Iraqi Couple Charged With Enslaving and Raping 5-Year-Old and 12-Year-Old Girls

An Iraqi couple living in Germany are suspected of enslaving, torturing and raping two Yazidi girls over the course of years. The two suspects were arrested in southern Germany on Wednesday, April 10, announced the Karlsruhe Federal Prosecutor’s Office, which handles terrorism cases.

Twana H. S. and his wife Asia R. A. were members of ISIS between October 2015 and December 2017 in Iraq and Syria, the prosecutor’s office announced in a statement.

The couple had enslaved “no later than the end of 2015” a then 5-year-old girl and then “from October 2017,” another 12-year-old girl, the prosecutors allege.

“Twana H. S. raped both children several times. Asia R. A. prepared the room and put makeup on one of the little girls,” prosecutors added.

The couple will now be prosecuted in Germany for the crimes committed while they were in Iraq and Syria.

The couple also forced the two girls to perform “continuous” housework and babysitting duties. The girls were forbidden to practice their own religion and the couple ordered them to follow Islamic prayers and rules.

Harsh physical violence

The Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking minority following a pre-Islamic religion partly derived from Zoroastrianism, have been persecuted by jihadists for several years.

Twana H. S. hit the older of the two girls with a broomstick, while Asia R. H. scalded the younger girl’s hand with boiling water. She also repeatedly forced the two children to stand on one leg for half an hour. The aim of this treatment was to destroy the Yazidi faith, in accordance with the wishes of ISIS.

The couple came to Germany as “refugees” and were allowed to stay by the authorities.

“Before leaving Syria (for Germany) in November 2017, the couple left the two little girls with other members of the Islamic State,” the public prosecutor’s office added.

Arrested on Tuesday in Regensburg and Roth in southern Germany, the two defendants were brought before a judge on April 9 and 10, who ordered them to be remanded into custody.

Mass immigration and multiculturalism has led to an explosion of controversial cultural practices in Germany, such as forced marriages and female genital mutilation, which are practiced exclusively by foreigners. Radical Islamists have also made their way into Germany, including members of ISIS, which has elevated the country’s terror threat and placed huge burdens on law enforcement.

It is also not even the first case of former ISIS members standing trial in Germany who previously enslaved Yazidi people. In 2021, a Tunisian-German Islamic State widow was sentenced to just four years in prison in Germany for enslaving members of the minority community.

In 2015, the jihadist bride, along with her three small children, followed her husband to Islamic State-controlled territory in Syria. Following the death of her husband in the spring of 2015, she married her boyfriend, Denis Cuspert, also known as “Deso Dogg,” a gangster rapper-turned-terrorist who was formerly based out of Berlin.

While living in the city of Raqqa – a stronghold of the terrorist organization at the time – Omaima and Cuspert enslaved two Yazidi women who had previously been kidnapped by members of the Islamic State.