The German ISIS member Jennifer Wenisch has etched her name deeply in the memory of many Iraqis during the reign of ISIS, especially after the news spread of her killing a young Yazidi girl by leaving her without water or food under the scorching sun for years. Her name has resurfaced again, this time as a German court sentenced her today, Monday, to 10 years in prison for allowing a five-year-old girl to die of thirst in the blistering sun after she and her husband, a member of ISIS, enslaved her in Iraq.
In detail, the German judiciary issued its ruling against this 30-year-old German citizen from Lower Saxony after two and a half years of proceedings. Wenisch admitted in a Munich court that she traveled to Iraq to join her "brothers." She indicated that she participated for several months in armed patrols there as part of what is known as the "hisbah," or moral police of ISIS, in Fallujah and Mosul.
However, in the summer of 2015, she and her then-husband, Taha al-Jumaily, who is also currently on trial in Frankfurt for similar charges, bought a five-year-old girl and her mother from Yazidi captives to enslave them, according to the prosecution. After enduring various forms of torture, the girl was "punished" for wetting her bed by being tied to a window outside the house where she was held with her mother, in temperatures reaching fifty degrees Celsius. She later died of thirst, while her mother, Nora, was forced to serve the couple.
It is noteworthy that the German prosecution accused Wenisch of failing to intervene to stop her partner from doing so. When asked during the trial why she did not act, she stated that she was "afraid" he would "imprison her!" Meanwhile, her lawyers, like her husband's, hinted that the girl, who was later transferred to a hospital in Fallujah, might not have died, an assertion that cannot be verified. They requested a suspended sentence for their client, arguing that she only "supported" the organization.
However, Nora, the child's mother, who is currently in hiding in Germany, refuted that narrative, confirming her daughter's death after testifying against the couple in previous trials.
It should be noted that Turkish security forces brought Wenisch to Germany after detaining her in Ankara in January 2016. However, she was not arrested until June 2018 when she was apprehended while attempting to travel with her two-year-old daughter to areas still controlled by the organization in Syria. During this trip, she disclosed details of her life in Iraq to her driver, who was actually an informant for the FBI and driving a vehicle equipped with listening devices. The prosecution used these recordings to charge her.
