German IS bride sentenced to 10 years over Yazidi girl murder
MUNICH, Germany: A Munich court on Monday sentenced a German woman who joined the Islamic State group to 10 years in prison over the war crime of letting a five-year-old Yazidi “slave” girl die of thirst in the sun.
Presiding judge Reinhold Baier of the superior regional court in the southern German city handed down the verdict to Jennifer Wenisch, 30, in one of the first convictions anywhere in the world related to the Islamic State group’s persecution of the Yazidi community.
Wenisch was found guilty of “two crimes against humanity in the form of enslavement”, as well as aiding and abetting the girl’s killing by failing to offer help and membership of a terrorist organisation.
Wenisch and her IS husband “purchased” a Yazidi woman and child as household “slaves”, whom they held captive while living in then IS-occupied Mosul, Iraq, in 2015, the court found.
“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 agonising death of thirst in the scorching heat,” prosecutors said during the trial.
“The accused allowed her husband to do so and did nothing to save the girl.”
Wenisch’s husband, Taha al-Jumailly, is also facing trial in separate proceedings in Frankfurt, where the verdict is due in late November.
Identified only by her first name Nora, the Yazidi girl’s mother has repeatedly testified in both Munich and Frankfurt about the torment allegedly visited on her child.
The defence had claimed the mother’s testimony is untrustworthy and said there was no proof that the girl, who was taken to hospital after the incident, actually died.
Wenisch’s lawyers had called for her to receive just a two-year suspended sentence for supporting a terrorist organisation.
When asked during the trial about her failure to save the girl, Wenisch said she was “afraid” that her husband would “push her or lock her up”.
Wenisch’s trial, which began in April 2019, is one of the first examples of court proceedings over the Islamic State group’s brutal treatment of Yazidis.