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