Status: 25.10.2021 11:32 a.m.
Jennifer W. joined IS in Iraq in 2014. During her time with the terrorist militia, she is said to have allowed a five-year-old girl to be chained up and to die of thirst. Now she has been sentenced to ten years in prison in Munich.
Around two and a half years after the start of the trial, the verdict against IS returnees Jennifer W. was passed. She has to go to jail for ten years.
The Munich Higher Regional Court found the woman from Lohne in Lower Saxony guilty of membership in a terrorist organization abroad, of aiding and abetting attempted murder and of attempted war crimes and of crimes against humanity.
The prosecution had demanded life imprisonment for Jennifer W. Her defense, on the other hand, only received a two-year prison sentence.
Five year old chained in the yard
Jennifer W. traveled to Iraq in 2014 to join the terrorist militia “Islamic State” and to marry one of the organization’s fighters. The accused herself said that they had ideological reasons behind this decision.
According to the judge’s verdict, the couple kept a Yezidi as a slave. The woman had a daughter. The judges saw it as proven that the child died in 2015 – through the fault of Jennifer W. and her husband. The man is said to have chained the then five-year-old girl in a courtyard in the blazing sun – probably as a punishment because the child got wet. The girl was “defenseless and helpless exposed” to the situation, according to the judges’ reasoning.
According to the verdict, Jennifer W. did nothing to help the child, even though it was “possible and reasonable” for her. On the contrary, she threatened to shoot the girl if she didn’t stop crying. The child died of thirst. Jennifer W. “had to expect from the start that the child, tied up in the heat of the sun, was in mortal danger,” the judges said.
The dead girl’s mother appeared as a joint plaintiff
The child’s mother, who was judged to have been mistreated and beaten while in custody, appeared as a joint plaintiff in the trial. Her case was taken on by human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, wife of Hollywood actor George Clooney.
The court ruled that the accused had supported the “annihilation of the Yazidi religion” and the “enslavement of the Yazidi people” with her IS membership. According to the Yazidi organization Yazda, when it started, the Munich trial was the world’s first indictment of crimes by ISIS members against the Yazidis religious minority.
Former husband is also on trial
Jennifer W. returned to Germany in 2015 and joined the Salafist-jihadist scene here. She was arrested in 2018 and her trial began the following year. Her ex-husband also has to answer to the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt for genocide and crimes against humanity, among other things.