Swedish Woman Accused of Treating Yazidi Women, Children ‘as Slaves’

A Swedish woman was recently charged with war crimes after she was accused of treating Yazidi women and children as “slaves.”

On Thursday, authorities in Sweden announced charges against 52-year-old Lina Laina Ishaq, a Swedish citizen associated with the Islamic State, for crimes that occurred between August 2014 and December 2016.

Ishaq has been charged with serious war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against Yazidi women and children. The incidents allegedly occurred in Raqqa, the former de facto capital of the self-proclaimed Islamic State caliphate in Syria, which was home to around 300,000 people.

In a statement, Swedish senior prosecutor Reena Devgun said that the crimes “took place under IS rule in Raqqa, and this is the first time that IS attacks against the Yazidi minority have been tried in Sweden.”

“Women, children and men were regarded as property and subjected to being traded as slaves, sexual slavery, forced labor, deprivation of liberty and extrajudicial executions,” Devgun said in the statement.

During a press conference, Devgun announced the charges, stating that the woman was identified with the help of information provided by UNITAD, the U.N. team investigating atrocities in Iraq.

“IS tried to annihilate the Yazidi ethnic group on an industrial scale,” Devgun said during the press conference.

In a separate statement, the Stockholm District Court said prosecutors allege the woman held several Yazidi women and children captive at her residence in Raqqa.

She “allegedly subjected them to severe suffering, torture, and other inhumane treatment” and persecuted them by depriving their fundamental rights based on cultural, religious, and gender grounds, in violation of international law

The charging documents, which were obtained by the Associated Press, showed that authorities believe Ishaq held nine individuals, including children, in her Raqqa residence for at least seven months, where they were treated as slaves. Authorities also accused Ishaq of molesting a 1-month-old baby.

Ishaq has continued to deny any wrongdoing in the case.

In 2014, IS militants attacked Yazidi towns and villages in Iraq’s Sinjar region, abducting women and children. The women were forced into sexual slavery, while boys were taken to be indoctrinated with jihadist ideology.

The woman was previously convicted in Sweden and sentenced to three years in prison for taking her 2-year-old son to Syria in 2014, an area then controlled by ISIS. She claimed she told the child’s father they were merely going on a holiday to Turkey, but once there, she crossed into ISIS-controlled territory in Syria.

The court announced that the trial is set to begin on Oct. 7 and is expected to last about two months. Much of the proceedings will be held behind closed doors.

This article includes reporting from the Associated Press.