The prosecutor’s office in the Netherlands has announced that a woman who joined the Islamic State (IS) is on trial for crimes against humanity. She will be prosecuted not only for her membership in terrorist organizations but also for the enslavement of a Yazidi woman in Syria in 2015.

The prosecuted woman, identified by Dutch media as Hasna Aarab, will hear the charges along with 11 other women who returned back to the European country in November last year, from IS member camps located in Syria.


It is the first trial in the Netherlands in which prosecutors have upheld a case for crimes against humanity committed against Yazidis, an eclectic religious minority from the Middle East that combines Zoroastrian, Christian, Manichean, Jewish and Muslim beliefs.


Germany has already sentenced several former IS members for various crimes, including those against Yazidi communities.


The Islamic State views the Yazidis as “devil worshippers” and has therefore been attacking them leaving 3,000 killed, and enslaving as many as 7,000 Yazidi women and girls. It is believed the IS oppression in Iraq has pushed some 550,000 Yazidis into exile from their ancestral province of northern Iraq.


A date for the trial has not yet been announced.