53-year-old Lina Ishaq kept six children and three women as slaves during the winter and spring of 2015 in her home in al-Raqqa, Syria, then the capital of the IS caliphate in Syria.
The children and women belonged to the Yazidis, an ancient religious minority that the terrorist sect has portrayed as "devil worshippers" and "heretics," and according to prosecutor Reena Devgun, the enslavement was part of IS's attempt to exterminate the ethnic group.
The Court of Appeal agrees with that assessment. The court has found that Ishaq "has shared IS's purpose to at least partially annihilate the Yazidi people, even though she has not directly participated in IS's acts of violence against the Yazidis," says Court of Appeal Councilor Robert Green in a comment.
Slavery system at IS
However, the women and children have been caused severe suffering and Ishaq has, among other things, "forced several of them to perform household chores, participate in religious instruction and pray - all within the framework of the slavery system introduced by IS," says Green.
Prosecutor Reena Devgun had requested that the 53-year-old be sentenced to life imprisonment, but the Court of Appeal agrees with the district court that the penalty is equivalent to sixteen years in prison. Since she was already sentenced to six years in prison in 2020 for a serious war crime, the additional penalty is set at twelve years in prison.
Life sentences for similar crimes are primarily considered for people who have held a leading position, participated as an organizer in carrying out severe massacres, or otherwise played a central role in carrying out extensive and organized violence, the Court of Appeal writes in the ruling.
Sold as slaves
The nine children and women were captured in connection with the IS attack on the Yazidis at Sinjar in northern Iraq in August 2014. After their male relatives were executed, they were taken, along with thousands of other children and women, to IS-controlled areas in Syria to be sold as slaves.
Lina Ishaq later sold them on to other IS supporters. Some of them were able to be freed a couple of months later via smugglers, but three of the children were not released until two, three and seven years later, respectively – and one young woman is still missing.
Ishaq has previously admitted that she was in the residence with the children and women, but said that it was not she but another person who enslaved them.
Lina Ishaq, who comes from Halmstad, traveled to Syria with her husband and children in the spring of 2013 to join the terrorist group Islamic State. Her husband died shortly after they arrived, fighting for IS.
After returning to Sweden much later, she was suspected of a crime and in 2022 she was sentenced to six years in prison for a serious war crime. According to that sentence, she had let her son become a child soldier for IS in Syria, where he died at the age of 16.
In September 2024, Ishaq was indicted again, for crimes against humanity, genocide and aggravated war crimes. She then became the first person in Sweden to be indicted and later convicted of crimes against humanity.
Source: TT
