An Iraqi court has sentenced a widow of late ISIL (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to death for her role in the armed group and for detaining Yazidi women, the judiciary has announced.
The court in west Baghdad handed down the sentence to the woman, who is in custody, under Iraq’s anti-terrorism law, according to a statement on Wednesday from Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council.
She was accused of collaborating with ISIL and using her home in Mosul to hold kidnapped Yazidi women who were later taken captive by ISIL fighters in Sinjar in northern Iraq.
The court did not name the accused woman, but a judicial official cited by the AFP news agency identified her as Asma Mohamed.
She was sentenced to “death by hanging”, a court official told the Reuters news agency, adding that the ruling must be ratified by an Iraqi appeals court to become final and applicable.
The charges against al-Baghdadi’s wife come nearly five years after United States special forces killed the ISIL leader, who had built a self-declared “caliphate” across vast swaths of Iraq and Syria.
Credit: aljazeera.com
