Status: 09.03.2023 1:11 p.m
Jennifer W. is said to have watched a Yazidi girl die without doing anything. For this she was sentenced to ten years in prison. The Federal Court of Justice has now ruled that the case must be renegotiated because of legal errors.
The Munich Higher Regional Court (OLG) has to renegotiate the punishment for IS returnee Jennifer W. The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) declared in Karlsruhe that the Munich judgment contained legal errors. According to the BGH, the Higher Regional Court did not take into account the “inhuman motives and goals” of the accused. The appeal by the Attorney General was successful. The 31-year-old faces a harsher sentence.
Enslavement of Yazidi women – Federal Court of Justice partly overturns first conviction against IS returnee
Claudia Kornmeier, SWR, Mittagsmagazin 1:00 p.m., March 9, 2023
Jennifer W. is said to have watched in Iraq in 2015 as a Yazidi girl chained by her ex-husband died of thirst in the scorching heat without intervening. For this she was convicted in October 2021 in Munich, among other things, of crimes against humanity through enslavement resulting in death.
“Pervasive Legal Concerns”
Because of various violations of the law, the Higher Regional Court had sentenced the woman from Lohne in Lower Saxony to two terms of imprisonment totaling ten years. The Higher Regional Court imposed nine years for crimes against humanity through enslavement resulting in death. The BGH has now reversed this judgment in part.
As the presiding judge Jürgen Schäfer said in Karlsruhe, the acceptance of a less serious case met “serious legal concerns”. The BGH doubted that the Munich court had taken all the circumstances into account. For example, W’s motives and goals were not discussed as potentially aggravating the sentence. “It makes sense to rate them as inhuman,” said Schäfer. Among other things, he pointed out that W. had approved the goal of the IS to destroy the religious group of the Yazidis.
Another senate of the higher regional court must now renegotiate and decide on the amount of the penalty. In the remaining points – including membership in a terrorist organization abroad and aiding and abetting attempted murder – the judgment against the 31-year-old is final.
Ex-husband sentenced to life imprisonment
Jennifer W. herself had also appealed to the Federal Court of Justice. However, this was rejected by the top criminal judges. Her Iraqi ex-husband, who chained the five-year-old to a grating in the yard as punishment, has already been sentenced to life imprisonment, also for genocide. He had bought the girl and her mother as slaves after they were abducted by the terrorist organization Islamic State (IS).
Yazidis are Kurds from Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran. They form a religious minority. In 2014, IS overran the region around the Sinjar Mountains in northern Iraq, killing more than 5,000 members. Women and girls were abducted, enslaved and raped. The Bundestag recognized the crimes as genocide in January.
BGH: IS returnee Jennifer W.
Max Bauer, SWR, 03/09/2023 1:33 p.m