Australia Prosecutes Woman Accused of Enslaving Yazidi Teen in Syria
A woman accused of enslaving a Yazidi teenager in Syria would agree to wear an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet and undergo religious counseling if she were freed on bail, her lawyer told a court Friday. Zeinab Ahmad, 31, continued an application for bail in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on two slavery charges. Her application was heard on Thursday and Friday. It will continue on June 15 when her lawyer Grace Morgan has called a police witness to testify, according to The Associated Press. The mother of three would live with her daughter in the Melbourne home of her uncle Abraham Abbas. The mechanic told the court he hated ISIS. A Yazidi woman has alleged she was enslaved in the Ahmad family home in 2017 and 2018 in the then-ISIS stronghold of Raqqa, Syria. She also alleged she was raped and beaten by the defendants’ husband and father Mohammed Ahmad, who in currently held in an Iraqi prison. This came while a district court in The Hague on Friday convicted a 49-year-old Dutch woman of war crimes and sentenced her to seven years in prison for allowing her then 14-year-old son to become a fighter for ISIS, according to Reuters. The woman, identified only as Ayada K, was convicted of the ⁠war crime of aiding and abetting the recruitment of a child soldier by allowing a minor to take up arms for ISIS, the court said in a press release. She was also convicted of aiding and abetting a terrorist organization and endangering her minor children. The woman took her teenage son and daughter from the ⁠Netherlands to live in ISIS-held territory in Syria in 2014. Judges say she then let her son join ISIS military police at 14. He ⁠died two years later while serving in an ISIS military unit, according to the verdict. During the trial K invoked ⁠her right to remain silent. After the fall of ISIS in 2019 she remained in ⁠Syria until she was repatriated in 2024 with her remaining children and arrested on arrival.