Iraqi court sentences widow of former ISIS leader Baghdadi to death

The woman has been sentenced for the kidnapping and enslavement of women from the Yazidi minority

10 Jul. (EUROPA PRESS) –

An Iraqi court has sentenced one of the wives of late Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to death for her role in the kidnapping and enslavement of Yazidi women, the country’s Supreme Judicial Council confirmed on Wednesday.

The agency said in a statement published on its website that the court had handed down the death penalty against the woman for “working with the Islamic State terrorist groups and detaining Yazidi women in her home.”

She said the woman “detained Yazidi women in her home” after her abduction by jihadists during their assault on the city of Sinjar in northern Iraq. The woman, Asma Mohamed, was arrested in Turkey in 2018 and extradited to Iraq in February, according to the Kurdish television channel Rudaw.

Islamic State swept into Yazidi-majority areas as part of its lightning offensive in northwestern Iraq in the summer of 2014, killing thousands and enslaving thousands of women and girls from the community, which practices an ancient form of religion that combines elements of Zoroastrianism and ancient Mesopotamian religions.

The United States announced in October 2019 that Baghdadi had been killed during a raid by its special forces in northwestern Syria, five years after he declared himself “caliph” of the territories controlled by the group in Iraq and Syria. Iraqi authorities have executed dozens of people convicted of belonging to the jihadist group in recent years.