THE HAGUE –
Prosecutors within the Netherlands on Wednesday requested judges to convict a Dutch girl for becoming a member of Islamic State in Syria and protecting two Yazidi ladies as slaves and sentence her to eight years in jail.
Hasna Aarab, 33, faces fees of collaborating in slavery as a criminal offense towards humanity for enslaving two Yazidi, between 2015 and 2016, whereas she lived in Raqqa along with her small son and her Islamic State fighter husband.
She had instructed judges earlier within the trial that she moved from the Netherlands to Islamic State-held territory in Syria in 2015 along with her younger son to attempt to change her life for the higher.
One in every of her alleged victims, recognized solely as Z., instructed the district court docket within the Hague she considered Aarab as partly chargeable for Islamic State crimes towards Yazidis and the enslavement of not solely herself but additionally her two daughters who had been saved as home slaves in different households.
“I burned inside once I noticed her along with her son whereas I didn’t have my very own kids round me,” Z. mentioned as a tearful Aarab listened.
Islamic State managed swathes of Iraq and Syria from 2014-17, earlier than being defeated in its final bastions in Syria in 2019.
It considered the Yazidis as satan worshippers and killed greater than 3,000 of them, in addition to enslaving 7,000 Yazidi ladies and women and displaced many of the 550,000-strong group from its ancestral residence in northern Iraq.
Aarab denies taking an energetic half within the enslavement of the ladies and instructed judges the Yazidi victims had been mendacity after they mentioned she gave them orders and compelled them to wish.
The Netherlands is simply the second nation to place an alleged Islamic State member on trial for crimes towards humanity towards Yazidis, an historic spiritual minority who mix Zoroastrian, Christian, Manichean, Jewish and Muslim beliefs.
No date has but been set for a judgment.
(Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg; Modifying by Alison Williams)
