Jennifer Wenisch, 30, who joined IS in 2014, was convicted of complicity in murder, war crimes, crimes against humanity and membership of a terrorist organization. The prosecution had demanded life.
The IS bride, from Lower Saxony, used the girl and her mother as slaves in the house when she lived with her husband Taha al-Jumailly in Iraq’s Mosul in 2015. In the caliphate that IS founded in parts of Iraq and Syria, an estimated 7,000 women and children of the Yazidi community were put to work as slaves. IS also killed thousands of Yazidis, a faith group considered by the movement to be devil worshippers.
The judge considered it proven that W. did not intervene when her husband tied up the girl and put it outside, under the bright sun. He wanted to punish her because the child had wet her bed. The girl’s mother, who had filed the case, said she was forced by the couple to watch her die. The German woman’s husband, an IS fighter, has also been charged in Germany. The verdict in his case is in November.
On the run
The girl’s mother, Nora T., said she and her three children were kidnapped in 2014 while fleeing IS. In Mosul, she and her daughter were ‘bought’ by the German and her husband to work in the household. In court, the mother said she still doesn’t know what happened to her sons. “It was important to her that it was clear who was responsible for this,” said her lawyer Natalie Von Wistinghausen. “Today she got that verdict.”
During the trial, W. found that she could not be held responsible for the crimes committed by IS against the Yazidis. Her lawyers said a two-year sentence was in order for the girl’s death. According to the Public Prosecution Service, she was patrolling the streets of Mosul and Falluja at the time, armed, to check whether women were complying with the strict rules of conduct of IS.
The German ended up in the hands of justice when she wanted to renew her passport at the German embassy in Turkey in 2016. She was transferred to her native country. Two years later, she was arrested when she tried to return to Syria from Germany.
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