Yazidi survivor offers to testify as Australia brings rare ISIS slavery charges

An Australian court will hear rare crimes against humanity charges after a Yazidi woman said an Australian-linked ISIS family enslaved her as a child. She has offered to testify against two women repatriated from Syria.

The case could test whether courts can meaningfully prosecute modern slavery committed during conflict years after the abuse occurred. It could also be the country’s first prosecution connected to ISIS’s systematic enslavement of the Yazidi minority, which subjected thousands of women and children to trafficking, forced labor and sexual exploitation.

Survivors describe alleged slavery under ISIS

Australian authorities arrested Kawsar Ahmad and her daughter, Zeinab Ahmad, after they returned from a detention camp in north-eastern Syria earlier this year.

Authorities allege that Kawsar was complicit in the purchase of a female slave for US$10,000 and knowingly kept her in the family home. Zeinab has also been charged with enslavement and use of a slave. Both deny the allegations.

One Yazidi survivor, identified as Kate, told ABC that ISIS abducted her at age 11 before being taken to the Australian-linked family’s home at age 13.

Kate alleges Abu Omar brought her into his house for a trial, where she was subjected to abuse. ABC News reports:

I had to stay with them for three days and if they liked my work, they were going to buy me,…It was very unpleasant. I was their slave and they could do whatever they wanted to me….My life was controlled by them. It felt like my existence did not matter.

Another survivor says the same family enslaved her as a minor, forcing her into domestic work and subjecting her to sexual abuse. She said:

I was a minor, they enslaved me and held me at their place.

Accountability remains rare but survivors continue to seek justice

When ISIS militants swept across northern Iraq in 2014, they abducted thousands of Yazidi women and girls and trafficked them through organized slave markets. Militants separated families during mass killings and forced displacement that devastated Yazidi communities across the Sinjar region. Fighters repeatedly sold many survivors between one another and held them captive for years before they escaped or rescuers freed them.

For many Yazidi survivors, accountability for ISIS crimes has remained painfully limited despite years of documented evidence of trafficking, enslavement, and sexual violence.

Some survivors have even encountered former ISIS members living freely abroad. In one case, a Yazidi teenager unexpectedly came face-to-face with her former captor on a street in Germany.

Displacement and instability have also left many Yazidis vulnerable to further exploitation after escaping captivity. Prosecutions like these are essential to addressing slavery committed during conflict. Moreover, it ensures survivors can access justice as well as improving protections for survivors worldwide.