TerrorismFormer Islamic State Member Found Guilty of Genocide in German Court
A German court has found a former Islamic State member guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity for the 2015 killing of a 5-year-old girl, sentencing him to life in prison. The Frankfurt case is the first in the world to decide whether a former member of the Islamic State group played a role in the attempted genocide of the Yazidi religious group.
Frankfurt’s Higher Regional Court on Tuesday found 29-year-old Taha A.-J. guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity resulting in death, sentencing him to life in prison (German law prohibits news organizations from publishing a defendant’s surname).
The Frankfurt case is the first in the world to decide whether a former member of the so-called “Islamic State” (IS) group played a role in the attempted genocide of the Yazidi religious group.
The proceedings had to be briefly suspended as the defendant passed out when the verdict was read aloud in court.
What Was the Case About?
The prosecution of A. -J. relates to the death of a 5-year-old girl from dehydration in the summer of 2015. A .-J.’s wife Jennifer W. was jailed for 10 years in October after a court heard she had stood idly by as the child was left to die of thirst in the sun.
The prosecutors said Taha A.-J. bought a Yazidi woman and her 5-year-old daughter as slaves at an IS base in Syria in 2015.
The two had been taken prisoner by IS militants in northern Iraq at the beginning of August 2014. They had already been “sold and resold several times as slaves” by the group.
The defendant took the woman and her daughter to his household in the Iraqi city of Fallujah. There, he and his wife forced them to “keep house and to live according to strict Islamic rules,”
They also allegedly gave the pair insufficient food and regularly beat them, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors said that toward the end of 2015, Al-J. chained the girl to the bars of a window in the open sun on a day where it reached 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit). The punishment was said to have been because the girl had wet the bed.
The girl’s mother Nora T., who survived captivity, testified at the Frankfurt trial.
Taha A.-J. was arrested in Greece in May 2019 under a German arrest warrant and was transferred to Germany in October. His ongoing trial — the first against a former IS militant to deal with the IS genocide of the Yazidi — has attracted international attention.
Why Was the Case Being Heard in Germany?
That the case is being heard by a German court is due to the legal principle of universal jurisdiction.
This allows German prosecutors and courts to pursue cases even if the alleged crime was not committed in Germany and neither the alleged perpetrator nor victim are German citizens.
