A Munich court on Monday convicted a woman married to an Islamic State fighter for “crimes against humanity and attempted war crimes” in the aiding and abetting of the murder of a 5-year-old Yazidi girl, sentencing the woman to 10 years in prison.
Wp Get the full experience.Choose your plan ArrowRight
The court ruled that Jennifer Wenisch, a 30-year-old German citizen, did not intervene to stop the child’s dying of thirst in the desert heat of Iraq. The conviction is believed to be the first in the world related to the Islamic State’s persecution of the Yazidi community.
In 2014, the Islamic State terrorist group took over a 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.
Story continues below advertisement
According to German prosecutors, Wenisch and her husband “purchased” the child and her mother as household “slaves” when they lived in the Islamic State-occupied Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2015. After the child became ill and wet her mattress, Wenisch’s husband chained her outside their home as punishment and let the child die of thirst in the desert heat. The child’s mother, who was forced to witness her death, was the trial’s main witness, testifying for over 11 days.
Why Germany is becoming a go-to destination for trials on the world’s crimes
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. Wenisch’s husband, Taha al-Jumailly, is on trial in Frankfurt.
Advertisement
The case is being tried in Germany because its legal system incorporates parts of the principle of universal jurisdiction. Under this legal principle, some crimes — such as genocide and war crimes — are so grave that the normal territorial restraints on prosecutions do not apply.
Story continues below advertisement
As part of what is known as “structural investigations,” German authorities have been investigating war crimes against the Yazidi minority in Iraq and Syria for years. Two other trials involving the enslavement of Yazidi women and children are ongoing in Hamburg and Düsseldorf.
In response to a lawmaker’s request last year, the government confirmed that 22 German nationals who “have a connection to ISIS or another terrorist organization” — 19 children and three women — have returned to Germany with help of the German authorities.
Advertisement
Over a hundred German citizens who left the country to join the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, or other terrorist organizations remain in prison camps in Syria and Iraq. They have petitioned the German courts for permission to return.
Read more:
German court case is first to try Syrian regime for war crimes
German court convicts Syrian ex-intelligence officer in historic torture trial
Analysis: What counts as evidence of Syria’s war crimes?