As a high school student, she is said to have become radicalized, becoming a member of the terrorist organization Islamic State (IS) in 2014 and the wife of an IS fighter. Charges have now been brought. The case is reminiscent of another young mother.
Naumburg (dpa/sa) - The public prosecutor's office in Saxony-Anhalt has brought charges against a suspected IS member. The 23-year-old woman appears suspicious enough to have participated in two cases as a member of the terrorist organization Islamic State (IS), said a spokesman for the Attorney General's Office on Friday. The charges were brought before the State Security Senate of the Naumburg Higher Regional Court (OLG). It is still unclear when a trial before the OLG against the young woman will begin. The spokesman for the Attorney General's Office said it first had to decide whether to admit the charges.
The accused is accused of having radicalized in 2014, as a tenth-grade student at a high school. At that time, she had made the decision to go to the dominion of the terrorist organization Islamic State in order to join it and to participate in the establishment of a religious fundamentalist state according to Sharia rules.
The high school student first traveled to Turkey, from there to IS territory in Syria, married a German-Tunisian IS fighter and had three children. According to the spokesman, the accused has two citizenships - including German. According to the indictment, she represented the ideologies of the IS, even after her arrest by Kurdish militias in 2019, and later indoctrinated her children with the ideas.
According to the findings of the investigators, the accused always had access to weapons of war, supported her husband in working for the terrorist organization, strengthened its military clout and strengthened its internal cohesion. She consciously raised her children in line with the IS ideology. The couple received financial support from the terrorist militia.
The woman was taken back to Germany with her children by officers from the Federal Criminal Police Office in March and arrested on arrival. She has been in custody ever since. The case shows certain parallels to another case from Saxony-Anhalt. A 15-year-old had also become radicalized, made her way to Syria via Turkey and joined IS there. She also married a suspected terrorist militia fighter.
After her return to Germany, the mother of two was given a suspended sentence by the Naumburg Higher Regional Court in May of this year. The trial against the 22-year-old took place in the justice center behind closed doors. The reason: the accused was a young person at the time of the alleged crimes.
In the verdict, the State Protection Chamber considered membership in a foreign terrorist organization and a violation of the Weapons Act and the War Weapons Control Act to be proven. The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office and the defendants' lawyers appealed the verdict to the Federal Court of Justice (BGH).
