![This file photo taken February 3rd, 2015 shows an Iraqi man inspecting the remains of members of the Yazidi minority killed by ISIS after Kurdish forces discovered a mass grave near the Sinjar village of Sinuni. [Safin Hamed/AFP]](/cnmi_di/images/2020/04/24/23730-Iraq-Yazidi-grave-700_496.webp)
A man believed to have belonged to the "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" (ISIS) goes on trial in Germany on Friday (April 24th), accused of genocide and murdering a Yazidi child he held as a slave.
Identified only as Taha al-J., the 37-year-old Iraqi man is also accused of crimes against humanity, war crimes and human trafficking in the case, heard before Frankfurt judges.
His wife, a German woman named Jennifer Wenisch, has been on trial for a year at a Munich court.
She too is charged with murdering the young Yazidi girl who the pair are believed to have allowed to die of thirst in the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2015.
The start of Wenisch's trial in April last year appeared to be the first formal proceeding anywhere in the world related to ISIS's persecution of the Yazidi community.
The mother of the young girl, identified only by her first name Nora, has repeatedly testified in Munich about the torment visited on her child, named as Rania.
Court documents allege that Taha al-J. joined ISIS in March 2013, holding different positions within its hierarchy in the the Syrian city of al-Raqa, as well as in Iraq and Turkey.
A string of abuses
German prosecutors say the accused bought a woman belonging to the Yazidi minority and her five-year-old daughter as slaves at the end of May or beginning of June 2015.
He then took them to Fallujah, where they were seriously maltreated and at times deprived of food, the prosecutors allege.
In the summer of 2015, after a string of such abuses, the young girl was chained by al-J to the window of a house where she lived with her mother, as "punishment" for having wet the bed.
She died of thirst in temperatures as high as 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit).
The couple also forced her mother to walk barefoot on the scorching ground outside, inflicting severe burns.
Mother and daughter had been kidnapped in summer 2014 after ISIS invaded the Sinjar region of Iraq.
They were repeatedly sold on "slave markets", prosecutors say.
The Frankfurt case is expected to last until at least August, and is being heard under tight police guard.
Al-J. was arrested in Greece in May 2019, before being extradited to Germany in October, where he has since been held in pre-trial custody.
