Swedish prosecutors indicted a 52-year-old woman for crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes over accusations of enslaving Yazidi women in Syria between August 2014 and December 2016. The defendant, Lina Ishaq, has denied the charges.

The indictment comes 10 years after the so-called Islamic State (IS) attacked the Yazidi people, which the UN says led to “multiple crimes against humanity and war crimes such as mass executions, forced religious conversions to Islam, enslavement, and widespread sexual violence against women and girls.”

Ishaq is suspected of buying or receiving nine Yazidi girls in her residence in Raqqa and selling them to other persons within IS, “knowing that they could be killed or subjected to torture or serious sexual assault.”

Relating to the indictment, the senior prosecutor and head of the preliminary investigation, Reena Devgun, said, “My opinion is that all the victims were subjected to such severe mental harm that it constitutes genocide. Forcefully taking the Yazidi children from their group and, as in this case, bringing them up to be Muslims, is also an act of  genocide.”

According to AFP, the 52-year-old was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment in 2022 for letting her 12-year-old son become a child soldier in Syria. She is still serving the sentence.

Reena Devgun added that “Genocide, crimes against humanity, and serious war crimes can be committed by means of acts that overlap each other. However, they have different protection interests and it is therefore important that the court tries all the criminal classifications that can be relevant for the acts that I believe to have been committed in the residence.”

Swedish law allows its courts to try people for crimes against international law committed abroad. Sweden has contributed to the prosecution of international crimes perpetrated in Sudan, Ukraine and Iran.