Lina Ishaq, a 52-year-old Swedish woman, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for war crimes and genocide committed against the Yazidi people. She joined the jihadist group, Islamic State (IS), in Syria, where she held Yazidi women and children as slaves. This marks a significant legal development, as it is the first time IS crimes against the Yazidis have been prosecuted in Sweden.
Ishaq’s crimes occurred between 2014 and 2016, during which she enslaved three Yazidi women and six Yazidi children in Raqqa. The Stockholm District Court convicted her in September of last year. Ishaq had joined IS in 2013 and moved her family to Syria. Prior to this conviction, she was already serving sentences for taking her two-year-old son to Syria and failing to prevent IS from using her 12-year-old son as a child soldier. Tragically, her son died in 2017 at the age of 16.
The court highlighted the severity of Ishaq’s actions. She forced the Yazidi women and children to wear veils, practice Islam, and subjected them to physical abuse. The court’s presiding judge, Maria Ulfsdotter Klang, emphasized that Ishaq was involved in the systematic enslavement of Yazidi women and children. She actively contributed to the trafficking of her victims and maintained their captivity, furthering the exploitation orchestrated by IS.
The Yazidis, a religious minority group primarily from northern Iraq’s Sinjar region, have long been targets of persecution. In 2014, IS launched a genocidal assault on Yazidi settlements, killing over 5,000 people and displacing more than 400,000. Additionally, IS enslaved over 6,000 Yazidi women and children, subjecting them to torture and sexual violence in an effort to annihilate the Yazidi community. The United Nations has classified these acts as genocidal.
Ishaq was born to a Christian family in Iraq and later moved to Sweden. She converted to Islam before marrying and joined IS with around 300 other Swedes in 2013. After the collapse of the IS caliphate in 2017, she fled Raqqa and escaped to Turkey. In 2020, she was extradited to Sweden, where she now faces justice for her actions.
This trial has had a profound impact on Sweden’s Yazidi community. The Yazidi association’s chairman in Skaraborg, Dawood Khalaf, noted that Ishaq’s conviction has helped restore trust between the Yazidi community and Swedish authorities. He shared that some women previously feared reporting IS-related crimes, but now, following Ishaq’s prosecution, they feel safer. Despite her conviction, Ishaq’s lawyer, Mikael Westerlund, stated that she continues to deny the charges and may appeal the verdict.
The sentencing of Lina Ishaq is a significant step in addressing the atrocities committed against the Yazidi people. It highlights Sweden’s commitment to holding perpetrators of war crimes accountable.
