Last week, prosecutors in the Netherlands announced Hasna Aarab, having been
accused of crimes against humanity for enslaving a Yazidi woman in 2015 while a
member of ISIS, will face trial along with 11 other women for crimes related to
their membership in ISIS. Aarab, who was repatriated from Syria, will be the
first defendant in a Dutch court facing charges of crimes against humanity
against the religious ethnic minority group.





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Dutch Prosecutors Allege Repatriated Woman Targeted Yazidis, Committed Crimes
Against Humanity



(New York, N.Y.) — Last week, prosecutors in the Netherlands announced
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Hasna Aarab, having been accused of crimes against humanity for enslaving a
Yazidi woman in 2015 while a member of ISIS, will face trial along with 11
other women for crimes related to their membership in ISIS. Aarab, who was
repatriated from Syria, will be the first defendant in a Dutch court facing
charges of crimes against humanity against the Yazidi religious minority group.



ISIS’s assault on the Yazidi population in Iraq’s northern Sinjar province
reportedly resulted in the deaths of 5,000 Yazidi men. Another 7,000 women and
children were taken captive, and 550,000 Yazidis were displaced. Captured
Yazidi men and boys were forcibly converted to Islam and enslaved for labor,
while women and girls were sold into sex slavery.



Until last year, the Netherlands had refused to repatriate adult women from
Syria, and public prosecutors had charged alleged female ISIS affiliates with
terrorist offencesin absentia as the women were not able to attend their trial.
In 2022, however, the Netherlandsrepatriated
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16 adult women as well as 39 children after a courtruled
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the Dutch Prosecutor's Office would lose its right to prosecute the women if
they were not returned to the Netherlands. Dutch officials chose repatriation
so prosecutors could continue their investigations.



To read the Counter Extremism Project (CEP)’s resource The Netherlands:
Extremism and Terrorism,please click here
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.
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In December, CEP published a policy paper, Recent Legal and Political
Developments in the Repatriation of European Nationals from Northeastern Syria
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, highlighting the positive trend of repatriations of European nationals.
Repatriations protect citizens from torture and continued inhumane and
degrading treatment, demonstrate a commitment to the rule of law and due
process, and allow for potential prosecution, rehabilitation, and reintegration
into society.



“It is a very good sign that the Netherlands are planning to prosecute female
returnees not only for their ISIS membership but also their role in crimes
against the Yazidi community,” said CEP senior research analyst Sofia Koller,
an author of the above policy paper and another on theProsecution of German
Women Returning from Syria and Iraq
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. “It is important to ensure accountability for ISIS’s victims.”



The Netherlands, however, lags behind its European partners in prosecutions.
In Germany, for example, at least 32 of the more than 95 adult German women
that have been repatriated have been convicted by a German court as of February
2023, six of which were convicted of crimes against humanity stemming from the
severe abuse of members of the Yazidi community. Prosecutors in those cases
employed “extraordinary testimonies from Yazidi survivors,” Koller observed,
which might support efforts in the Netherlands to secure convictions.



“It is important for the Dutch to continue strengthening cooperation with the
Yazidi communities directly and via non-governmental organizations to locate
victims and improve the probability that their testimonies can be used in
court,” Koller said. “Courts must ensure adequate conditions of legal
proceedings in which members of the Yazidi community might want to participate,
for example, by providing at interpretation and translation of judgements in
relevant languages, such as Kurmanji. It is also crucial to provide culturally
sensitive counseling and psychosocial support of victims of core international
crimes and sexualized violence during all stages of such investigations, but
especially right before, during, and after giving testimony.”



To read CEP’s resource ISIS, please click here
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