Australia launches landmark prosecutions for ISIS-linked crimes against Yazidis

When Islamic State invaded northern Iraq in 2014, their campaign of genocide led to the deaths of 5,000 Yazidis and the abduction of 6,000 women and children who were forced to convert to Islam and sold into slavery.

Thousands more fled the country, and now more than 4,000 Yazidi people are rebuilding their lives in Australia.

But their fight for justice is ongoing and difficult due to an inability to punish the perpetrators of their genocide.

"Yazidi people in Australia and around the world exist in a state of recognition without redress," said Professor Aldo Zammit-Borda, an international law expert at the University of London.

"A large number of states have recognised the genocide against the Yazidi people, including Australia; however, they have taken very little action to live up to their legal obligations to prevent and punish genocide."

The recent return of ISIS-linked families in May has also raised anxieties among Yazidis who are concerned they will be forced to share the same communities with Australians accused of joining the terrorist organisation that persecuted them.

"There could be the scenario where you have ISIS members walking freely alongside their victims in Australia or elsewhere, and that's an incredibly worrying and concerning situation," Dr Zammit-Borda told 7.30.

"Without evidence of the crimes that they have committed, it is impossible to stop them, to even prosecute them."

In May, Australian Federal Police launched landmark prosecutions against Melbourne women, Zeinab Ahmad, 31, and her mother Kawsar Ahmad, 54, over crimes allegedly committed during IS rule over parts of Syria and Iraq.

The AFP alleges Kawsar and Zeinab were involved in the enslavement of a Yazidi woman in 2017, who was captured by IS in Northern Iraq in the years prior.

At the end of July, Zeinab and Kawsar each entered not guilty pleas to the charges in the Melbourne Magistrates Court and were committed to stand trial in the Supreme Court of Victoria.

They are the first Australians charged with international crimes, including crimes against humanity and using a slave, and in the case against Kawsar, purchasing and possessing a slave.

Dr Monique Cormier is an international law expert at Monash University and said these charges are a "landmark decision" for Australia.

Until recently, the AFP have charged many returning ISIS fighters with terrorism offences, but in the cases of Zeinab and Kawsar, prosecutors have used laws brought in in 2002.

"We upgraded all of our laws to include genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes," Dr Cormier said.

"Until very recently, they've never been used."

"We're looking at about a maximum of 10 years in prison for terrorism offences, whereas for the slavery and the enslavement as a crime against humanity offences, [the] potential accused could be looking at up to 25 years in prison per charge."

The pair was among a group of Australian citizens, women and children, who had been living in the Al-Roj internment camp in north-east Syria since the fall of the caliphate.

During separate bail hearings, Kawsar and Zeinab told the court through their lawyers that they do not subscribe to IS ideology.

Kawsar's legal team said she had begun divorce proceedings against her husband, accused IS fighter, Mohammad Ahmad.

During Zeinab's bail application, her uncle, Abraham Abbas, told the court, "I hate those bastards."

Zeinab was refused bail, but her mother, Kawsar, was released.

German prosecutions

Although IS committed its atrocities in Iraq and Syria, relatively few perpetrators have faced prosecution there for genocide or crimes against humanity.

Instead, much of the world's accountability effort has shifted to Europe, where countries like Germany have relied on universal jurisdiction laws to prosecute returning ISIS members.

"The International Criminal Court (ICC) can't prosecute these crimes because Iraq and Syria haven't signed up to the Rome statute, which would be a prerequisite for the ICC to get involved," German lawyer Natalie von Wistinghausen said.

Ms von Wistinghausen said Yazidis "want justice and they won't get justice in their own country, so the only possibility they have at the moment is before national courts, and they are asking for accountability".

Germany has become the world's leading jurisdiction for prosecuting ISIS atrocities.

"The principle of universal jurisdiction basically means that an international crime can be prosecuted in Germany without the accused being German, without the victim being German, and without the crimes having been committed in Germany," Ms von Wistinghausen said.

"And why is that? Because we see a responsibility for not only the prosecution, but also for accountability for these crimes wherever they have happened."

Few people have seen more of these cases than Ms von Wistinghausen, who has represented Yazidi survivors in some of the world's most significant prosecutions of IS members and their spouses.

One of the most consequential was that of German national 'Jennifer W', whose case became one of the world's most important legal precedents concerning IS's treatment of the Yazidi people.

Ms von Wistinghausen represented a Yazidi mother whose young daughter died after being enslaved by 'Jennifer W' and her husband, 'Taha Al-J'.

In the couple's household in the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2015, the mother watched on as her child was punished and left outside to die.

Ms von Wistinghausen said Taha Al-J "took [the child] outside in a scorching sun, tied her to a window and left her outside".

She says the child lost consciousness in extremely hot conditions.

"My client was inside; she was watching what was happening. She couldn't go and help her child. She was afraid of being beaten," she said.

"Taha Al-J and Jennifer W were in the house as well. The child was asking for her mother, but eventually the child lost consciousness, and when they brought her in, she was probably already dead.

Taha Al-J was sentenced in 2021 to life imprisonment, and his wife, Jennifer W, was in 2024 sentenced to 14 years' jail.

She says that despite these significant convictions in Germany, justice for many Yazidi remains incomplete.

"All these trials are just a drop in the ocean," she said.

Establishing a truth commission

Dr Zammit-Borda recently travelled from London to Berlin to hear directly from members of the Yazidi community.

"Perhaps the betrayal that most angers and motivates me to act in this subject is the betrayal of international law towards the Yazidis," he told 7.30.

"The Genocide Convention is quite clear in terms of the legal obligation to prevent or punish genocide, and yet here we are 12 years on where the Yazidi people have been promised a lot, but the delivery has been very, very, very limited."

This point has motivated him to establish a community-based Truth Commission into the 2014 genocide alongside the Yazidi diaspora, to be held in Germany, in late 2026.

"Truth commissions are normally state-organised; however, in the case of the Yazidi people, no such commission has been organised and there's a clear need for truths about the Yazidi genocide to come out," he said.

"The commission will be connected with Australia by inviting a number of Yazidi witnesses who have moved to Australia to testify and give their stories."