Daily Times

A German woman has been charged with crimes against humanity over her alleged persecution of the Yazidi minority under Daesh (ISIS), German federal prosecutors announced yesterday.

The suspect, known only as Nurten J, is believed to be the first woman charged with crimes against humanity for her actions in Syria, Agence Franc-Presse (AFP) reported.

Nurten J, according to a statement by prosecutors, travelled to Syria with her three-year-old daughter in 2015 to the join Daesh.

She later married a German-born Daesh fighter, with whom she had more children.

The “slave” was forced to clean and tidy Nurten J’s house.

The German suspect faces secondary charges of war crimes against property for living in a house that was forcibly seized from its rightful occupants by Daesh.

She is believed to have lived in at least five different apartments, all of whose former tenants were either killed or evicted. In a statement, prosecutors said the woman traveled to Syria with her then three-year-old daughter in 2015 to join the extremist organization and marry a Daesh fighter, also from Germany, with whom she had other children.

Throughout 2016 and 2017 she received frequent visits from a friend who owned a Yazidi “slave” also forced to do housework at the suspect’s home.

Nurten J. was “following the ideology of IS according to which the enslavement of the Yazidis was justified,” the prosecutors in Karlsruhe said.

The suspect also stands accused of war crimes against property for living in a home that had been seized by Daesh from its rightful occupants, and for endangering her daughter by taking her to a war zone.

In addition, she faces charges for violating weapons laws. After Daesh lost its territories in Syria, the woman was held in Kurdish captivity before being transferred to custody in Turkey and then sent back to Germany.

Germany has charged several German and foreign nationals with war crimes and crimes against humanity carried out abroad, using the legal principle of universal jurisdiction which allows crimes to be prosecuted even if they were committed in a foreign country.