Faces of transgender people adorn an artwork in London's Trafalgar Square

LONDON (AP) — An artwork featuring the plaster face casts of hundreds of transgender people went on display Wednesday in London’s Trafalgar Square, where their features will be worn away by London’s wind and rain over the next 18 months.

Mexican artist Teresa Margolles’ “Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant)” is a 3.3-metric-ton (3.6-US-ton) cube covered in face masks of 726 trans, nonbinary and gender nonconforming people. It's the latest artwork placed atop the “ Fourth Plinth, ” a large stone pedestal in the central London square.

Margolles, who trained as a forensic pathologist and once worked in a morgue, has used blood and material from crime scenes in artworks exploring death and conflict.

The new sculpture evokes a Tzompantli, a rack used in Mesoamerican civilizations to display the skulls of captured enemies and sacrifice victims. It pays tribute to one of the artist’s friends, a transgender woman named Karla who was killed in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico in 2015. The crime remains unsolved.

“We pay this tribute to her and to all the other people who were killed for reasons of hate,” the artist said. “But, above all, to those who live on, to the new generations who will defend the power to freely choose to live with dignity.”

Organizers of the project say the work will “naturally age” while on display, with the detail of the faces slowly fading as the plaster is exposed to the elements.

One of London’s main gathering spots for tourists and protesters, Trafalgar Square was named for Admiral Horatio Nelson’s 1805 victory over the French and Spanish fleets. A statue of the one-armed admiral stands atop Nelson’s Column at the center of the square, and statues of other 19th-century military leaders are nearby.

The fourth plinth — a 24-foot (7-meter) high stone pedestal -- was erected in 1841 for a never-completed equestrian statue, and since 1999 has been occupied by a series of artworks for about 18 months at a time.

Previous occupants included a giant bronze thumb, a sculpture of a giant swirl of whipped cream topped with a cherry, a fly and a drone, and 2,400 members of the public who each stood atop the plinth for an hour over the course of 100 days.

An artwork "Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant)" created by Mexican artist Teresa Margolles is placed for the Fourth Plinth, marking 25 years of the ground-breaking commissioning programme for public art at Trafalgar Square, in London, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

An artwork "Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant)" created by Mexican artist Teresa Margolles is placed for the Fourth Plinth, marking 25 years of the ground-breaking commissioning programme for public art at Trafalgar Square, in London, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Mexican artist Teresa Margolles, fifth left, unveils her artwork "Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant)" on Fourth Plinth, marking 25 years of the ground-breaking commissioning programme for public art at Trafalgar Square, in London, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

An artwork "Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant)" created by Mexican artist Teresa Margolles is placed for the Fourth Plinth, marking 25 years of the ground-breaking commissioning programme for public art at Trafalgar Square, in London, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Mexican artist Teresa Margolles poses in front of her artwork "Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant)" for the Fourth Plinth, marking 25 years of the ground-breaking commissioning programme for public art at Trafalgar Square, in London, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

An artwork "Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant)" created by Mexican artist Teresa Margolles is placed for the Fourth Plinth, marking 25 years of the ground-breaking commissioning programme for public art at Trafalgar Square, in London, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Mexican artist Teresa Margolles poses in front of her artwork "Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant)" for the Fourth Plinth, marking 25 years of the ground-breaking commissioning programme for public art at Trafalgar Square, in London, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

An artwork "Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant)" created by Mexican artist Teresa Margolles is placed for the Fourth Plinth, marking 25 years of the ground-breaking commissioning programme for public art at Trafalgar Square, in London, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Swedish authorities on Thursday charged a 52-year-old woman associated with the Islamic State group with genocide, crimes against humanity and serious war crimes against Yazidi women and children in Syria — in the first such case of a person to be tried in the Scandinavian country.

Lina Laina Ishaq, who's a Swedish citizen, allegedly committed the crimes from August 2014 to December 2016, in Raqqa, the former de facto capital of the self-proclaimed IS caliphate and home to about 300,000 people.

The crimes “took place under IS rule in Raqqa, and this is the first time that IS attacks against the Yazidi minority have been tried in Sweden,” senior prosecutor Reena Devgun said in a statement.

“Women, children and men were regarded as property and subjected to being traded as slaves, sexual slavery, forced labor, deprivation of liberty and extrajudicial executions,” Devgun said.

When announcing the charges, Devgun told a press conference that they were able to identify the woman through information from UNITAD, the U.N. team investigating atrocities in Iraq.

“IS tried to annihilate the Yazidi ethnic group on an industrial scale,” Devgun said.

In a separate statement, the Stockholm District Court said the prosecutor claims the woman detained a number of women and children belonging to the Yazidi ethnic group in her residence in Raqqa, and “allegedly exposed them to, among other things, severe suffering, torture or other inhumane treatment as well as for persecution by depriving them of fundamental rights for cultural, religious and gender reasons contrary to general international law.”

According to the charge sheet, obtained by The Associated Press, Ishaq is suspected of holding nine people, including children, in her Raqqa home for up to seven months and treating them as slaves. She also abused several of those she held captive.

The charge sheet said that Ishaq, who denies wrongdoing, is accused of having molested a baby, said to have been 1 month old at the time, by holding a hand over the child’s mouth when he screamed to make him shut up.

She is also suspected of having sold people to IS knowing they risked being killed or subjected to serious sexual abuse.

In 2014, IS militants stormed Yazidi towns and villages in Iraq’s Sinjar region and abducted women and children. Women were forced into sexual slavery, and boys were taken to be indoctrinated in jihadi ideology.

The woman earlier had been convicted in Sweden and was sentenced to three years in prison, for taking her 2-year-old son to Syria in 2014, in an area that was then controlled by IS. The woman had claimed that she had told the child’s father that she and the boy were only going on a holiday to Turkey. However, once in Turkey, the two crossed into Syria and the IS-run territory.

In 2017, when the Islamic State’s reign began to collapse, she fled from Raqqa and was captured by Syrian Kurdish troops. She managed to escape to Turkey where she was arrested with her son and two other children, she had given birth to in the meantime, with an IS foreign fighter from Tunisia. She was extradited from Turkey to Sweden.

Before her 2021 conviction, the woman lived in the southern town of Landskrona.

The court said the trial was planned to start Oct. 7 and last approximately two months. Large parts of the trial are to be held behind closed doors.

Prosecutor Reena Devgun speaks during a press conference regarding the indictment of a 52-year-old woman, associated with the Islamic State group, with genocide, crimes against humanity and serious war crimes against Yazidi women and children in Syria, in Stockholm, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (Anders Wiklund/TT News Agency via AP)

Prosecutor Reena Devgun speaks during a press conference regarding the indictment of a 52-year-old woman, associated with the Islamic State group, with genocide, crimes against humanity and serious war crimes against Yazidi women and children in Syria, in Stockholm, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (Anders Wiklund/TT News Agency via AP)