Prosecutors in the Netherlands have asked judges to convict a 33-year-old Dutch woman of crimes against humanity for allegedly keeping two Yazidi women slaves and subjecting them to “extreme cruelty” after she married an Islamic State fighter in Iraq in 2014.
In a case described by the Yazidi-led NGO, Yazda, as “a significant moment”, Hasna Aarab from the eastern Dutch city of Hengelo, is charged with enslavement, membership of a terrorist organisation and endangering her four-year-old son by uprooting him to a war zone.
The case is being taken by the Dutch prosecution service under universal jurisdiction, which permits it to prosecute international crimes, including genocide and crimes against humanity, in domestic courts, even where the alleged offences were committed abroad.
“I wanted to build a new life in the caliphate”, Ms Aarab told judges in the high-security courtroom at Schiphol when the case opened last Monday.
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“I felt very alienated and depressed in the Netherlands. I was looking for peace.”
The court heard that Ms Aarab’s son was “vulnerable”. He had been diagnosed as autistic and as a result couldn’t attend school in Raqaa, the Syrian city designated by Islamic State, also known as Isis, as its capital.
Ms Aarab married a Moroccan Islamic State fighter and the couple had three children together before they divorced.
When the terror group’s “caliphate” collapsed, she was one of 12 Dutch women identified in the notorious Al Roj prison camp in Syria and repatriated to the Netherlands in 2022 – along with their 28 children.
The two Yazidi woman allegedly used as slaves were named in court as “Z” and “S”. On Wednesday, Z gave evidence from behind a screen.
She said she was forced to live with Ms Aarab and her husband. She was made to cook and clean and to look after the children. She was also forced to pray with the family.
She described how she regarded Ms Aarab as partly responsible for Islamic State’s crimes against the Yazidis and not only her own enslavement but the imprisonment of her two daughters, who were kept as domestic slaves in other Isis households.
Accusing Ms Aarab of “extreme cruelty”, she told the judges: “I burned inside when I saw her with her son because I could not see my own children or have them with me”.
Ms Aarab responded by saying she knew the women were being held against their will but did not see any abuse.
She denied that she gave the women orders or forced them to pray.
The Yazidis are an ancient community whose culture combines Zoroastrian, Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Manichean beliefs.
Islamic State displaced most of the 550,000-strong community from its home around Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq, slaughtering some 3,000 and enslaving around 7,000 women and girls.
The prosecution asked on Friday for an eight-year sentence for Ms Aarab.
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