German Isil bride goes on trial over killing of 5-year-old Yazidi girl

A German former Isil bride went on trial on Tuesday on charges of deliberately allowing a five-year-old Yazidi girl to die of thirst.

The 27-year-old woman, named only as Jennifer W under German privacy laws, is accused of “murder by omission” and a war crime over the death of the child in the Iraqi city of Mosul.

Prosecutors allege she kept the five-year-old girl as a household slave and stood by and did nothing when her husband chained the child outside in the sun as a punishment for wetting the bed.

The girl, who has not been named, died of acute thirst in temperatures believed to have been as high as 45C.

There are no pleas in the German legal system, and Jennifer W did not show any emotion as the charges against her were read out in the Munich courtroom.

In addition to the murder of the child, which prosecutors allege was a war crime, she is also accused of membership of a terrorist organisation.

Prosecutors allege that she was a member of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) morality police, which enforced strict sharia law, and patrolled public parks armed with a Kalashnikov.

She was arrested in Germany following a joint sting operation by German police and the American FBI after she allegedly admitted she was a former Isil bride to an FBI informant.

She allegedly travelled to Syria and Iraq in 2014 where she married an Isil fighter but returned to Germany in 2016 to give birth to a child. She was unhappy in Germany and told the FBI informant she wanted to get back to the Middle East.

The FBI passed this information to German police and a sting operation was set up in which the informant offered to help her return and picked her up in a car which had been fitted with a recording device.

As they drove, Jennifer W allegedly told the informant about the death of the child, saying she and her husband had obtained the girl and her mother as household slaves in Mosul, which was under Isil control at the time.

The girl’s death was a “step too far” even for Isil, who punished her husband, she allegedly said.

The informant then drove her to a pre-arranged ambush at a petrol station where police arrested her.

Prosecutors later tracked down the mother of the murdered girl, who has been named only as Nora B.

Amal Clooney is a member of the legal team representing Nora B, who is a co-plaintiff in the case under the German legal system. Ms Clooney was not in court on Tuesday.

The case continues.