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- A district court in Munich reopened the trial and increased the sentence to 13 years, a court spokeswoman told AFP
FRANKFURT, Germany: A Munich court on Tuesday increased the jail term to 14 years for a German woman who joined the Daesh group and let a five-year-old Yazidi “slave” girl die of thirst.
Jennifer Wenisch, then aged 30, was sentenced in 2021 to 10 years in prison for “crimes against humanity in the form of enslavement” and membership of a terrorist organization.
But prosecutors in Munich requested a retrial, arguing the sentence handed down for the first of the two charges — nine years — was insufficient.
A district court in Munich reopened the trial and increased the sentence to 13 years, a court spokeswoman told AFP.
The verdict for membership of a terrorist organization remained unchanged at one year, bringing the total term to 14.
Wenisch, from Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany, left her homeland in August 2014 and traveled via Turkiye and Syria to Iraq, where she joined the jihadist group.
Her then husband — Iraqi Taha Al-Jumailly — purchased the Yazidi child and her mother as household “slaves,” whom they held captive while living in then Daesh-occupied Mosul, Iraq, in 2015.
The Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking group hailing from northern Iraq, have for years been persecuted by Daesh militants who have killed hundreds of men, raped women and forcibly recruited children as fighters.
When the girl wet her bed, the husband chained her up outside as punishment and let the child die in the heat, according to prosecutors.
Wenisch allowed her husband to do so and did nothing to save the girl, they said.
In November 2021, Jumailly was sentenced to life imprisonment by a Frankfurt court for a string of offenses including genocide against the Yazidis, as well as crimes against humanity resulting in death.