Facts
The city of Raqqa in Syria was taken over by ISIS militants in 2014. Under ISIS control, the Yazidi minority was deprived of basic freedoms and rights. Women, men and children were regarded as property and subjected to enslavement, slave trading, sexual slavery, forced labor, deprivation of liberty and extrajudicial executions.
Lina Laina Ishaq, a Swedish national, traveled to Syria in 2013 with four of her children to join her husband and an older son. One of her sons, aged 12, was recruited by the Islamic State (ISIS) and used as a child soldier. He died in combat in 2017.
Lina Ishaq is alleged to have been involved in buying and receiving women and children belonging to the Yazidi minority in her residence in Raqqa. She reportedly treated these persons as slaves and abused them in numerous ways, including by forcing them to live without enough food, clothing or warmth.
Ishaq returned to Sweden in 2020.
Procedure
On 4 March 2022, Lina Ishaq was convicted of serious crimes under international law and serious war crimes for failing, in her capacity as a legal guardian, to prevent her 12-year-old son from being recruited and used as a child soldier by ISIS during the armed conflict in Syria. She was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment.
On 19 September 2024, while serving the sentence for her previous conviction, the Swedish Prosecution Authority indicted Ishaq on further charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and serious war crimes in Raqqa, Syria, during the period August 2014 to December 2016. She is charged with having held nine people, including six minor children and three adult women, captive in her home in Raqqa. According to the indictment, they were treated as slaves, were required to perform forced labor and experienced severe suffering and torture. Ishaq is further alleged to have sold people to ISIS with the knowledge that they risked being killed or subjected to serious sexual abuse.
The Swedish Prosecution Authority identified Ishaq through information shared by the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh/ISIL (UNITAD).
The trial began on 7 October 2024 before the Stockholm District Court.
Accused of keeping Yazidi women and children as slaves at her home in Syria in the winter and spring of 2015, Lina Ishaq was convicted, on 11 February 2025, of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The court said her crimes warranted a sentence of 16 years, but taking a previous sentence into account set the sentence to 12 years.
On 17 February 2025, the prosecutor appealed the District Court’s conviction. Instead of 12 years’ imprisonment, the prosecutor demands life imprisonment.