German court convicts Iraqi couple of enslaving Yazidi girls

A court in Germany has convicted an Iraqi couple of enslaving two Yazidi girls in Iraq.The Munich Higher Regional Court also found them guilty of membership of the Islamic State group (IS).The man, named only as Twana H.S. in line with German privacy rules, was sentenced to life imprisonment on charges including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and severe sexual abuse of children.His wife, Asia R. A., was handed a juvenile sentence of nine and a half years. The couple was arrested in Bavaria in 2024.The Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking minority, were persecuted by IS after the jihadist group seized large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq beginning in 2014.Thousands of men were killed and women and children were enslaved and raped when IS fighters stormed into the ancestral heartland of the Yazidis in northern Iraq.Germany recognises these acts as genocide. The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office accused the two defendants of having been part of this systematic campaign, "the Islamic State's objective to destroy the Yazidi religion."Twana H.S. first came to Germany in the early 2000's as an asylum seeker. He worked in Munich as a hairdresser and had a child. According to Der Spiegel magazine, he was denied asylum but was given permission to stay as the parent of German child.