German mother 'held Yazidi woman as slave'

The woman is accused of aiding and abetting war crimes and genocide with ISIS

The accused was alleged to have joined ISIS in Syria. AP

A mother has gone on trial in Germany accused of enslaving a Yazidi woman in ISIS-controlled land.

The German woman, identified as Nadine K, 37, is accused of aiding and abetting war crimes and genocide with ISIS.

She also faced charges of crimes against humanity and membership of a foreign terrorist organisation as the trial began in Koblenz, in south-west Germany.

“From early 2016, Nadine K and her husband kept a Yazidi woman as a slave,” prosecutors said when she was charged in September.

“The man raped and beat the woman regularly, which Nadine K knew.”

Prosecutors said she kept watch to prevent the woman, who was 22, from fleeing and forced her to do housework and care for children.

“All of this served the declared purpose of ISIS to wipe out the Yazidi faith,” they said.

Federal prosecutors say Nadine K travelled with her husband in December 2014 from Germany to the ISIS-controlled part of Syria where they joined the group.

Months later the couple and their daughter settled in Mosul, Iraq, where they allegedly hoarded weapons and established a hostel providing room for “single female members” of ISIS.

Nadine K and her family are understood to have lived in ISIS-controlled territory until March 2019, when they were arrested by Kurdish fighters and the Yazidi woman was released.

The accused was arrested last March on her return to Germany in one of several repatriation operations.

Last year, a German court issued the first ruling worldwide to recognise crimes against the Yazidi community as genocide, in a verdict praised by activists as a “historic” win for the minority.

Kurdish-speaking Yazidis hailing from northern Iraq have been persecuted by ISIS, which killed hundreds of men, raped women and forcibly recruited children as fighters.

Last May, a German woman who joined ISIS in Syria as a teenager was given a two-year suspended prison sentence but cleared by a court in Naumburg, central Germany, of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity.