BERLIN (AP) — A German woman was found guilty on Wednesday of keeping a Yazidi woman as a slave during her time with the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, and sentenced to nine years and three months in prison.
The state court in the western city of Koblenz convicted the 37-year-old of crimes against humanity, membership in a foreign terrorist organization and complicity in genocide, the agency reported. german press dpa. Authorities identified her only as Nadine K. in accordance with German confidentiality rules.
The court found that the defendant had abused a young Yazidi woman for three years “for his own benefit as a domestic slave”. He said her husband had brought the woman to their home and regularly raped her, and that the defendant was aware of this and should have intervened.
Prosecutors said the defendant traveled to Syria with her husband in 2014 and joined ISIS. In 2015, the couple moved to the Iraqi city of Mosul, where they reportedly kept the Yazidi woman.
The accused was arrested in March 2022 after being flown back to Germany from a camp in northeast Syria where suspected IS members were being held.
In a statement read at her trial by a defense attorney, she denied coercing the Yazidi woman at any time. She said there had been frequent arguments with her husband over the woman’s presence and she was ashamed that she had not done more for her.
In February, the Yazidi woman testified at trial and said she recognized the accused.
The trial is the latest of several in Germany involving women who traveled to areas controlled by the IS group in Syria and Iraq.
In one case, a German convert to Islam was convicted in 2021 for allowing a 5-year-old Yazidi girl she and her husband kept as a slave to die of thirst in the sun. Her husband was also later convicted.
Earlier this year an appeals court ordered a new sentencing hearing for the woman, who was given a 10-year sentence. She now faces a longer prison sentence.