German ISIS woman sentenced to 14 years in prison for death of Yazidi child

A German woman who joined Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq has been sentenced to 14 years in prison on appeal for her role in the death of a five-year-old girl in 2015. The 30-year-old woman, Jennifer W., had traveled to Iraq a year earlier to marry an ISIS fighter.

W. and her husband bought a 5-year-old girl in 2015 to use as a slave in the household. The child died of dehydration after the man chained her in the scorching sun. He had tied her up in a courtyard where he left the infant to die of thirst. W., who was present at the time of the torture, merely watched as her husband tortured the child. She later stated that she had not helped the Yazidi girl in any way. According to her testimony, the girl was killed by her husband, apparently as punishment for the child urinating in her bed.

Jennifer W. joined ISIS in Iraq in the summer of 2014, after traveling through Turkey and Syria. During a court hearing, W. confessed that she had also been a member of the Hisbah, ISIS’s feared Sharia police, in Iraq. The woman from Niedersachsen, who grew up in a Protestant family and converted to Islam in 2013, said she took part in armed patrols in Fallujah and Mosul to monitor women’s ‘moral behavior’. According to German prosecutors, she carried a kalashnikov and wore a bomb vest during her patrols. She was paid between 70 and 100 dollars a month for her work.

Initially, the court in Munich sentenced the ISIS woman to 10 years in prison for membership of a terrorist organization, complicity in murder, attempted war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, a higher court said she was also guilty of slavery resulting in death. The judge also accused W. of putting a gun to the head of the girl’s mother after her daughter’s death to stop her crying. The court subsequently imposed a heavier sentence on her.