Sweden: Woman jailed for 12 years for genocide and war crimes against Yazidis

Lina Ishaq, 52, was found guilty of enslaving three Yazidi women and six Yazidi children in Raqqa between 2014 and 2016. Her conviction marks the first time IS crimes against the Yazidis have been prosecuted in Sweden.

Ishaq joined IS in 2013, moving her family to Syria. She is already serving prison sentences for taking her two-year-old son to Syria and for “failing to prevent” IS from making her 12-year-old son a child soldier. He was killed in 2017 at the age of 16.

She forced her Yazidi prisoners to wear a veil, practise Islam, and subjected them to physical abuse.

“The convicted woman was part of the large-scale enslavement system which IS introduced for Yazidi women and children,” said Stockholm District Court presiding judge, Maria Ulfsdotter Klang.

“She has acted independently in maintaining the enslavement and deprivation of liberty of the victims and contributed to trafficking them further.”

The Yazidis, an ancient religious minority primarily based in northern Iraq’s Sinjar region, were targeted by IS in a genocidal campaign launched in August 2014. Over three years, approximately 5,000 Yazidis were killed, half a million were displaced, and more than 6,000 women and children were taken captive, tortured, and subjected to systematic sexual violence, according to the UN.

Born in Iraq to a Christian family, Ishaq moved to Sweden as a child and later converted to Islam before her marriage. She was among 300 Swedish nationals who joined IS, a quarter of whom were women.

Following the collapse of IS’s so-called caliphate in 2017, Ishaq fled Raqqa and escaped to Turkey. She was extradited to Sweden in 2020.

Sweden is now home to around 6,000 Yazidis. Dawood Khalaf, chairman of the Yazidi association in Skaraborg, said Ishaq’s prosecution has helped build trust between the Yazidi community in Sweden and local authorities.

“I know women who have been called for questioning by Swedish police who have not dared to testify for fear of being handed over to IS,” he told public broadcaster SVT. “After this indictment, the picture has changed.”

Ishaq’s lawyer, Mikael Westerlund, said his client planned to appeal.