A German court convicted an Iraqi couple of enslaving two Yazidi girls in Iraq.

The Higher Regional Court in Munich also found them guilty of belonging to the Islamic State (IS) group.

The man, identified only as Twana HS in accordance with German privacy rules, was sentenced to life in prison on charges including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and serious sexual abuse of children.

His wife, Asia RA, received a youth sentence of nine and a half years. The couple was arrested in Bavaria in 2024.

The Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking minority, were persecuted by IS after the jihadist group seized large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq starting in 2014.

Thousands of men were killed and women and children were enslaved and raped as IS fighters swept into the ancestral heartland of the Yazidis in northern Iraq.

Germany recognizes these acts as genocide. The federal Public Prosecutor’s Office accused the two defendants of having been part of this systematic campaign, “the objective of the Islamic State to destroy the Yazidi religion.”

Twana HS first arrived in Germany in the early 2000s as an asylum seeker. He worked in Munich as a hairdresser and had a son. According to Der Spiegel magazine, he was denied asylum, but was given permission to stay as the father of a German child.

After being radicalized in a Munich mosque, Der Spiegel says he will return to Iraq in 2015.

Prosecutors say Twana HS and Asia RA were married there under Islamic law and became members of the Islamic State between October 2015 and December 2017.

Asia RA was under 21 years old when the crimes were committed.

They said that in the fall of 2015, Twana HS bought a five-year-old Yazidi girl as a slave in a Mosul bazaar, at the request of his wife.

The couple bought a twelve-year-old Yazidi girl in early October 2017.

Prosecutors said Twana HS “repeatedly raped both children.”

They said his wife “did makeup on one of the girls” and prepared her room.

The couple was accused of forcing them to do housework and childcare, and forbidding them to practice their own religion.

The children were hit, sometimes with solid objects.

On one occasion, Asia RA “burned the younger girl’s hand with hot water,” prosecutors said.

During the trial, the court heard harrowing testimony from the eldest of the Yazidi girls, who described beatings, forced labor and repeated rape, BR News reported.

The second girl is still missing, he added.

The two were tried in Germany because of the legal principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows prosecutions for alleged war crimes, including genocide, that occurred abroad.

During the trial, Asia RA, who is now separated from Twana HS, apologized. In his final statement, he said “I’m sorry.”

Twana HS declined to speak in court.