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German ISIS woman accused of letting Yazidi 'slave' girl die of thirst

German ISIS woman accused of letting Yazidi slave girl die of thirst
German ISIS woman accused of letting Yazidi 'slave' girl die of thirst

2019-04-09 00:00:00 - Source: Baghdad Post

A German woman who joined ISIS went on trial Tuesday accused

of the war crime of letting a five-year-old Yazidi "slave" girl die

of thirst in the sun, AFP reported.

The case against Jennifer Wenisch, 27, is believed to be the

first anywhere in the world for international crimes committed by ISIS

militants against members of the Yazidi minority.

She faces a maximum term of life in jail if found guilty of

committing murder and of murder as a war crime, as well membership in a

terrorist organization and violations of the German War Weapons Control Act.

It is Germany's first trial of a female ISIS returnee,

prosecutor Claudia Gorf told the Munich court.

Wenisch – wearing a white blouse and black jacket, her dark

hair not covered – showed no emotion and did not speak, but shielded her face

with a paper folder while photographers were in the room at the start.

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Nadia Murad, herself a Yazidi

survivor of ISIS enslavement and torture, said in a statement that the trial

"is a very big moment for me and for the entire Yazidi community".

Prominent London-based human rights lawyer Amal Clooney is

part of the team representing the dead Yazidi girl's mother, although Clooney

did not appear on the trial's opening day.

'Agonising death'

German prosecutors allege Wenisch and her ISIS husband

"purchased" the Yazidi woman and child as household

"slaves" whom they held captive while living in then ISIS-occupied

Mosul, Iraq, in 2015.

"After the girl fell ill and wet her mattress, the

husband of the accused chained her up outside as punishment and let the child

die an agonizing death of thirst in the scorching heat," prosecutors

charge.

"The accused allowed her husband to do so and did

nothing to save the girl."

German media said the defendant's husband, Taha Sabah Noori

Al-J., had beaten both the mother and child, and that Wenisch allegedly also

once held a pistol to the woman's head.

The trial is being held under tight security in a court for

state security and terrorism cases, with hearings initially scheduled until

September 30.


Morality police

Wenisch – who reportedly left school after the eighth grade

and has no job or qualifications – converted to Islam in 2013 and traveled the

following year via Turkey and Syria to Iraq where she joined the ISIS.

Recruited in mid-2015 to the group's self-styled hisbah

morality police, she patrolled city parks in ISIS-occupied Fallujah and Mosul.

Armed with an AK-47 assault rifle, a pistol and an

explosives vest, her task was to ensure strict ISIS rules on dress code, public

behavior, and bans on alcohol and tobacco.

In January 2016, months after the Yazidi child's death, she

visited the German embassy in Ankara to apply for new identity papers. When she

left the mission, she was arrested and extradited days later to Germany.

For lack of actionable evidence against her at the time, she

was allowed to return to her home in the German state of Lower Saxony, but

quickly sought to return to ISIS territory.

FBI informant

Der Spiegel reported that an FBI informant posed as an

accomplice who offered to take Wenisch and her two-year-old child back to the

ISIS "caliphate".

While they were sitting in a bugged car, headed for Turkey,

Wenisch allegedly spoke of her time at the ISIS and incriminated herself.

She said that the child's death had been "hard-core

even for the ISIS" and unjust because only God had the right to use fire

as punishment, adding that her husband had later been beaten as punishment by

the ISIS.

Police followed her car for several hours and listened to a

live audio feed, then arrested Wenisch at a highway stop.

Amal Clooney, the wife of Hollywood star George Clooney, has

been involved in a campaign to get ISIS crimes against the Yazidi recognized as

a "genocide".

"I hope this will be the first of many trials that will

finally bring ISIS to justice in line with international law," the lawyer

said in a statement, using an alternative acronym for the group.





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