A Munich Higher Regional Court has concluded proceedings against an Iraqi couple accused of enslaving and abusing Yazidi girls in Iraq during the Islamic State’s control of the region. The male defendant, identified as Twana H.S. under German privacy conventions, was sentenced to life imprisonment after conviction on charges including genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and severe sexual abuse of children. His wife, Asia R.A., received a juvenile sentence of nine and a half years. Both defendants were apprehended in Bavaria in 2024.
The Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking ethnic and religious minority, became targets of systematic persecution when IS took control of significant territories in Syria and Iraq beginning in 2014. Historical accounts document that thousands of Yazidi men were killed while women and children were subjected to enslavement and sexual violence. Germany has officially recognized these actions as genocide, and prosecutors argued that the defendants participated in this deliberate campaign to destroy the Yazidi religion.
According to court records and reporting, Twana H.S. initially came to Germany as an asylum seeker during the early 2000s, working as a hairdresser in Munich before becoming radicalized at a local mosque. He subsequently returned to Iraq, where he and Asia R.A. married under Islamic law and joined IS between October 2015 and December 2017. Prosecutors established that the couple purchased two Yazidi girls—one aged five in autumn 2015 from a market in Mosul, and another aged twelve in early October 2017—for enslavement. The children were subjected to repeated sexual abuse, forced labor, physical beatings, and were forbidden from practicing their religion. The older girl provided testimony during trial describing the abuse she endured, while the second child remains missing. The case proceeded under the principle of universal jurisdiction, permitting prosecution of alleged war crimes regardless of location. Asia R.A. offered an apology during proceedings, while her co-defendant declined to speak in court.