Shortly after 11 a.m. today, the verdict was handed down in the first trial ever in which an IS member was charged with genocide of Yazidis.

For the Yazidi minority, the verdict is a small step on the road to restoration after the enormous atrocities the group has been subjected to.  

"It is a historic moment for us Yazidis.

We can not imagine a better verdict.

We will work to make this the first genocide trial of many and that other Yazidi survivors will be able to face perpetrators in future legal proceedings, says Natia Navrouzov of the organization Yazda that worked on the case.

Sentenced to life

The trial in Frankfurt, Germany, which ended today, is unique in that it is the first time that an IS terrorist has been charged - and convicted - of genocide against the Yazidi minority.  

The court finds that the 29-year-old Iraqi jihadist Taha al-Jumailly committed genocide and war crimes when he killed a five-year-old Yazidi girl in front of her mother.

He is sentenced to life in prison.  

Bought the girl at the slave market

According to the verdict, al-Jumailly and his then wife Jennifer Wenisch bought a Yazidi woman and her five-year-old daughter at a slave market in an IS-occupied part of Syria in 2015. The couple kept the mother and daughter as slaves in their household and forced them to convert to Islam. , and they must have been subjected to daily abuse.  

The convicted jihadist couple later moved to Fallujah and it was there that Al-Jumailly chained the Yazidi girl outdoors in 50-degree heat as punishment for peeing on her mattress.

The girl died of thirst and exhaustion, while her mother was forced to watch. 

In a separate trial in October, Jennifer Wennisch was sentenced to ten years in prison for "crimes against humanity in the form of slavery" and as an accomplice to the five-year-old girl's death because she did nothing to save her. 

The road to restoration is long 

On Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq, thousands of Yazidis are still awaiting information about what happened to their relatives.

Seven years after IS murdered more than 5,000 men, and took women and children as slaves, the road to recovery is slow.  

Nearly 3,000 women and children abducted by the terrorist sect are still missing.

Some families still have contact with their abducted family members and hope to buy them free.

The excavations of the mass graves on Sinjarberget will take many years to complete, while the graves are unprotected from the weather and wind.  

The UN and several states have called the terrorist sect IS crime against the Yazidis in 2014 a genocide, but no court has previously ruled that it was a genocide that took place in 2014.  

Universal jurisdiction

In Germany, five female IS members have so far been convicted of crimes against humanity in crimes against Yazidis during the IS occupation of Iraq and Syria.  

According to the principle of universal jurisdiction, trials can be held in Germany regardless of where in the world the crimes have been committed and regardless of the nationality of the perpetrator and the plaintiff.

In Sweden, too, the same principle applies to crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.