Sweden jails woman for keeping slaves for ISIS in Syria

Lina Ishaq sentenced to 12 years for enslaving Yazidi women and children and forcing religious conversion

A Swedish court said prisoners held by ISIS in its Syrian capital of Raqqa were subjected to abuse and forced religious conversion at the hands of a female captor. AFP

A woman who kept prisoners captured by ISIS as “slaves” during the civil war in Syria has been jailed for 12 years in a war crimes trial in Sweden.

Lina Ishaq, 52, kept Yazidi women and children as captives at her home after ISIS had attacked their villages and executed their male relatives, a court in Stockholm found. It said she forced them to practise as Muslims and subjected them to “various forms of abuse” while referring to them as “infidels” and “slaves”.

Judges said Ishaq, a Swedish citizen, shared ISIS's desire to persecute the Yazidis and “had a strong ideological intent to destroy a religious group”. Extradited from Turkey in 2021, her conviction is the first in Sweden relating to the ISIS assault on the Yazidis in Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2016, which has been widely labelled a campaign of genocide.

Nine people enslaved by Ishaq “were subjected by the convicted woman to serious mental harm which will affect them for the rest of their lives”, the Stockholm District Court said. Seven were children, and three were not freed for several years after others had escaped with the help of smugglers. One remains missing.

The victims were captured during co-ordinated ISIS attacks in northern Iraq in the summer of 2014, in which the militants carried out executions and assaults in what the Swedish court called a “systematic attack” on Yazidi civilians. It is believed the captives were transported between ISIS holding sites in Iraq and Syria for several months before they came to Ishaq's home in Raqqa, the extremist group's former capital in Syria.

At her home she “kept them imprisoned and treated them as her property by holding them as slaves”, the court announced in its verdict on Tuesday, in which Ishaq was convicted of involvement in genocide, crimes against humanity and gross war crimes.

It said that while imprisoned they were “forced to become practising Muslims” by reciting the Quran, praying five times a day, wearing religious dress and being forbidden from speaking Kurmanji, a dialect of Kurdish. Their captor is said to have declared that ISIS “will kill all the infidels” while showing them propaganda films in which Yazidis were executed by members of ISIS.

Prosecutor Reena Devgun said victims in the ISIS war crimes case were subjected to acts of genocide. EPA

At Ishaq's home the prisoners were also treated in a “slave-like way” by being forced to perform domestic chores, were “severely restricted” in their freedom to move about and received limited food and supplies, the court ruled. It said Ishaq “assaulted and molested some of the injured parties and referred to all of them using demeaning invectives such as 'infidels' or 'slaves'".

After five months Ishaq is said to have assisted in the “onward transfer” of most of the captives, which involved having their photographs taken. Judges reasoned that her actions were “part of a pattern of acts committed by ISIS and ISIS adherents against the Yazidi civilian population, which taken together constitute a widespread and systematic attack against civilians”. The militants lost control of Raqqa in 2017.

“The crimes do not only constitute an exceptionally serious violation of the life and integrity of specific individuals, but also of fundamental human values and humanity,” the court said. “To exercise the powers attaching to right of ownership over another human being is a tremendous violation of the integrity of that person, as it deprives the person of their human dignity.”

The court's decision also “stresses that the comprehensive system of enslavement of the Yazidi population implemented by ISIS was one of the crucial elements in the perpetration of the genocide, the crimes against humanity and gross war crimes that the Yazidi population was subjected to”. The case was the first ever trial for crimes against humanity in a Swedish court.

Captives of ISIS were transported between the militants' holding sites in Iraq and Syria for months before arriving in militant-ruled Raqqa. AFP

About 300 Swedes or Swedish residents, a quarter of them women, joined IS in Syria and Iraq, mostly in 2013 and 2014, according to Sweden's intelligence service Sapo. Many European countries claim a “universal jurisdiction” to prosecute grave crimes that occurred outside their territory, such as ISIS war crimes allegations that have been heard in Germany.

The charges in the Swedish war crimes case were brought last September. Prosecutor Reena Devgun said at the time the victims suffered “such severe mental harm that it constitutes genocide”. She said forcing Yazidi children to be brought up as Muslims was also an act of genocide.

The offences at trial were just “part of the systematic abuse and offences these women and children were subjected too during their time in ISIS captivity”, she said. “ISIS sought to destroy the Yazidi people on an industrial scale.”

Ishaq was already serving a six-year sentence handed down in 2022 for allowing her 12-year-old son to be recruited as a child soldier for ISIS. Her sentence in the war crimes trial was assessed at 16 years but reduced to 12 because of the time already served. The victims were awarded 150,000 Swedish crowns ($13,700) each in damages.