Jihadist who left child to die of thirst sentenced to ten years in prison
Jennifer Wenisch, a jihadist of German origin, has been sentenced to 10 years for a crime committed in Iraq. The prosecution had charged her two and a half years ago, when the trial began, with manslaughter for the murder of a minor.
The Munich Regional Court heard the verdict and the charges against her. In 2015, Wenisch was living in Iraq with her husband, and both belonged to Daesh. At that time, residing west of Baghdad, they had bought a five-year-old girl and her mother, who believed in the Yazidi religion, as slaves. Throughout the time they belonged to the family of jihadists, the mother was mistreated by Wenisch's partner from the moment she arrived at the house, according to the court statement in which the girl's mother was present. One day, the man named Taha Al. J, who is being tried for the same act in a Frankfurt court, found that the child had wet the bed during the night, so he punished her by tying her up and leaving her in a courtyard in the 45-degree sun. The child died of thirst due to the conditions. According to the court, the convicted woman could have prevented the acts, but she herself testified that she could not face the man she married and that it was impossible for her to untie the child. Although the judges claim that she did not do so because of her support for Daesh and the genocide they have committed against the Yazidis
The prosecution initially asked for life imprisonment for omission to commit murder, in addition to crimes such as war crimes, belonging to a terrorist organisation abroad and possession of weapons. Jennifer Wenisch was first arrested in Turkey as she left the German embassy in Ankara and was sent back to Germany, where she was released. But both the FBI and the German secret service had been after her for some time, because they knew she was trying to return to the Middle East, so she was arrested again in Germany when she tried to flee to the caliphate, Syria or Iraq in 2018. She tried to return by land, via Greece, and on her way, an undercover informant picked her up by car in Lower Saxony to take her to Bavaria, where the woman told everything she had done, and of course, it was all recorded and is a key piece in the trial.
According to the prosecutors in the case, Wenisch became part of Daesh in 2015, in the paramilitary part and in decision-making. She had travelled to Iraq in 2014 to marry her husband, who was already a member of the jihadist army. There, the now 30-year-old woman was part of the jihadists' moral police, patrolling at night to ensure that women in the area obeyed the dress and behavioural orders imposed by the regime.
Since 2014, Daesh has committed genocide against the Yazidi people and it continues. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recognised the crimes against this ethnic group in Iraq, and has warned that, since the jihadists took control, more than 3,200 women and children are under the hand of Daesh, with women being used as sex slaves and children being trained to be soldiers of the regime.
Several survivors, who have been able to escape, claim that children have been taken from their families, minors have been raped and sold into slavery; men were forced to either convert to the regime or die. In addition, children who were forced to become soldiers were made to watch beheadings and instructed to fight for Islam.
