Wife of Late ISIS Leader Sentenced to Death for Crimes Against Humanity, Terrorism

Illustration. (Wikimedia Commons/Joe Gratz)

JAKARTA - An Iraqi court has sentenced the wife of late Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to death for collaborating with the group and holding Yazidi women in her home, the judiciary said in a statement on Wednesday.

Iraq's Supreme Judicial Council said the Yazidi woman was kidnapped by the Islamic State group in Sinjar district, west of Nineveh Governorate, and then held captive in her home in Mosul. She is being held in Iraqi custody.

"The criminal court today sentenced Baghdadi's wife to death by hanging for crimes against humanity and genocide against the Yazidi people and also for contributing to acts of terrorism," a court official told Reuters on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The decision must be ratified by Iraq's appeals court to become final and enforceable, the official added.

While her name was not given, a court official told The National that her name was Asma Fawzi Mohammad, known as Umm Hudaifa.

Born in 1976 into a conservative Iraqi family, Umm Hudaifa married Al Baghdadi in 1999, she told the BBC in an interview aired in May. His real name was Ibrahim Awad Al Badri.

At the time, she was “religious but not an extremist conservative but open-minded” while studying Sharia at Baghdad University, she said.

She was arrested in 2018 in Turkey, a year after declaring the terrorists defeated in Iraq, and was sent back to Iraq in February this year, she said.

The widow later faced a case brought by Yazidi families, who accused her of colluding in the sexual slavery of kidnapped girls and women.

During the interview, she admitted that her son-in-law brought nine Yazidi girls and women to the house in August 2014. They ranged in age from nine to about 30.

She denied any involvement in IS’s brutal activities.

It is known that for centuries, the Yazidis, who follow an ancient monotheistic religion but are mistakenly considered by some to be devil worshipers, have lived in the mountains of northwestern Iraq where their ancestral villages, temples and shrines are located.

In August 2014, ISIS fanatics seized Sinjar and surrounding villages, capturing thousands of Yazidis and massacring others. Thousands of young women were forced into sex slavery by the militants while mass graves containing the bodies of thousands of those killed are still being exhumed.

Others fled to nearby Mount Sinjar, where many were flown to safety by US-backed Iraqi forces.