A German court jailed a former member of the ISIL (ISIS) group, Taha al-Jumailly, for life after he was convicted of committing genocide against Iraq’s minority Yazidi community. The case involved the death of a five-year-old girl he bought as a slave and then chained up in the hot sun to die.
Al-Jumailly was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity resulting in death, war crimes, aiding and abetting war crimes, and bodily harm resulting in death after joining ISIL in 2013.
Germany, home to a large Yazidi community, is one of the few countries to have taken legal action over such abuses using the legal principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows offenses to be prosecuted even if they were committed in a foreign country.
“This is the outcome every single Yazidi and all genocide survivors were hoping to see. Today is a historical day for humanity and the Yazidi genocide enters finally the history of international criminal law. We will make sure that more trials such as this take place,” Natia Navrouzov, a lawyer and member of the nongovernmental organization Yazda, said.
Read more here.
