Iraqi court sentences widow of IS leader al-Baghdadi to death | ISIL/ISIS news

The woman was accused of collaborating with IS and holding kidnapped Yazidi women captive in her home in Mosul.

An Iraqi court has sentenced the widow of late ISIL (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to death for her role in the armed group and the imprisonment of Yazidi women, the judiciary announced.

The court in western Baghdad imposed the sentence against the detained woman on the basis of Iraq’s anti-terrorism law, according to a statement by Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council on Wednesday.

She was accused of collaborating with IS and using her house in Mosul to hold kidnapped Yazidi women who were later captured by IS fighters in Sinjar, northern Iraq.

The court did not name the defendant, but a judicial official quoted by AFP news agency identified her as Asma Mohamed.

She was sentenced to “death by hanging,” a court official told Reuters, adding that the verdict still had to be confirmed by an Iraqi appeals court to become final and applicable.

The charges against al-Baghdadi’s wife came nearly five years after US special forces killed the leader of IS, who had established a self-proclaimed “caliphate” in large parts of Iraq and Syria.

During al-Baghdadi’s lightning advance through northern Iraq in 2014, the Yazidis were persecuted. IS fighters systematically killed thousands of their men and forced Yazidi women into sexual slavery.

More than a decade later, members of the minority are still struggling to recover from IS attacks. More than 200,000 of them have been displaced, according to a report by Refugees International and Voice of Yazidis. Few have received reparations or compensation.

Since ISIS was driven out of all areas under its control in Iraq in 2017, Iraqi courts have handed down hundreds of death sentences and life sentences to people convicted of membership in a “terrorist organization,” including more than 500 foreign men and women found guilty of joining ISIS.

In February, Iraq announced that it had secured the return of some members of al-Baghdadi’s family detained in Turkey.

Al-Baghdadi was known to have had four wives. More than a week after his death in 2019, Turkey announced that it had arrested one of his wives and other family members.