BERLIN (AP) – Two Iraqis accused of keeping two Yazidi girls as slaves and sexually and physically abusing them while members of the Islamic State have been arrested in Germany, prosecutors said. It was announced on Wednesday.
Federal prosecutors said in a statement that the man and woman, identified only as Towana HS and Asia RA in accordance with German privacy regulations, were arrested in Bavaria on Tuesday. In addition to being members of a terrorist organization, they are accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
According to prosecutors, the suspects are married and were members of the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria from October 2015 to December 2017. They are said to have kept a 5-year-old Yazidi girl as a slave since late 2015, and a 12-year-old girl since October 2017.
Prosecutors allege that the man repeatedly raped the two girls, and that the woman prepared a room and applied make-up to one of the girls.
Prosecutors said the couple also subjected the girls to “severe physical violence,” preventing them from practicing their religion and forcing them to do housework and raise children. On one occasion, a man is accused of hitting an older girl with a broom, a woman is accused of scalding the younger girl’s hands with boiling water, and both children are repeatedly forced to stand on one leg for 30 minutes as punishment. Forced.
The suspects handed the girls over to other IS members before leaving Syria in November 2017, prosecutors added.
“All this served the organization’s objective of destroying Yazidiism,” their statement said.
Justice Minister Marco Buschmann welcomed the arrest. “The promise of the principle of universal jurisdiction is clear: impunity for genocide against Yazidis must be fought around the world,” he said.
Last month, a German federal court sentenced a German convert to Islam to 14 years in prison for killing a five-year-old Yazidi girl she enslaved while she and her husband were Islamic State members in Iraq. The appeal was dismissed. Sun.
Her ex-husband, an Iraqi national, was convicted in November 2021 and sentenced to life in prison.
Germany arrests woman suspected of committing war crimes after traveling to join Islamic State group https://t.co/aFNBBODx4Z
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) December 1, 2023
