Former Islamic State member found guilty of genocide in the death of a 5-year-old Yazidi girl: NPR

Taha Al-J of Iraq. was led into a courtroom at Frankfurt’s Higher Regional Court before the verdict was delivered in Frankfurt, Germany, on Tuesday.

Frank Rumpenhorst / AP

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Frank Rumpenhorst / AP

Taha Al-J of Iraq. was led into a courtroom at Frankfurt’s Higher Regional Court before the verdict was delivered in Frankfurt, Germany, on Tuesday.

Frank Rumpenhorst / AP

BERLIN – A former member of the Islamic State group was found guilty by a German court of genocide on Tuesday and guilty of war crimes over the death of a 5-year-old Yazidi girl he bought as a slave and then chained to the hot spot. sun to die.

The Frankfurt Regional Court convicted Taha Al-J., an Iraqi citizen of not revealing his full name because of privacy regulations, to life in prison, and ordered him to pay the girl’s mother. 50,000 euros ($57,000).

The German news agency dpa quoted the presiding judge, Christoph Koller, as saying it was the world’s first genocide conviction for one person’s role in IS’s systematic crackdown on minorities. Yazidi religious numbers.

The defendants’ attorneys have denied the charges against their client.

His Duc’s wife was sentenced last month 10 years in prison for the girl’s death.

The girl’s mother, who survived incarceration, testified at both trials and participated as co-plaintiff.

Yazidis and their supporters praise the devastation of genocide

“This is the moment Yazidis has been waiting for,” said attorney Amal Clooney, who acted as a consultant to the mother. “Finally, to hear a judge, after seven years, declare that what they suffered was genocide. To see a man face justice for killing a Yazidi girl – by because she’s a Yazidi.”

Zemfira Dlovani, a lawyer and member of Germany’s Central Council of Yazidis, also welcomed the ruling.

“We can only hope that it will be a milestone for further cases,” she told The Associated Press, noting that thousands of Yazidi women have been enslaved by the Islamic State group and mistreatment. “This should be the beginning, not the end.”

The United Nations has called the IS attack on the Yazidis ancestral homeland of northern Iraq in 2014 a genocide, saying the Yazidis’ 400,000-strong community “have all been displaced, captured or captured kill.” Of the thousands held by IS, boys are forced to fight for extremists, men are executed if they do not convert to Islam – and are often executed in any case – and women are killed. Women and girls were sold into slavery.

Grim details revealed during trial

According to German prosecutors, Al-J. bought a Yazidi woman and her 5-year-old daughter Reda as slaves at an IS base in Syria in 2015. Both were taken prisoner by rebels from the town of Kocho, northern Iraq. the beginning of August 2014 and has already been “sold and resold as slaves many times” by the group.

The defendant took the woman and her daughter to his household in the Iraqi city of Fallujah and forced them to “keep their house and live according to the strict rules of Islam”, while feeding them nothing. enough and regularly beat them to punish them, according to the indictment.

Prosecutors allege that in late 2015, Al-J. chained the girl to the window bars in the sun one day the temperature reached 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) and she died of punishment. The punishment was supposed to be taken because the 5-year-old had wet the bed.

Al-J. was arrested in Greece and extradited to Germany two years ago.
German authorities have accepted the case under the principle of common jurisdiction, which allows the country to try particularly serious crimes even if they are committed elsewhere and have no direct connection to Germany. .

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad, herself a survivor of atrocities perpetrated by IS, said the ruling was “a victory for survivors of the genocide regime, survivors of sexual violence and the whole Yazidi community.”

“Germany is not only raising awareness of the need for justice but is also taking action for it,” she said in a statement. “Their use of universal jurisdiction in this case can and should be replicated by governments around the world.”