An Iraqi couple was accused by Germany’s federal prosecutor on Monday of enslavement, torture, and war crimes after they allegedly kept two young Yazidi girls as slaves and subjected them to physical and sexual abuse.
According to German privacy regulations, the couple was arrested in April in the southern state of Bavaria and was identified as Twana H.S. and Asia R.A.
According to the prosecutor’s statement, the two are also suspected of having been part of the extremist organization known as “Islamic State” (IS) in Iraq and Syria from October 2015 to December 2017.
A 12-year-old Yazidi girl from October 2017 and a 5-year-old daughter from late 2015 were allegedly held as slaves by them.
According to the prosecutor, the couple allegedly bought the two children in a bazaar in Iraq.
The woman is accused of setting up the room and applying cosmetics to one of the girls, while the male is accused of raping the children.
Prosecutors claim that the pair also used “harsh physical violence” against the girls, making them labor nonstop and hitting them.
The suspects allegedly gave the females to other IS militants before departing Syria in November 2017.
“All of this served the organization’s objective to destroy the Yazidi religion,” the prosecutor’s statement said.
The ethno-religious Yazidi minority mostly resides in northern Iraq. In 2014, they became a target for IS.
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