Shortly after the wedding in spring 2015, Jennifer W. informed her husband that it was out of the question for her to run the household in Fallujah alone in Iraq in the future.

She didn't have to.

Because Jennifer W., in her early twenties, without vocational training and coming from Lohne in Lower Saxony, from then on had two slaves available that her husband, a member of the terrorist organization "Islamic State" (IS), had previously bought.

The two Yazidis, a five-year-old girl and his mother, were among the innumerable women of this religious community who had been kidnapped by IS fighters from their home villages, sold in markets, systematically raped, beaten or exploited.

Karin Truscheit

Editor in the section “Germany and the World”.

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In the house of W. and her husband, the two Yazidis had to do work orders that W. gave: cleaning, washing, washing up.

W., the presiding judge stated on Monday in the grounds of the verdict, had often complained to her husband about the "slaves".

The mother did "poor" work, the child ran too often into her bedroom and "annoyed", according to W. It also cried a lot.

W's husband regularly punished the two Yazidis, punched the mother in the face and hit the girl on the head so hard that she had to spend several days in bed.

One of these punitive actions resulted in the death of the child in the summer of 2015 - and led Jennifer W. to appear before the Munich Higher Regional Court for around two and a half years, including for murder.

The little girl wet her bed at night because of an illness.

As a result, W's husband, as the court sees it, tied the child to a window in the scorching heat in the courtyard of the house - the temperature in Fallujah at that time was at least 43 degrees.

He had tied the girl to a window with an electric cable or rope so that she was hanging from the grille, facing the sun, without being able to touch the ground with her feet and support herself.

During the taking of evidence, the child's mother had testified in court that her daughter had always called “Mama”, “Mama”.

In turn, she called out that she couldn't help her because she was so afraid of the man.

Finally the child fell silent.

"Arrived home"

According to the court, Jennifer W. initially did not notice anything about the handcuffing of the child. When she noticed "after a while" in the courtyard, she said to her husband that the girl "will die" if you don't untie her. But he left the child hanging. It may well be punished with death, he said. Jennifer W. did not release it either. When the man finally untied the girl and brought her to the hospital, she was already unconscious, possibly dead, according to the court. The child died in the hospital at the latest. In a statement in court, Jennifer W. had stated that she did not dare to free the child herself. If she had taken sides for the mother and the child, her husband would have insulted her and locked her up, the defendant said.

Jennifer W., now 30 years old, who was dressed in black in the dock on Monday, converted to Islam at the age of 21.

According to the court, she dealt “intensively” with ISIS and other terrorist organizations at the time.

In 2014 she finally made the decision to join the IS: In August of that year she was smuggled to Syria and was initially housed in women's shelters.

She wrote to her mother that she now feels “at home”, that she has “arrived”.