ISIS supporters in court: life imprisonment demanded after death of five-year-old Yazidi

Does this look like a genocide? This is a naive and legally completely meaningless question, and yet it will probably go through the minds of most of those who see Taha Al J. in the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court. A slim young man in a sports jacket, long black hair combed back to the back of his neck. Supported on a crutch, he limps through the hall to the dock, attentively following the almost three-and-a-half-hour plea of the Federal prosecutor's office, which two interpreters translate for him. He eagerly takes notes, talks excitedly gesticulating in the breaks of the session.

The 31-year-old Iraqi is said to be responsible for the death of a five-year-old Yazidi woman as a member of the so-called "Islamic State" (IS), that is the central accusation of the prosecution. He is said to have previously bought and exploited the girl and her mother as slaves, he is said to have abused them both and forced them to practice Islamic religious practices, and he is said to have tied the child, who had become wet, to a window grille in the courtyard of his house for "punishment".

Apply the universal law principle

With well over 40 degrees in the blazing sun, the girl is said to have died of a heat stroke during or after the one-hour ordeal. The process is considered groundbreaking. This is not due to the cruelty of the alleged act, but to the fundamental question of whether the universal principle of justice can be upheld.

It is about whether crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes will be punished globally. Chief Prosecutor Anna Zabeck, who gave the closing speech of the prosecution on Monday, referred in advance to the importance that goes beyond the specific procedure. It is a "signal on a national and international level".

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According to the will of the Federal Prosecutor's Office, Taha Al J. is to be sentenced to life imprisonment under the International Criminal Code. In addition, the prosecution demands to establish the special gravity of the guilt. The fact that the Iraqi is on trial in Frankfurt is due to the fact that he was arrested in Athens on the basis of an international arrest warrant and extradited to Germany.

But it is also indirectly related to the fact that he was married to a German Islamist, who put the investigators on his trail. Jennifer W. also testified as a witness in the Frankfurt proceedings, in a separate trial, the Higher Regional Court of Munich sentenced her to a ten-year prison sentence in October.

The court was convinced that the thirty-year-old girl did nothing about the mistreatment of the Yazidi girl. Jennifer W. and her future husband, who could be called Abu Muawia in the IS terrorist system, had met in 2015 in a Syrian women's shelter, where Taha Al J. worked for the terrorist militia as a "spiritual healer".