A German woman who joined the Islamic State jihadist group goes on trial Tuesday accused of the war crime of letting a five-year-old “slave” girl die of thirst.
Prominent London-based human rights lawyer Amal Clooney is part of the team representing the dead Yazidi girl’s mother, but Clooney was not expected to appear in the Munich trial on Tuesday.
The defendant, identified only as Jennifer W., 27, faces life in jail if found guilty of committing a war crime, murder, membership in a terrorist organisation and weapons offences.
According to news weekly Der Spiegel, the defendant, herself the mother of a small girl, had incriminated herself while talking at length to an undercover FBI informant in a bugged car.
German prosecutors allege her IS husband had purchased the Yazidi child and her mother — a co-plaintiff in the trial — as household “slaves” whom they held captive while living in then IS-occupied Mosul, Iraq, in 2015.
“After the girl fell ill and wet her mattress, the husband of the accused chained her up outside as punishment and let the child die an agonising death of thirst in the scorching heat,” prosecutors charge.
“The accused allowed her husband to do so and did nothing to save the girl.”
German media said the defendant’s husband, Taha Sabah Noori Al-J., had beaten both the Yazidi mother and child, and that Jennifer W. allegedly also once held a pistol to the woman’s head.
The trial will start at 0730 GMT under tight security in a Munich court that deals with state security and terrorism cases, with hearings initially scheduled until September 30.
FBI informant
Jennifer W., who reportedly left school after the eighth grade and converted to Islam in 2013, left Germany in August 2014 and travelled via Turkey and Syria to Iraq where she joined the IS.
Recruited in mid-2015 to an “anti-vice squad” of the group’s self-styled Hisba morality police, she patrolled city parks in IS-occupied Fallujah and Mosul.
Armed with an AK-47 assault rifle, a pistol and an explosives vest, her task was to ensure that women complied with IS behaviour and clothing regulations, said prosecutors.