Munich Genocide Trial: Life Imprisonment for IS Member over Enslavement of Yazidi Girls

According to Stoll's words, the chamber considered it proven that the couple bought two Yazidi girls as slaves at a bazaar, forced them to work in the household, and sexually abused them. The older of the two was twelve years old at the time of purchase, and the younger at most seven. According to the court's reasoning, both girls were held captive in the couple's household, beaten, and systematically humiliated.

Attack on the Yazidi Faith Community

The representative of the Federal Prosecutor General had spoken in her plea of "monstrous violence" that was "so far removed from any humanity that it seems unreal." The prosecution had sought life imprisonment and a finding of particularly severe guilt. The verdict, which under juvenile criminal law logic came out milder for the then 17-year-old accomplice, thus largely followed the indictment.

At the center of the proceedings was the testimony of one of the former slaves, who spoke before the court as a co-plaintiff and described the circumstances of her captivity. "We Yazidi women were the slaves — even dogs had a higher status than we did," the presiding judge quoted from the young woman's witness statement. During the reading of the verdict, which was translated by an interpreter, the co-plaintiff repeatedly burst into tears.

The survivor, who was able to flee with her family in 2018, had already described in detail at the start of the trial how she was selected at a bazaar. "Before he bought me, he looked me over," she said. "He fetched a stick and beat the soles of my feet." She was "intentionally scalded with hot water" and raped nightly, the judge continued: "He forced me to sleep with him."

Statements of the Co-Plaintiff

A second Yazidi co-slave, who was at most seven years old at the time, was also sexually abused by the defendant according to the verdict. The co-plaintiff also recalled a scene at the bazaar: "He and his IS friends mocked me and said: Buy her, she hasn't been raped yet." Another statement by the young woman was: "I wished I were dead." Her childhood had been "nothing but suffering," she told the court.

The chamber did not view the role of the now 30-year-old wife as that of a mere follower. According to the verdict's reasoning, she had initiated the purchase of the first girl and had wished for the younger slave as a "bride price" and wedding gift to spare her husband a second wife. "A second slave seemed the lesser evil to her, because you could sell her again," the court quoted from internal records. She was also said to have tolerated nighttime rapes of the girls by her husband and structured the household around their exploitation.

Role of the Wife

In a psychiatric evaluation, the convicted woman showed remorse and told the expert: "Morally, my eyes were closed." In court, she had a statement relayed through an interpreter: "I am sorry for what happened." This statement was entered into the record along with her description of the treatment of the girls, which she herself called "very cruel."

The chamber reconstructed the now life-sentenced man's radicalization starting in 2013 at a Salafist-influenced mosque in Munich. In 2015, he traveled to Iraq and joined the terrorist militia Islamic State. Under pressure from the family of his then bride, born in 1996, he married her in 2015. The man had initially come to Munich in 2002 as an asylum seeker, worked there as a hairdresser, and had become a father before his radicalization. In spring 2015, he apparently returned to Syria and Iraq.

Radicalization in Munich

According to the court's findings, the two Yazidi slaves were passed on to other IS fighters at the end of 2017. According to her own account, the older one was freed by her family in January 2018; the fate of the younger one remains unclear in the court's words. The couple returned to Germany together in May 2018, where they later separated.

In August 2014, IS attacked the Yazidi settlement area around the Sinjar mountains in northern Iraq. In the assault, which the Federal Prosecutor's Office classifies as genocide, thousands of women and girls were abducted, enslaved, and raped. "IS defames them as 'infidels' and 'idol worshippers,'" the court summarized the ideological thrust of the terror. The crimes in the Munich trial are expressly placed in this context.

Context of the IS Genocide

After his return to Bavaria, the couple initially lived undisturbed. It was not until April 2024 that both were arrested in Bavaria — he in the Roth district, she in Regensburg. This time, the charges were not only membership in a terrorist organization, but also genocide, abduction, and attempted forced marriage. There had been earlier investigations; in the current trial, the conviction has now followed.

Judge Stoll justified the particular severity of the guilt with the systematic character of the crimes and the exploitation of the helplessness of children. He hoped that "this criminal trial contributes to historical reappraisal" and "gives back to the Yazidi people a piece of their self-confidence and their hope," he said. Everything revolves around "events that occurred, above all, in a mud-brick house on the edge of the Syrian desert eight years ago."

The trial is considered one of the first federal German criminal proceedings to classify the IS attack on the Yazidis as genocide within the meaning of the Code of Crimes against International Law. Observers see the verdict as a signal that Germany is consistently pursuing the criminal-legal reappraisal even decades after the attempted genocide against the Yazidis. Co-plaintiffs and Yazidi associations had advocated strongly for a clear signal before and during the proceedings.

Significance for the Legal Reappraisal

The defense announced after the verdict that it would review the decision. The verdict is not yet final. Should the life sentence stand, the first major hurdle of the legal reappraisal of the IS genocide against the Yazidis in a German assize court would have been cleared.

The conviction is based essentially on the co-plaintiff's statements, who testified in detail over the course of months. Statements such as "My entire childhood was violence" and "I wished I were dead" are emblematic of the scale of the cruelty experienced. The verdict sees the crimes as an attack on human dignity that can only be contained, but not undone, by the means of German law alone.