IS militant who left Yazidi slave girl, 5, to die in 50C heat convicted of genocide in world first
A FORMER Islamic State militant was yesterday convicted of genocide against the Yazidi people in a world-first ruling by a German court.
Taha al-jumailly was sentenced to life in prison for crimes including the murder of a child he chained in the sun to die of thirst.
The 29-year-old Iraqi national is the first person to be convicted of genocide over the jihadist group’s systematic killing campaign against the Yazidis.
The court in Frankfurt heard that he kept a five-year-old Yazidi girl as a slave and chained her outside his house in Mosul in temperatures of more than 50C as punishment for wetting the bed.
The judge ruled that the enslavement and killing of the girl amounted to genocide as part of an organised campaign by IS to wipe out those of the Yazidi faith.
“This is the moment Yazidis have been waiting for,” said Amal Clooney, the human-rights lawyer, who represented the murdered child’s mother. “To finally hear a judge, after seven years, declare that what they suffered was genocide. To watch a man face justice for killing a Yazidi girl because she was Yazidi. There is no more denying it. IS is guilty of genocide.”
“This verdict is a win for survivors of genocide, survivors of sexual violence, and the entire Yazidi community,” said Nadia Murad, herself a survivor and Nobel laureate. “Thank you to Germany for today’s historic conviction.”
Al-jumailly was extradited to Germany after being held as a migrant in Greece.
He was tried by a German court under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which holds that war crimes and crimes against humanity can be prosecuted anywhere in the world regardless of where they were committed.
His former wife, a German IS volunteer, was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to 10 years in prison last month as an accessory to the killing of the child.
Al-jumailly did not testify in his own defence and made no comment to the court.
As the verdict against him was read out he appeared to faint and the hearing had to be temporarily suspended.