The Munich Higher Regional Court delivered guilty verdicts against an Iraqi couple accused of enslaving Yazidi girls and participating in Islamic State activities. Twana H.S. was sentenced to life imprisonment on charges encompassing 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 arrested in Bavaria in 2024.
The Yazidi people, a Kurdish-speaking minority, faced systematic persecution following the Islamic State’s territorial expansion across Iraq and Syria beginning in 2014. During this period, thousands of men were killed while women and children were subjected to slavery and sexual violence. German authorities recognize these actions as genocide, with prosecutors characterizing the couple’s alleged conduct as part of the extremist group’s broader campaign to destroy Yazidi religious practices.
According to prosecutors, Twana H.S. initially came to Germany in the early 2000s as an asylum seeker and worked as a hairdresser in Munich. Though his asylum request was denied, he was permitted to remain due to his status as a parent of a German child. After becoming radicalized at a Munich mosque, he returned to Iraq in 2015. Prosecutors assert the couple married under Islamic law and joined Islamic State between October 2015 and December 2017.
The charges alleged that Twana H.S. purchased a five-year-old Yazidi girl at a market in Mosul in autumn 2015 at his wife’s request, and that the couple acquired a twelve-year-old girl in early October 2017. Court testimony detailed abuse including beatings with solid objects, forced labor, and religious prohibition. Asia R.A. was accused of scalding one child’s hand with hot water and preparing conditions for abuse. During proceedings, the eldest girl provided accounts of her treatment; the second child remains missing.
The case proceeded under universal jurisdiction principles, allowing Germany to prosecute alleged international crimes occurring elsewhere. Asia R.A. issued an apology during trial, while Twana H.S. declined to make a statement.