Swedish woman charged over ISIS torture of Yazidi women and children in Syria

Lina Laina Ishaq accused of crimes of humanity and inhumane treatment

Syrians inspect debris after a bomb hit a building during clashes between rebel fighters and Syrian government forces on August 10, 2013 in the northern city of Raqqa. AFP

A 52-year-old woman in Sweden was on Thursday charged over her association with ISIS, genocide, crimes against humanity and serious war crimes against Yazidi women and children in Syria, in the first such trial in the Scandinavian country.

Swedish citizen Lina Laina Ishaq is accused of committing the crimes between August 2014 and December 2016, in the city of Raqqa, the former de facto capital of ISIS's self-proclaimed caliphate and home to about 300,000 people.

Senior prosecutor Reena Devgun said the crimes “took place under ISIS rule in Raqqa, and this is the first time that ISIS attacks against the Yazidi minority have been tried in Sweden”. The Yazidis are one of Iraq’s oldest religious minorities.

Iraq's Yazidis wait for ISIS-abducted relatives to return - in pictures

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  Fawziya Jasim, 16, was one of many affected when ISIS fighters swept over Mount Sinjar in August 2014. All photos: AFP

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  Hayam, pictured, was 17 when ISIS abducted her on August 3, 2014, along with her parents, five sisters and two brothers

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  In an ISIS prison, she met Leila, a fellow Yazidi. In May 2015, Hayam was sold to a Syrian and Leila to an Iraqi

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  Four months later, Hayam was given to a man from Dagestan before escaping and reaching Iraqi Kurdistan after a year and a half in captivity

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  She has since married Leila's brother, Marwan, and the couple and their two children have sought asylum in Australia where Hayam has family

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  She has the word 'huriya' (freedom) tattooed on her wrist and has no intention of returning to her former home, with her family and friends no longer there

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  After paying nearly $100,000 in ransoms to free 10 family members, Khaled Taalou, a member of Iraq's Yazidi minority, is still working to free other relatives kidnapped by ISIS

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  Nineteen members of Mr Taalou's family were abducted, including his brother and sister and their spouses and children

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  Now displaced and living in Iraqi Kurdistan, Mr Taalou said expensive releases are negotiated 'via networks of traffickers in Iraq and abroad'

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  Bahar Elias was separated from her husband Jassem and their son Ahmed, who was just 19 when they were kidnapped

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  Relatives paid intermediaries $22,000 to secure the release of Bahar and her three younger sisters

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  Now in a camp for displaced people, the 40-year-old said she has her 'eyes glued to the road' in the hope that her husband and son will return

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  She appealed for international assistance to 'help us find a trace of our families, to find out if they are dead or alive'

“Women, children and men were regarded as property and subjected to being traded as slaves, sexual slavery, forced labour, deprivation of liberty and extrajudicial executions,” Ms Devgun said. “ISIS tried to annihilate the Yazidi ethnic group on an industrial scale."

In announcing the charges, Ms Devgun said prosecutors were able to identify Ishaq through information from the UN team investigating atrocities in Iraq, known as Unitad.

The Stockholm District Court said the prosecution claims she detained a number of women and children of the Yazidi ethnic group in her residence in Raqqa, and “allegedly exposed them to, among other things, severe suffering, torture or other inhumane treatment" and deprived them "of fundamental rights for cultural, religious and gender reasons contrary to general international law”.

Militias who played a vital role in defeating ISIS - in pictures

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  Iraqi government forces and allied militias take a position in the northern part of Diyala province as part of an assault to retake the city of Tikrit from ISIS, on March 2, 2015. All photos: AFP

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  Members of the Iraqi paramilitary Popular Mobilisation units flash the 'V' for victory sign after regaining control of the village of Albu Ajil, near Tikrit, on March 9, 2015.

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  Fighters from a Popular Mobilisation unit take part in an exercise during their graduation ceremony in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, on April 9, 2015.

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  Iraqi fighters of the Shiite group Asaib Ahl Al Haq (The League of the Righteous) stand guard outside their headquarters on May 18, 2015, in the mainly Shiite southern city of Basra, as Shiite militias converged on Ramadi in a bid to recapture it from ISIS.

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  Iraqi government forces and members of the Popular Mobilisation units raise their weapons on the front line during battles with ISIS on the road leading to Saqlawiya, in Iraq's Anbar province, on August 4, 2015.

