An ISIS jihadist, Taha Al-Jumailly, was sentenced to life in prison for the Yazidis genocide, the first verdict that thus labels the tragedy of the Kurdish minority in northern Iraq. The 29-year-old was also found guilty by a Frankfurt court of crimes against humanity and war crimes, when the sentence was pronounced he passed out. Nora, a Yazidi woman, mother of a 5-year-old girl left to die of thirst by the man testified against him: the little girl was bought in Mosul with her mother as a ‘slave’ in 2015. After wetting the bed, as punishment, she was chained outside the house by Al-Jumailly and died of thirst in the sun. For this same crime last month, the jihadist’s wife, the German Jennifer Wenisch, was found guilty of “crimes against humanity in the form of slavery” for not doing anything to save her. Among the lawyers who represented the woman, also Amal Clooney, wife of the American actor and well-known human rights lawyer, committed to ensuring that the crimes of Isis against the Yazidis are recognized as genocide.
Germany, where a large community of Yazidis resides, is one of the few countries to have taken legal action against such abuses. “This verdict is a victory for survivors of genocide, sexual violence, and for the entire Yazidi community,” commented Nadia Murad, herself a survivor of crimes against her community, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018. “A result that every Yazidi and all survivors of the genocide hoped to see,” confirmed Natia Navrouzov, a lawyer and member of the NGO Yazda, at the forefront of collecting evidence of ISIS crimes against the minority. “The Yazidi genocide finally enters the history of international law, we will make sure that other trials like this are celebrated,” he added.