An Iraqi couple, who allegedly kept female slaves and sexually assaulted two Yazidi girls was arrested in southern Germany, the federal prosecutor’s office in Karlsruhe, which is responsible for terrorism, announced.

Tuana H.S. and his wife, Asia RA (under German law the names of the suspects are not being released) were members of the Islamic State from October 2015 to December 2017 in Iraq and Syria. Around the end of 2015, at the latest, they enslaved a little girl who was only 5 years old at the time. A 12-year-old Yazidi girl had the same fate in October 2017.

“Tuana HS raped the two children several times. Asia RA was getting the room ready and applying makeup to one of the little girls,” the prosecution said.

The couple was also forcing the two girls to do “non-stop” housework and watch over their children. They were forbidden to follow their religious customs but were obliged to observe Islamic rules and prayers, at the behest of the couple.

The Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking minority of Iraq, practice a pre-Islamic religion that contains elements of Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The jihadists have been persecuting them for many years.

According to the prosecution, when the children made “mistakes” the couple punished them violently. The man beat the older girl with a broomstick while his wife scalded the younger girl’s hand with water and forced both of them to stand on one leg for half an hour several times. This abuse was aimed at “eliminating” their faith, as ordered by the Islamic State.

Before leaving Syria in November 2017, the couple gave the two girls to other IS members, according to prosecutors.

The two suspects were arrested on Tuesday in Ratisbon and Roth in southern Germany and remanded in custody.

At the end of August 2023, a German woman, a member of IS, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for the murder of a Yazidi girl in Iraq.

In 2021, with a landmark decision, a German court condemned a former IS member serving a life sentence for genocide and crimes against humanity, against the Yazidis. Two years later, the German parliament recognized IS’s crimes against the Yazidis in Iraq in 2014 as genocide.