German teen in Iraq wants to go home
BERLIN (AP) — A teenage German girl, who ran away after converting to Islam and was found by Iraqi troops in Mosul, has told a newspaper she wants to go home.
German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported yesterday it had interviewed 16-year-old Linda W. whose last name is not given in line with German privacy laws.
Linda told the newspaper she had enough of war, weapons and suffering.
The newspaper wrote the teenager is currently staying in a military hospital ward in Baghdad for a bullet wound in her left leg. The girl’s injury was caused during a helicopter attack.
German broadcasters NDR and WDR and newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung said they had interviewed Linda W. in the infirmary of a military complex in Baghdad and she told them she wanted to leave.
“I just want to get away from here,” she was quoted as saying.
“I want to get away from the war, from the many weapons, from the noise,” Linda said.
The girl from the small town of Pulsnitz in eastern Germany said she’d been hiding in a basement in Mosul when she was captured by Iraqi soldiers.
It’s not clear if she can return to her home country or if she will be tried in Iraq for membership in the extremist Islamic State (IS) group.
Linda W. will be interrogated next week by Iraqi officials.
She could theoretically face the death sentence, according to Iraqi’s counter-terrorism 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. According to other media reports, she was carrying a malnourished baby when she was captured.
The German teenager had married a Muslim Arab she met online after arriving in Mosul, the Iraqi officials added.
They said she is being held together with 26 other foreign women.