The District Court of Stockholm convicted a woman Friday for failing to prevent her 12-year-old son from being used as a child soldier in the Syrian civil war. The child, recruited by ISIS, was killed in 2017.

The court found that the boy’s parents “belonged to a sect-like Islamist environment that advocated armed struggle for Sharia and emigration to live in a fundamentalist society.” In 2013, the boy’s mother, a Swede, took her son to join the rest of their family in Syria. There, he was forced to commit war crimes on behalf of the Islamic State. The woman, who denied the charges, returned to Sweden in 2020.

The district court’s judgment rested on the finding of a crime by omission. Establishing that, as the boy’s legal guardian, the woman had a duty to protect her son, the court found that the woman’s failure to do so resulted in criminal liability. Evidenced showed that she was aware of the danger in bringing her son to Syria, did so anyways, and that “his role as a child soldier has been in accordance with her convictions.”

Swedish law provides that courts can try its citizens for international crimes committed abroad. According to the International Criminal Court, the use of children under the age of 15 as soldiers constitutes a war crime under Article 8 of the Rome Statute.

The Syrian Civil War is infamous for its use of child soldiers. A 2021 UN report found that over 1,400 children were recruited by various parties in the conflict between 2018 and 2020. Similarly, a 2021 UNICEF report found that violations against children’s rights are on the rise globally.

This is the first time that Sweden has convicted on war crimes related to the recruitment of child soldiers. The court sentenced the woman to 6 years in prison.