NW Democrat-Gazette

Woman gets 10 years in Yazidi girl’s death

COMPILED BY DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE STAFF FROM WIRE REPORTS

A Munich court Monday convicted a woman married to an Islamic State fighter of “crimes against humanity and attempted war crimes” in the aiding and abetting of the murder of a 5-year-old Yazidi girl, and sentenced her to 10 years in prison.

The court ruled that Jennifer Wenisch, a 30-year-old German citizen, did not intervene to stop the child from dying of thirst in the desert heat. The conviction is believed to be the first in the world related to the Islamic State group’s persecution of the Yazidi community.

In 2014, the Islamic State took over the region in northern Iraq that was home to the small Yazidi religious group, massacring thousands of Yazidi men and enslaving an estimated 7,000 women and children.

According to German prosecutors, Wenisch and her husband “purchased” the child and her mother as household “slaves” when they lived in Islamic State-occupied Fallujah, Iraq, in 2015. After the child became ill and wet her mattress, Wenisch’s husband chained her outside as punishment and let the child die of thirst. The child’s mother, who was forced to witness her death, was the trial’s main witness, testifying for more than 11 days.

The prosecutor had recommended that Wenisch be imprisoned for life. However, the court found that the accused had only a limited ability to end the enslavement of the woman and her child. Her husband, Taha al-Jumailly, is also on trial in Frankfurt.

International

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2021-10-26T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-10-26T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://edition.nwaonline.com/article/281754157530885

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