A 37-year-old German woman, identified as Nadine K. due to privacy regulations, has been sentenced to nine years and three months in prison for enslaving a Yazidi woman while affiliated with the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria. The Koblenz state court convicted her of crimes against humanity, membership in a terrorist organization, and aiding genocide.
The court determined that Nadine K. exploited the young Yazidi woman as a domestic slave for three years. Her husband, also an ISIS member, brought the woman into their home and subjected her to repeated sexual assaults. The court held Nadine K. accountable for facilitating these assaults and failing to intervene.
Prosecutors outlined how the defendant and her husband joined ISIS in Syria in 2014 and later relocated to Mosul, Iraq, in 2015, where they held the Yazidi woman captive. Following her repatriation from a Syrian camp housing suspected ISIS members in March 2022, Nadine K. was arrested in Germany.
During the trial, Nadine K., through her lawyer, denied coercing the Yazidi woman and claimed to have argued with her husband about the woman's presence, expressing remorse for not having done more to help her. The Yazidi woman herself testified in February, identifying Nadine K. as her captor. She returned to Koblenz for the verdict, hoping her testimony encourages other victims to come forward and those who committed similar crimes are brought to justice.
This case represents one of several trials in Germany involving women who joined ISIS in Syria and Iraq. In a similar case, a German woman who converted to Islam received a 10-year sentence for allowing a 5-year-old Yazidi girl she and her husband enslaved to die of thirst. An appeals court ordered a resentencing, potentially leading to a longer prison term. Her husband was also subsequently convicted.
