Sweden: ISIS Wife Convicted

In Stockholm this week, a court has sentenced a woman to 6 years in prison for taking her son with her to Syria where he was used as a child soldier at the age of 12. He was killed in battle three years later.

The below article from Nya Dagbladet is translated from Swedish by Fousesquawk.

https://nyadagbladet.se/inrikes/is-kvinna-domd-for-krigsforbrytelse

ISIS woman convicted of war crime

Posted March 7, 2022

-By Sofie Persson

Caption below photo: Lina Ishaq Moske,  Damascus, Syria

Lina Ishaq becomes the first in Sweden to be convicted for war crimes by using a child soldier. She is convicted after having taken her then-12-year-old son to Syria, where he was then trained and forced to fight for the Islamic State.

It was in 2013 that the then-49-year-old Lina Ishaq took her children with her to an ISIS-controlled area in Syria. There, her 12-year-old son was quickly recruited as a child soldier and continued to be so until his death three years later, only 16 years old.

Thus, last week, Ishaq was sentenced to 6 years in prison for a serious violation of international law and a serious war crime at the Stockholm District Court.

The District Court finds that she should have been aware that the children could be used as child soldiers when they traveled to the ISIS-controlled area, in part because there was a civil war ongoing, (and) in part because it was judged that both she and her husband were members in the terror sect, and therefore should have been aware of the risks.

Ishaq claims, however, that it was her husband, the well-known Islamic preacher, Jiro Mehho, who tricked her and the children, and that she had no idea that the children could be exploited. The husband fell in battle in 2013. She also states that as a woman, she had no power. The District Court does not agree, rather maintains that she, as a parent, has the responsibility to protect her child.

“We have reasoned that if you intentionally go into a war zone as she did with her child, then you have relinquished the possibility to protect and save your children,” says Jakob Hedenmo, according to TT (News).

The war crimes prosecution for the use of child soldiers is the first of its kind in Sweden.