This file image, released by the Department of Defense on October 30, 2019 and shown during a Pentagon briefing, shows an image of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. An Iraqi court has handed down a death sentence to one of the wives of late Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, alleging she was complicit in crimes against Yazidi women captured by the militant group. File | Photo credit: AP
An Iraqi court has sentenced the wife of slain Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to death on charges of detaining Yazidi women, the judiciary said on July 10.
The polygamist Baghdadi’s wife was returned to Iraq after her arrest in Turkiye, judicial sources said on the cover of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
“The criminal court of Karkh (West Baghdad) has sentenced the wife of terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to death for collaborating with the terrorist group Daesh and detaining Yazidi women in her home,” the Supreme Judicial Council said in its website. use of an Arabic acronym for IS.
The wife of the slain leader arrested the Yazidis who were “later abducted” by IS fighters in the Sinjar district of northern Iraq, it added.
A judicial source identified her as Asma Mohammed.
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Washington announced in October 2019 that US forces had killed Baghdadi during an operation in northwestern Syria, five years after he declared a “caliphate” in parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq.
During their meteoric advance through northern Iraq in 2014, IS Islamist extremists singled out non-Muslim Yazidis, systematically killing thousands of men and forcing women into sexual slavery.
In recent years, Iraqi courts have imposed hundreds of death sentences and life sentences under the Criminal Code for membership of “a terrorist group.”
Among those convicted in Iraq were more than 500 foreign men and women found guilty of joining IS.
Iraq announced in February that it had “secured the repatriation of the family” of Baghdadi, with a judicial source telling AFP that Baghdadi’s wife, “detained in Turkiye”, had been sent back along with her children.
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The announcement coincided with a broadcast of an interview with “Baghdadi’s wife” by Saudi Arabia’s pan-Arab TV channel. Al Arabiya. It called her Asma Mohammed.
In November 2019, Turkiye said it had arrested a woman of Baghdadi in June 2018, identified by Turkish media as Asma Fawzi Mohammed Al-Qubaysi.
US-backed forces defeated IS in Iraq in 2017, and in Syria two years later. But remnants of the group continue to attack civilians and security personnel in both countries.
