Netherlands: 10 years in prison for enslaving a Yezidi woman

This is a crime against humanity, stressed the District Court of The Hague, in the Netherlands, in delivering its verdict on Wednesday 11 December. It sentenced Hasan Aarab, a Dutch citizen, to 10 years' imprisonment for using a Yezidi woman as a slave in Syria in 2015. The prosecutor had requested an 8-year prison sentence.

Yezidi women demonstrate in Syria to commemorate the fifth anniversary of attacks by the Islamic State (EI) group.
Syrian Yezidi women demonstrate near the Syrian-Turkish border on 3 August 2018 to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Islamic State (EI) group's attacks in the Sinjar mountains. Photo: © Delil Souleiman / AFP
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A Dutch court Wednesday sentenced a woman to 10 years prison for keeping a woman from the Yazidi minority as a slave after joining the Islamic State group in Syria.

The court in The Hague convicted the 33-year-old from Hengelo in eastern Netherlands, identified as Hasna A, for "enslavement, membership of a terrorist organisation, promoting terrorist crimes, and endangering her young son."

She travelled to Syria in 2015 with her son, aged four at the time, the court said. She married an IS fighter and had children with him.

Between May to October 2015, she lived with another IS fighter, who kept a Yazidi woman as a slave.

Hasna A. made the Yazidi woman do household chores for her and look after her son, the court ruled.

In 2014, Islamic State swept across swathes of Iraq, carrying out horrific violence against the Kurdish-speaking Yazidis, whose non-Muslim faith the extremists considered heretical.

The jihadists massacred thousands of men and abducted thousands of women and girls as sex slaves.

Hasna A enslaved the Yazidi woman knowing that her actions contributed to the "widespread and systematic attack on the Yazidi community," the court said.

"The court holds this against the suspect very seriously. Crimes against humanity such as these are among the most serious international crimes there are," judges said.

According to public broadcaster NOS, Hasna A was repatriated in November 2022 to the Netherlands from a Syrian prison camp with 11 other Dutch women and their 28 children.

The women were arrested upon arrival in the Netherlands.