Swedish Woman Sentenced for Genocide Against Yazidis Amid IS Atrocities

A 52-year-old Swedish woman has received a 12-year prison sentence for her involvement in genocide and war crimes against the Yazidi community during her time with Islamic State in Syria.

A Swedish woman has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for her role in genocide and war crimes committed against the Yazidi people while she was affiliated with the Islamic State (IS) in Syria. Lina Ishaq, 52, was convicted for holding three Yazidi women and six Yazidi children as slaves in Raqqa from 2014 to 2016. Her trial marked the first prosecution in Sweden for IS crimes against the Yazidis, a religious minority from Iraq.

Ishaq moved her family to Syria in 2013 to join IS and is already serving sentences for taking her two-year-old son to the war zone and not preventing her 12-year-old son from becoming a child soldier, who perished in 2017 at age 16. She forced her captives to wear veils and practice Islam, subjecting them to physical violence.

"The convicted woman was part of the large-scale enslavement system which IS introduced for Yazidi women and children," stated Stockholm District Court judge Maria Ulfsdotter Klang. Ishaq was found to have acted independently in enforcing the slaves' deprivation of liberty and contributed to their further trafficking.

Following IS's attack on Yazidis in August 2014, around 5,000 were killed, and about half a million were displaced. Over 6,000 women and children were abducted to face torture and sexual violence, with the aim of exterminating the Yazidi population, as per UN reports.

Born in Iraq to a Christian family that later settled in Sweden, Ishaq converted to Islam before marriage. With roughly 300 Swedish nationals, including many women, Ishaq joined IS in 2013. After the collapse of the self-proclaimed caliphate in 2017, she escaped to Turkey and was extradited back to Sweden in 2020. Presently, Sweden is home to around 6,000 Yazidis.

Dawood Khalaf, the chairman of the Yazidi association in Skaraborg, noted that Ishaq's trial has fostered trust between the Yazidi community and local authorities, indicating a shift in the willingness of victims to come forward. "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," Khalaf shared with public broadcaster SVT.

Despite her conviction, Ishaq's attorney Mikael Westerlund stated that she continues to deny the allegations and is deliberating an appeal.