The 52-year-old woman who grew up in western Sweden is serving a prison sentence for serious war crimes, since she took her son from Sweden and let him become a child soldier for the terrorist sect IS.
On Thursday, she became the first Swede to be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. She is also being prosecuted for genocide and serious war crimes, for having enslaved six Yazidi children and three women in her home in the Syrian city of al-Raqqa, the "capital" of the caliphate, between 2014 and 2015.
According to prosecutor Reena Devgun, the nine plaintiffs come from northern Iraq, where IS attacked the Yazidi religious minority in August 2014.
Abuse of Yazidis
From there, thousands of children and women were taken to IS-controlled areas in Syria to be sold as slaves. Nine of these ended up as prisoners in the 52-year-old Swedish woman's home, according to the investigation.
The woman had traveled to Syria in 2013 to live in the Islamic State together with her husband – also from Sweden – who died shortly after they arrived.
They have lived in the home as slaves and have been under the control of the accused woman, says Devgun at a press conference.
All of them have been forced to become practicing Muslims. One woman and her child have been subjected to abuse. They have lived under difficult conditions with little food.
Devgun says that IS tried to exterminate the Yazidi people "on an industrial scale", and that the 52-year-old is one of many perpetrators who contributed to this.
What happens in this home does not happen in a vacuum. IS has attacked the Yazidi minority in a very extensive and systematic way.
They attack them in different ways, partly through killing, but also in this way, by forcibly relocating them to Syria and raising the children as Muslims and making the women into sex slaves or household slaves.
Woman died
One of the three adult Yazidis who were in the home is said to have died during later captivity. The two other women have been heard and will come to Sweden for the trial, which begins in October.
They have been bought and sold between different IS-affiliated households. After this home, they were all sold further and are still being held captive. Some were freed in 2015, the last child was released in 2022.
Several of the individuals are extremely traumatized, says the prosecutor.
Some have unfortunately been so traumatized that we have assessed that we have not been able to conduct interviews with them, it concerns some of the children.
The 52-year-old denies the crimes.
The woman originally comes from western Sweden and was sentenced in March 2022 to six years in prison for serious war crimes and serious violations of international law by the Stockholm District Court. This was for having taken her then 12-year-old son to Syria and letting him become a child soldier in IS. The boy was killed at the age of 16 in Syria.
