A Dutch court sentenced a woman to 10 years in prison after she was convicted of crimes against humanity for keeping a Yazidi woman as a slave after joining the Islamic State (IS) in Syria.
The #Netherlands will issue its first ever indictment of a #Dutch national member of #ISIS #Daesh , Hasna A., for her enslavement of a #Yezidi #Yazidi in the course of the #YazidiGenocide .
Statement and thread.https://t.co/Cb1gRv3WKe pic.twitter.com/xejPFpL9JX— Free Yezidi Foundation (@Free_Yezidi) February 10, 2023
The Hague District Court found the 33-year-old woman, identified as Hasna A, guilty of “enslavement, membership of a terrorist organization, promoting terrorist crimes, and endangering her young son.”
Originally from Hengelo in the eastern Netherlands, Hasna was convicted of these multiple offenses after she traveled to Syria in 2015 to join the Islamic State. She took along with her then 4-year-old son, married an IS fighter, and had children with him.
Dutch prosecutors first brought the case for attacks against the Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking, ethno-religious minority from northwestern Iraq near the Syrian border. In August 2014, IS militants swept across swathes of Iraq and carried out acts of horrific violence against the Yazidis, determined to erase the tiny, insular group whose non-Muslim faith the Islamic State considered heretical.
Some 300,000 Yazidi women fled. The Islamic State killed Yazidi men and boys, while Yazidi women and girls were subjected to sex slavery or forced to convert to Islam and marry militants. Although IS was defeated in 2017, less than half of those who fled returned to the Yazidi heartland around the city of Sinjar.
Only 10, not enough.
— Debbie Davidsohn (@debbie77777777) December 14, 2024
“Thousands of Yazidi women and girls were taken to other parts of Iraq and Syria and subjected to slavery,” Judge Jacco Snoeijer said. The victim was referred to in court only by the initial Z.
The court also said Hasna enslaved the victim, knowing that her actions contributed to the “widespread and systematic attack on the Yazidi community.”
“The court holds this against the suspect very seriously. Crimes against humanity such as these are among the most serious international crimes there are,” the judge also said.
Between May and October 2015, Hasna lived with another IS fighter, who kept a Yazidi woman as a slave. She made the Yazidi woman do household chores and look after her son.
Hasna was one of 12 Dutch women repatriated to the Netherlands, along with 28 other children, from a refugee camp in northern Syria in 2022. She was arrested upon her arrival in the Netherlands, while her children were taken into care by the child protection service.
Oh sure. I bet she was “Dutch”.
— Joseph Graziano (@JosephGraz61860) December 11, 2024
The Dutch government refused to bring the women home until a court ruled that if they were not returned, the proceedings against them would not continue in absentia. The public prosecution service initially asked for an eight-year sentence against Hasna, but the court went with 10 years, in part because she still expressed extremist views.
The Yazidi victim testified during the trial from a shielded witness booth. Her son was taken to an IS fighting camp.
“I begged her to let me call my son, but that was not allowed,” the victim said.
Hasna, whose full name was not disclosed in line with Dutch privacy laws, denied the accusations, claiming her husband was responsible for the victim.
“I lived my own life, withdrawn into my own room. I made my own bed and cleaned my own room,” she claimed.
