Swedish woman jailed for war crimes over son becoming child soldier

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – A Swedish court found a Swedish woman guilty of war crimes for failing to prevent her 12-year-old son from becoming a child soldier in Syria, where he was killed in the civil war.

The woman has denied the charges.

“The district court sentences Lina Ishaq to six years in prison for grave violation of international law and grave war crime,” the Stockholm district court said on Friday.

“She, in her capacity as protection guarantor, omitted to prevent her son Joan, 12-15 years, from being recruited by unknown accomplices and used as child soldier on behalf of IS in the armed conflict in Syria,” it said in the verdict.

The 49-year-old woman, a Swede who returned from Syria in 2020, is the first person known to have been charged in Sweden with aiding the recruitment of her own minor son as a child soldier.

The boy, born in 2001, died in 2017.

According to Swedish newspaper Expressen, reporting last year when she first appeared in a Swedish court, her boy isn’t the only child of Swedish passport holders to be killed as a soldier in Syria. 

She initially travelled to Syria with her first husband Jiro Mehho and their five children. He ran a violent Islamist site that openly promoted jihad. After his death storming Aleppo airport she remarried and had more children.  Other sons have been photographed with weapons standing by mutilated bodies.  They may also now be dead.

One daughter was married at age 12.  Two others are believed to be in Syria. The two children who returned to Sweden are now in state care.