Members of the Yazidi minority in Germany are taking the federal government to court. They say Berlin isn't doing enough to bring German "Islamic State" supporters captured in Syria to justice.
Image: picture-alliance/AP/K. Mohammed
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The Yazidi Women's Council has filed a lawsuit against Germany's justice and interior ministers, alleging obstruction of justice, according to German media reports.
The interest group accuses the government of failing to prosecute German supporters of the "Islamic State" (IS) militia who are being held by Kurdish-led forces in northern Syria.
Hundreds of IS foreign fighters and their families are in Kurdish custody. The question of how they should be dealt with is a difficult problem that many European countries, including Germany, are grappling with.
According to information cited by public broadcasters NDR and WDR, there are at least 74 German IS supporters currently in Kurdish custody in Syria. The Federal Prosecutor's Office has arrest warrants for 21 of those individuals on charges ranging from support of a terrorist organization to committing war crimes.
The complaint specifically targets Justice Minister Katarina Barley and Interior Minister Horst Seehofer.
"The result of this refusal to transfer German nationals in the custody of the local administration in northern and eastern Syria ... has delayed — if not prevented — punishment (from being doled out)," lawyer Berthold Fresenius was quoted by the broadcasters as saying.
For centuries, the Yazidi community has been targeted by its neighbors for its religious beliefs. In 2014, it faced its most tragic experience in what the UN has described as a genocide committed by the "Islamic State."
For hundreds of years, the Yazidi community has been persecuted for its religious views, an amalgamation of Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam. Throughout their history, they have been killed, forced to convert to other religions and even taken as slaves. While the Kurdish-speaking minority community in northern Iraq had been attacked before, 2014 marked a tragic turning point in history.
Image: picture-alliance/ZUMA Wire/D. Honl
Genocide
In 2014, the "Islamic State" militant group launched a blitzkrieg campaign across Iraq and Syria, capturing large swathes of territory and laying waste to areas such as Mount Sinjar, the ancestral homeland of the Yazidis. More than 5,000 people were killed and up to 10,000 kidnapped, many of them children. The event was described by the UN as a genocide.
The "Islamic State" abducted hundreds of girls and women and enslaved them in the wake of the assault. The militant group created a database of all the women, including pictures of them, to document who bought them and to ensure they do not escape. While dozens of women were able to escape, hundreds more remain missing.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/M. Alleruzzo
Missing
Thousands of men, women and children remain missing. Critics have accused Iraqi authorities of doing little to find those who were abducted after Baghdad declared military victory over the militant group in December 2017. Family members fear that up to 3,000 Yazidis will remain indefinitely unaccounted for.
Image: picture-alliance/ZUMA Wire/G. Romero
Scattered
In the wake of the "Islamic State" militant group's systematic assault on the Yazidis, many have fled to neighboring countries, Europe and beyond. While some families have found refuge outside their country, others have been forced to stay in camps in Iraqi Kurdistan. Although the UN is helping to rebuild houses in their ancestral homeland, many still believe IS poses a threat to their existence.
The Interior Ministry told NDR and WDR that all German citizens have the right to return to Germany and to face trial there. But Germany, like France, has decided to let countries in which alleged crimes were committed prosecute and convict foreign IS members, as long as the accused have access to consular officials and don't face the death penalty.
A number of Germans have already faced trial in Iraq, but the situation is more complex in Syria. Germany has no official relations with the unrecognized Syrian Kurdish administration and any legal decisions from the entity would be invalid under international law.
The Yazidis are a Kurdish-speaking minority with a unique monotheistic religion and roots in Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Today there are large numbers of Yazidi refugees living in Armenia, Georgia and Russia. About 150,000 live in Germany — the largest community of Yazidis in exile.
New hope for Yazidi women tortured by IS fighters
A new psychological trauma institute for Yazidi women tortured by the so-called IS is being established at the university of Dohuk in Iraq. It is the first in the entire region.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
Hoping for help
Perwin Ali Baku escaped the Islamic State after more than two years in captivity. The 23-year-old Yazidi woman was captured together with her 3-year-old daughter. "I don't feel right," she says, sitting on a mattress on the floor of her father-in-law's small hut in a northern Iraq refugee camp. "I still can't sleep and my body is tense all the time."
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
Tormenting flashbacks
When Perwin hears a loud voice, she cringes at the thought of her captors. She hopes for help at the newly established institute in Iraq, part of an ambitious project funded by the German state of Baden Württemberg that has already brought 1,100 women who had escaped Islamic State captivity to Germany for psychological treatment.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
Kabarto refugee camp
Members of Germany's 100,000 strong Yazidi community reached out to help the women - and the Baden Württemberg state legislature approved a €95-million program ($106 million) over three years to bring women abused by the IS to Germany. Now, help is on the way on-site in Iraq.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
No trauma treatment - yet
As fighting rages between Iraqi forces and the IS in Mosul only about 75 km from Dohuk, the number of victims that make it to freedom increases daily. 26 psychiatrists work in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq with its population of 5.5 million and more than 1.5 million refugees and internally
displaced people. None specialize in treating trauma.
Hope on the horizon
German trauma specialist Jan Kizilhan, who has Yazidi roots but immigrated to Germany at the age of 6, is the driving force behind the new institute. The program will train local mental health professionals to treat people like Perwin and thousands of Yazidi women, children and other Islamic State victims.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
Training psychotherapists
The idea is to train 30 new professionals for three years and then extend the program to other regional universities: in ten years' time, there could be more than 1,000 psychotherapists in the area. Students will receive a double master's degree in psychotherapy and psychotraumatology according to German standards, and training from both local and German professors.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
Duty to help
Kizilhan has interviewed thousands of women in refugee camps - and more recently, prospective students for the program's inaugural class: "We are talking about general trauma, we are talking about collective trauma and we are talking about genocide. That's the reason we have to help if we can - it's our human duty to help them."
