Copenhagen [Denmark], September 20: In Sweden, a supporter of the extremist militia Islamic State has been charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and serious war crimes, the Swedish Prosecution Authority announced on Thursday in Stockholm.
Prosecutors said in a statement that the 52-year-old Swedish woman is alleged to have held Yezidi women and children captive in her house in northern Syria between 2014 and 2016.
According to the indictment, she treated them like slaves.
"The woman is suspected of, on different occasions, being complicit in selling or handing over women and children to other persons within [the Islamic State movement], knowing that they could be killed or subjected to severe suffering or serious sexual assault," prosecutors said.
Head prosecutor Reena Devgun said: "My opinion is that all the victims were subjected to such severe mental harm that it constitutes genocide."
She added that the violent removal of Yezidi children from their group and their re-education as Muslims also constituted genocide
The main trial is scheduled to begin in October. The suspect denies all allegations.
She is currently serving a prison sentence for gross violations of international law and serious war crimes. She took her then 12-year-old son to Syria and handed him over to Islamic State to serve as a child soldier.
He was killed in Syria at the age of 16.
In August 2014, Islamic State forces overran the Sinjar region in northern Iraq and took thousands of women and children from the Yezidi minority captive.
Some of them were reportedly taken to areas in Syria controlled by Islamic State at the time, where they were enslaved and exploited.
At its height between 2014 and 2015, the extremist militia controlled large parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq and declared its own caliphate.
However, the militia has since lost its territory, but Islamic State cells continue to be active.
Source: Qatar Tribune
