A German ISIS member who was given a 10-year prison term for her part in the death of a five-year-old Yazidi slave has been ordered to have a new sentencing hearing, according to Germany’s highest court. The young Yazidi girl and her mother were bought by Wenisch and her ex-husband, an ISIS warrior, as domestic slaves.
Wenisch was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2021, but the German public prosecution thought the sentence was too light.
The 31-year-old defendant, who is initially from Lohne in Lower Saxony, may now receive a more severe punishment.
In October 2021, Wenisch identified as Jennifer W in court, was found guilty on two counts of crimes against humanity through enslavement, one of which resulted in death.
She was also found guilty of being an accessory to attempted murder and belonging to an international terrorist group.
Wenisch was charged with permitting a young Yazidi girl who was a house slave and had been chained up in a courtyard by her husband to perish from thirst.
Her ex-husband, an Iraqi national, received a life term after being found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and bodily harm that resulted in death.
The girl’s mother, who made it out of prison, gave testimony in both cases.
Wenisch joined an ISIS in the middle of 2015 after converting to Islam and joined the extremist group’s self-styled hisbah morality police.
Part of her job to enforce strict ISIS rules regarding dress code, public behaviour, and prohibitions on alcohol and tobacco.
She patrolled parks in IS-occupied Fallujah and Mosul carrying an AK-47 assault rifle, a pistol, and an explosives vest.
Wenisch went to the German embassy in Ankara in January 2016 to request fresh identification documents.
She was detained on leaving the mission and subsequently extradited to Germany.
Her original trial started in April 2019 and is one of the first examples of court proceedings concerning the Islamic State group’s brutal treatment of Yazidis.
Beginning in 2015, jihadists particularly targeted and oppressed the Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking group from northern Iraq.
Among the legal team supporting the mother of a Yazidi girl was Amal Clooney, the world-renowned human rights attorney based in London.
Ms Clooney has been leading a global campaign to label ISIS’s atrocities against the Yazidi people as “genocide”.