German IS returnee hardly admits allegations
Created: 03/09/2022Updated: 03/09/2022, 17:30
A sign in front of the Higher Regional Court in Celle.
© Moritz Frankenberg/dpa
A German from Osnabrück is said to have joined the Islamic State terrorist militia in 2014.
On the first day of the hearing in the Higher Regional Court of Celle, the woman is largely clueless.
Celle – Because she joined the Islamic State (IS) terrorist militia and is said to have taken her little daughter to a stoning in Syria, among other things, a 33-year-old has had to answer to the Celle Higher Regional Court (OLG) since Wednesday.
The federal prosecutor accuses the German of seven criminal offenses, including membership in a foreign terrorist organization and crimes against humanity.
According to the indictment, she participated in the enslavement of the Yazidi population.
On the first day of the hearing, the woman described how it came about that she left Frankfurt for the war zone at the end of 2014 together with her four-year-old daughter and a 16-year-old girl.
According to her own account, she was not a radicalized Islamist, but believed everything that a man she met online in early 2014 told her.
"He suggested I come to Syria, he would take care of me." At times there were 200 German women in a WhatsApp group who had toyed with the idea of traveling to Syria.
The 33-year-old denied that the prosecution had recruited other women for IS.
She just didn't want to travel alone, so she teamed up with the youngster.
She didn't know at the time that her Facebook friend was something like the IS media manager.
He told her about humanitarian aid.
Jesidin as joint plaintiff
According to the indictment, the woman, who was born in Mülheim an der Ruhr, married several IS members in Syria according to Islamic rites and enabled them to fight by running the household.
For a few days she is said to have economically exploited a Jesidin enslaved by IS in the house of a slave trader in Raqqa.
The Jesidin appears in the proceedings as a joint plaintiff.
"I didn't know that they were all slaves," said the 33-year-old about this allegation.
She is one of the IS returnees who were brought to Germany with their children at the beginning of October in a plane chartered by the federal government.
After her capture in 2019, she lived in two Kurdish refugee camps.
The woman from Osnabrück was arrested at Frankfurt Airport when she entered the country and has been in custody since then.
The presiding judge Frank Rosenow confronted the accused with audio files and a video of her little daughter that was sent to the grandmother in Germany at the end of 2016.
"Come here, there's nothing here," says the little one inside.
In the summer of 2016, the alleged IS supporter had expressed her approval of the terrorist attacks in Nice and Würzburg in Twitter messages.
"That doesn't give the impression that you didn't want anything to do with the matter and were completely clueless," Rosenow said to the accused, who admitted that the news was "not correct".
more on the subject
Possible IS terrorist: Child taken to stoning
Alleged IS terrorist from Lower Saxony in court
Witness: Alleged triple killer was a broken man
She is said to have told a witness that one of her husbands was a martyr and that she was looking for a new man to be proud of - "a fighter".
The woman said in court that she had to talk like this because she was afraid that her children would be taken away from her.
She was beaten by her husband.
With tears, she described that she lost one of her twin babies after ten days in 2016.
The boy had previously come to a clinic with breathing problems.
"No one could explain to me what he died of." dpa