German girl who was found with Daesh in Iraq wants to go home
berlin — A teenage German girl who ran away after converting to Islam and was found by Iraqi troops in Mosul says she wants to go home, a German newspaper and broadcaster reported on Monday.
“I just want to go back home to my family,” 16-year-old Linda Wenzel said. “I want to get away from the war, away from all the weapons, away from the noise.”
German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and public broadcaster ARD said their reporter interviewed the girl in Baghdad after she was found earlier this month as Iraqi forces liberated the northern city of Mosul from the Daesh group.
She could theoretically face the death penalty in Iraq for membership in Daesh. Wenzel ran away from her home in the small eastern German town of Pulsnitz last summer, shortly after converting to Islam, according to German security officials. She had been in touch with Daesh members online and was married to one of the extremist group’s fighters after arriving in the group’s territory.
Her husband died shortly after the marriage, the German media reported.
The girl said she had been hiding in a basement in Mosul when Iraqi soldiers captured her. She said she is “doing fine” despite a bullet wound in her left leg that she said “is from a helicopter attack.”
She is currently in a military hospital ward in Baghdad, according to the report.
It’s not clear if Wenzel can return to Germany or if she will be tried as a Daesh member. However, even if she is sentenced to death in Iraq, she would not be executed before the age of 22.
A spokeswoman for the German Foreign Office, Maria Adebahr, said German Embassy staff visited Wenzel and another German woman on Thursday. While Germany and Iraq didn’t have any official extradition agreements, the German government was looking into other ways of cooperation regarding the two German women.
Photos of a disheveled young woman in the presence of Iraqi soldiers went viral online earlier this month. —