German woman 'let five-year-old Yazidi slave girl die of thirst in hot sun'

Jennifer W arrives with her lawyer Ali Aydin for the first day of her trial
Getty Images
Katy Clifton9 April 2019
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A German convert to Islam and alleged member of Islamic State in Iraq let a five-year-old Yazidi girl she and her husband kept as a slave die of thirst, a court heard.

The 27-year-old, identified only as Jennifer W, has been charged with murder, a war crime and membership of a terrorist organisation.

If convicted in Munich state court, she could face life in prison.

Pleas are not entered in the German court system and as her trial opened on Tuesday her lawyer Seda Basay-Yildiz said the defendant had no statement to make.

Defendant Jennifer W sits next to her lawyer Ali Aydin
AFP/Getty Images

The girl's mother, whose lawyers include Amal Clooney, is to be called as a witness and is also a co-plaintiff in the case as allowed under German law.

Neither were in court for the opening hearing before the trial was adjourned for three weeks, but human rights lawyer Ms Clooney said in a statement it was hoped the case would encourage more prosecutions of returning IS members for international crimes.

The United Nations has called the IS assault on the Yazidis' ancestral homeland in northern Iraq in 2014 a genocide, saying the Yazidis' "400,000-strong community had all been displaced, captured or killed".

Of the thousands captured by IS, boys were forced to fight for the extremists, men were executed if they did not convert to Islam - and often executed in any case - and women and girls were sold into slavery.

"Yazidi victims of genocide have waited far too long for their day in court," Ms Clooney said.

"I hope that this will be the first of many trials that will finally bring Isis (IS) to justice in line with international law."

Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney
REUTERS

The defendant in the Munich case grew up in Lower Saxony as a protestant but converted to Islam in 2013, according to a lengthy profile in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

Prosecutors allege she then made her way to Iraq through Turkey and Syria in 2014 to join IS.

In 2015, as a member of the extremist group's "morality police", she patrolled parks in Fallujah and Mosul, armed with an assault rifle and a pistol as well as an explosive vest, looking for women who did not conform with its strict codes of behaviour and dress, prosecutors said.

It was in the summer of that year that she and her husband, an IS fighter, purchased the young Yazidi girl as a slave.

One day when the girl wet her bed, prosecutors allege her husband chained the girl outside in the heat of the day and Jennifer W did nothing to prevent her dying of thirst.

The victim's mother was held with her in slavery by the couple, and plans to give evidence about how they were both treated, another of her lawyers, Natalie von Wistinghausen, said.

"She wants justice," Ms von Wistinghausen said.

"She wants to have the opportunity to explain the fate that befell her and her daughter."

Defendant Jennifer W hides her face behind a folder
AFP/Getty Images

The defendant was taken into custody when trying to renew her identity papers at the German embassy in Ankara in 2016, and deported back to Germany.

It was not clear whether she was investigated at the time, but prosecutors said she was arrested again in 2018 while trying to make her way back to Syria, and has been in custody since then.

She has her own young daughter, but her lawyer would not give any details about her, other than to say she is living with her grandmother in Germany and is "doing well".

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported her husband is believed to still be alive, living in the Turkey-Iraq border region.

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