The Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court has sentenced an IS returnee from Sankt Augustin near Bonn to three and a half years in prison for membership in the foreign terrorist militia Islamic State (IS) and severe child abduction. The sentence of the verdict announced on Tuesday corresponded to the demands of the representatives of the federal prosecutor’s office. The defense had requested a two-year suspended sentence. The verdict is not yet legally binding.
The 33-year-old convert joined IS in July 2015 and took her then five-year-old son to Syria against his father’s will. According to the Düsseldorf State Protection Senate, she also owned two assault rifles with IS and thus violated the War Weapons Control Act. At the start of the trial at the end of March, the accused had distanced himself from the terrorist militia. ISIS “lured and seduced” them.
The accused was captured by Kurdish militias in Syria in early 2019 and held in detention camps there until her extradition in October 2021. In the opinion of the court, this time cannot be counted towards the prison sentence, since it was not a state-ordered deprivation of liberty.
