She traveled to Syria with her young son and against the will of the child’s father. There she is said to have joined the terrorist militia IS. Now the verdict in the case of the 33-year-old is expected.
Dusseldorf (dpa / lnw) – Four months after the start of the trial against a suspected IS terrorist from Sankt Augustin near Bonn, a judgment by the Higher Regional Court in Dusseldorf is expected on Tuesday. The 33-year-old mother is accused of having supported IS as a member since July 2015 and of having taken her then five-year-old son to Syria against his father’s will. Before leaving for Syria, the German divorced her husband and father of their son. The parents lived separately. In addition, she is said to have owned two assault rifles in Syria 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. The IS “lured and seduced” them. Instead of pure Islamic teachings, “there was a system of coercion with torture and executions,” the woman explained about her lawyers at the time. According to the indictment, she is said to have lived at times in the Iraqi city of Mosul, which was then controlled by the Islamists, and later returned to Syria. There she is said to have married an IS fighter and had another son.
In Syria, the woman was captured by Kurdish militias in early 2019 and held in two camps. The 33-year-old mother was among German women who were extradited to Germany last October and returned with their children. The prosecution has asked for three and a half years in prison for the woman. Her defense attorney has applied for a two-year suspended sentence.
