Isil bride in abuse trial after ‘making her children watch execution’

A GERMAN woman is facing child abuse charges for taking her three young children to Isil-run northern Syria and subjecting them to military training, indoctrination and witnessing a public execution.

Carla-josephine S, a so-called Isil bride, has been charged with the neglect of her duty of care and child abduction, along with four other charges, in the first case of its kind in Germany and one of the first in Europe. If found guilty, she faces up to 15 years in prison.

In the trial, the Düsseldorf state court will hear how in late 2015 the 32-year-old took her three young children to the town of Raqqa, which was then held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), leaving without warning while her husband was away on a business trip.

According to the indictment, once in Syria, all three children, aged between three and seven, were indoctrinated into radical Islamist thought and forced to watch a public execution. The woman then enrolled her six-year-old son in a weapons training programme and, when he questioned the radical ideology, reported him to the religious police, who beat him as punishment. In 2018 the son died in an artillery attack.

In 2016 Ms S remarried and had a further child with her new husband, a militant from east Africa. She then joined an all-female fighting unit, the indictment states.

In the summer of 2017 she left Raqqa with her four children, leaving behind her husband, who later died in battle. She returned to Germany last year and has been in detention since June.

Several former Isil brides have gone on trial in Germany in recent months, but the Düsseldorf trial marks a first due to the string of charges against Ms S relating to the abuse of her children.

On the first day of the trial, she told the court that her first husband beat her and that she fled to Turkey, and then into Syria, to escape from him.

The trial is expected to last 10 days.