The first wife of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the late leader of the jihadist group Islamic State (IS), has been sentenced to death by an Iraqi court, the Iraqi judiciary said.
The Kach Criminal Court found the woman guilty of “collaborating with extremist groups and detaining Yazidi women,” according to the Supreme Judicial Council.
The Interior Ministry identified her as Asma Mohammed, also known as Umm Hudaifa.
Her lawyer had no comment, but In a recent interview with the BBC She denies any involvement in Islamic State atrocities or the abduction and enslavement of Yazidi women.
She was married to Baghdadi, who oversaw the group’s brutal rule over much of Iraq and neighboring Syria, a region of nearly eight million people.
In 2019, U.S. forces raided a hideout of Baghdadi and some of his family members in northwestern Syria, months after the group’s military defeat in the region. Al-Baghdadi detonated his explosive vest while cornered in a tunnel, killing himself and his two children, and two of his four wives were also killed in the shootout.
Umm Hudaifa is not there as she was detained in 2018 while living under a false name in southern Turkey. In February, she was extradited to Iraq and remanded in custody as authorities investigated whether she had committed terrorism-related offences.
UN investigators say they have clear and convincing evidence that Islamic State has committed genocide and numerous other international crimes against the Yazidi religious minority, and members of the minority have been given an ultimatum or Convert or die.
They found that thousands of Yazidis were killed, thousands more were enslaved, and women and children were abducted from their families and subjected to brutal abuse, including serial rape and other sexual violence.
U.N. investigators also say IS committed war crimes, including the 2014 massacre of about 1,700 unarmed cadets, mostly Shia Muslim cadets, and personnel from the Camp Spike military base in Iraq, which included murder and torture.
When asked by the BBC about such atrocities, Umm Hudaifa said she had questioned her husband, saying he had “the blood of innocent people” on his hands.
She also said she was “ashamed” and “very sorry” for the treatment of Yazidi women and children, at least nine of whom were allegedly bought into her family as slaves.
Yazidis kidnapped and raped by members of the Islamic State have filed a civil lawsuit in Iraq accusing Umm Hudaifa of conspiring to kidnap and sexually enslave girls and women. She denies the accusations.
In recent years, Iraqi courts have sentenced hundreds of men and women convicted of “membership of a terrorist organization” to death sentences and life imprisonment.
Rights groups say the charge is too broad and vague, and that trials are often rushed and based on confessions often obtained through torture.
