of the Yazidi people". He added that the nine-year jail sentence was a "just punishment" for her actions.

The German government estimates that at least 1,100 people have travelled from Germany to join IS. Of those, around a third are thought to have returned, and are now facing prosecution. A German woman accused of joining the Islamic State (IS) group has been found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to nine years in prison. The Koblenz court heard that the defendant had abused the young Yazidi woman for three years while they lived in Syria and Iraq. In 2014, IS fighters stormed into the ancestral heartland of the Yazidi people in northern Iraq. The Yazidis fled to Mount Sinjar, with many killed and some 7,000 women and girls seized and enslaved. The victim, who was freed in 2019, testified in Nadine K's trial in February and was present for Wednesday's verdict.

During her trial, the accused denied coercing the Yazidi woman but said she should have done more for her. There have been a number of trials in Germany recently involving former IS members accused of killing or abusing Yazidis, and in October 2021 a woman was jailed for 10 years over the killing of a Yazidi girl she and her husband had bought as a slave. A month later, a German court issued the first worldwide ruling that recognized crimes by IS against the Yazidi people as genocide.