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  An Iraqi Shiite fighter cleans his weapon on his vehicle at the petrochemical plant in the town of Baiji, north of Tikrit, on October 16, 2015.

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  Iraqi Shiite fighters fire a rocket during a military operation against ISIS as they advance towards the centre of Baiji, about 200 kilometres north of Baghdad, on October 19, 2015.

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  Iraqi Shiite fighters from the Hashed Al Shaabi paramilitaries advance in a desert area near the village of Tall Abtah, south-west of Mosul, on November 28, 2016, during a broad offensive by Iraq forces to retake Mosul from ISIS.

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  An Iraqi Shiite fighter from the Hashed Al Shaabi paramilitary forces inspects an underground tunnel in the town of Tal Abtah, south of Tal Afar, on December 10, 2016.

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  Iraqi pro-government forces advance towards the Unesco-listed ancient city of Hatra, south-west of Mosul, during an offensive to retake the area from ISIS fighters, on April 26, 2017.

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  A fighter from the Hashed Al Sahaabi units helps displaced people who fled from battles to oust ISIS from Hawija cross a river in the area of Zarga, about 35km south-east of Kirkuk, on October 4, 2017.

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  Iraqi forces advance towards the city of al-Qaim, in Iraq's western Anbar province near the Syrian border, as they fight against remnant pockets of ISIS forces, on November 3, 2017.

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  Iraqi forces ride in the back of pick-up trucks during the advance through Anbar province in the western desert bordering Syria, on November 25, 2017, to flush out remaining ISIS fighters in the region.

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  Members of the Iraqi forces and the Hashed Al Shaabi carry their firearms as they stand on an infanty-fighting vehicle near the Iraqi-Syrian border, about 80km west of the border town of al-Qaim, on December 9, 2017.

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  Abbas Hamza Hassan, a 56-year-old Iraqi fighter, is pictured on November 13, 2018 while training fellow Hashed members how to use weapons in the western Iraqi province of Anbar.

Ishaq is accused of holding nine people, including children, in her home for up to seven months and treating them as slaves, and abusing some of them.

Ishaq, who denies wrongdoing, is further accused of having molested a baby, said to have been one month old at the time, by holding a hand over the child’s mouth when he screamed to silence him. She is also accused of having sold people to ISIS knowing they risked being killed or subjected to serious sexual abuse.

“In short, her explanation is that she has never bought another person, that she has never owned or exercised any control over another person and that she has never sold another person,” Ishaq's lawyer Mikael Westerlund told Swedish news agency TT.

In 2014, ISIS militants stormed Yazidi towns and villages in Iraq’s Sinjar region and abducted women and children. Women were forced into sexual slavery and boys were taken to be indoctrinated.

Iraqi artist depicts Yazidi heritage - in pictures

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  Artist Fares Bibani, 55, paints a colourful mural on the wall of a house in Beban village in Mosul, Iraq. All photos: Reuters

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  Several walls in the main square of the village have murals depicting the Yazidi way of life as a farming community before the rise of extremist group ISIS

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  Bibani says the aim of the project is to make new generations aware of their heritage

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  Some of his paintings depict what a UN-appointed commission of independent war crimes investigators said was genocide against the Yazidis

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  A woman buys vegetables near one of Bibani's murals

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  Bibani started his project in March 2022 and says he will continue to paint until he decorates the entire village

The court said Ishaq's trial was to start on October 7 and would last approximately two months. Much of it will be held behind closed doors.

Ishaq was earlier convicted in Sweden and sentenced to three years in prison for taking her two-year-old son to Syria in 2014, to an area then controlled by ISIS.

She had claimed that at the time, she had told the child’s father that she and the boy were going on holiday to Turkey. However, once in Turkey, the two crossed into ISIS-run territory in Syria.

In 2017, when ISIS’s reign began to collapse, Ishaq fled Raqqa and was captured by Syrian-Kurdish troops. She managed to escape to Turkey where she was arrested with her son and two other children she had given birth to in the meantime, with an ISIS foreign fighter from Tunisia.

She was extradited from Turkey to Sweden. During her first trial and conviction in 2021, Ishaq was not identified by name. She previously lived in the southern Swedish town of Landskrona.