German runaway girl who converted to Islam is found in Iraq
BERLIN » A German girl who ran away from home after converting to Islam has been found as Iraqi forces liberated the northern city of Mosul from Islamic State extremists, German and Iraqi officials said Saturday. She is reported to be in good health and will be interrogated next week by Iraqi officials.
The 16-year-old teenager, only identified as Linda W. in line with German privacy laws, is getting consular assistance from the German Embassy in Iraq, prosecutor Lorenz Haase said from the eastern German city of Dresden.
Three Iraqi intelligence and investigative sources confirmed to The Associated Press that the German teenager, who was apprehended in the basement of a home in Mosul’s Old City earlier this month, was Linda W.
The girl is in good health, the Iraqi officials said, adding that on the day of her arrest she was “too stunned” to speak but now she is doing better. They said she had been working with the IS police department.
Linda W. could theoretically face the death sentence, according to Iraqi’s counterterrorism law. However, even if she is sentenced to death in Iraq, she would not be executed before the age of 22.
Photos of a disheveled young woman in the presence of Iraqi soldiers went viral online last week, but there were contradicting reports about the girl’s identity.
The German teenager had married a Muslim Arab she met online after arriving in the group’s territory, the Iraqi officials added, speaking on condition of anonymity because the information was not public. They said Linda W. was one of 26 foreigners arrested in Mosul since the retreat of the extremists there.
So far, the young German has not made any statement. The officials said she is currently being held together with other foreign women at a prison near Baghdad’s airport. Starting next week, she’ll be investigated by the Iraqis, who will bring in German interpreters for the interrogation since she does not speak much Arabic.
Haase, the German prosecutor, told the AP that the girl ran away from her family home in Pulsnitz in eastern Germany last summer. It’s not clear yet whether she will return to Germany, he said.
“We, as the public prosecutor’s office Dresden, have not applied for an arrest warrant and will therefore not be able to request extradition,” Haase said. “There is the possibility that Linda might be put on trial in Iraq. She might be expelled for being a foreigner or, because she is a minor reported missing in Germany, she could be handed over to Germany.”
The 26 foreigners found in Mosul included two men, eight children and 16 women, the Iraqi officials said. Some of those arrested were from Chechnya, and the women were from Russia, Iran, Syria, France, Belgium and Germany.