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In 2014, the Islamic State took over the region in northern Iraq 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, âpurchasedâ the child and her mother as household âslavesâ when they lived in ISIS-occupied Fallujah, Iraq, in 2015. After the child became ill and wet her mattress, Wenischâs husband chained her outside their home as punishment and let the child die of thirst in the desert heat. The childâs mother, who was forced to witness her death, was the trialâs main witness, testifying for over 11 days.
The prosecutor had recommended that Wenisch be imprisoned for life. However, the court found that the accused only had a limited ability to end the enslavement of the woman and her child. Wenischâs husband, Taha al-Jumailly, is also on trial in Frankfurt.
The case is being tried in Germany because its legal system incorporates parts of the principle of universal jurisdiction. Under this legal principle, some crimes â such as such as genocide and war crimes â are so grave that the normal territorial restraints on prosecutions do not apply.
As part of what is known as âstructural investigations,â German authorities have been investigating war crimes against the Yazidi minority in Iraq and Syria for years. Two other trials involving the enslavement of Yazidi women and children are ongoing in Hamburg and Düsseldorf.
In response to a parliamentarian request last year, the government confirmed that 22 German nationals that âhave a connection to ISIS or another terrorist organization,â including 19 children and three women, have returned to Germany with help of the German authorities so far.
Over a hundred German citizens who left the country to join ISIS or other terrorist organizations remain in prison camps in Syria and Iraq. They have petitioned the German courts to receive permission to return.
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