A German woman who joined the Islamic State militant group in Iraq has been jailed for 10 years for letting a young, enslaved Yazidi girl die of thirst. Prosecutors accused the woman, identified only as Jennifer W in court documents, of joining the militant group in 2014 and integrating herself into the group’s decision-making and command structure. Munich’s Higher Regional Court found the 30-year-old guilty of supporting Islamic State militants, aiding and abetting attempted murder, attempted war crimes and crimes against humanity. The woman, from Lohne in Lower Saxony, was accused of standing by and allowing the death of the girl she and her husband kept as a slave.
Child ‘defenceless and helplessly’ exposed
The court was told the woman’s former husband, an Islamic State fighter, chained the child up in a courtyard without protection from the scorching heat as punishment for wetting her mattress. The court found the woman’s failure to prevent the girl’s death was a crime against humanity.
The child was ‘defenceless and helplessly exposed to the situation,’ judge Joachim Baier said, adding the woman “had to reckon from the beginning that the child, who was tied up in the heat of the sun, was in danger of dying”.However, she had done nothing to help the girl, although this had been ‘possible and reasonable’ for her, Mr Baier said. The woman also received two and half years’ jail for joining a terrorist group. The two sentences were combined into a total of 10 years in prison.
A crime ‘no-one would have thought would be solved’
The defendant grew up as a Protestant but converted to Islam in 2013. German media reported that Jennifer W made her way to Iraq through Turkey and Syria in 2014 to join IS. In 2015, as a member of the extremist group’s ‘morality police’, she patrolled parks in Fallujah and Mosul while armed with an assault rifle, pistol and explosive vest, looking for women who did not conform with the group’s strict codes of behavior and dress, prosecutors said. She was taken into custody while trying to renew her identity papers at the German embassy in Ankara in 2016, and deported back to Germany. The prosecutor said Monday’s verdict was significant because it found someone guilty of a crime that took place years ago outside of Germany.
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Case believed to be a world first
The case against Jenny W was believed to be the first in the world to indict crimes committed by IS members against the Yazidi community, the Yazidi organization Yazda said. Jennifer W’s lawyer said it was important to isolate the subjective guilt of his client and not to hold her responsible for what IS militants had done to the Yazidi community in general. The prosecutor’s office had demanded a life sentence for the defendant, while defence lawyers pleaded for a maximum of two years in prison.
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