According to German prosecutors, Wenisch and her husband “purchased” the child and her mother as household “slaves” when they lived in the Islamic State-occupied Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2015. After the child became ill and wet her mattress, Wenisch’s husband chained her outside their home as punishment and let the child die of thirst in the desert heat.

October 25, 2021

A Munich court on Monday convicted a woman married to an Islamic State fighter for “crimes against humanity and attempted war crimes” in the aiding and abetting of the murder of a 5-year-old Yazidi girl, sentencing the woman to 10 years in prison, the Washington Post reports.

The court ruled that Jennifer Wenisch, a 30-year-old German citizen, did not intervene to stop the child’s dying of thirst in the desert heat of Iraq. The conviction is believed to be the first in the world related to the Islamic State’s persecution of the Yazidi community.

In 2014, the Islamic State terrorist group took over a region in northern Iraq that was home to the small Yazidi religious group, massacring thousands of Yazidi men and enslaving an estimated 7,000 women and children.

According to German prosecutors, Wenisch and her husband “purchased” the child and her mother as household “slaves” when they lived in the Islamic State-occupied Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2015. After the child became ill and wet her mattress, Wenisch’s husband chained her outside their home as punishment and let the child die of thirst in the desert heat. The child’s mother, who was forced to witness her death, was the trial’s main witness, testifying for over 11 days.

The prosecutor had recommended that Wenisch be imprisoned for life. However, the court found that she had only a limited ability to end the enslavement of the woman and her child. Wenisch’s husband, Taha al-Jumailly, is on trial in Frankfurt.

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