Iraq sentences widow of former Daesh leader to death over role in group's crimes

Iraq hands death sentence to Daesh leader's wife

One of the wives of slain Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi has been sentenced to death for holding enslaved Yazidi women captive by Iraqi court. Identified as Asma Mohammed, she was detained by Turkiye in 2018 and extradited to… pic.twitter.com/z2zsVgxqiM

— Middle East Monitor (@MiddleEastMnt) July 11, 2024

Iraq has sentenced the widow of the former leader of Daesh to death over her alleged participation in crimes against humanity.

According to Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council today, the Al-Karkh Criminal Court in the capital, Baghdad, found Umm Hudaifa – the wife of deceased former Daesh leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi – guilty of working and participating with the terror group in detaining Yazidi women.

Despite her insistence in an interview last month that she did not actively take part in Daesh’s crimes against humanity and that she, instead, tried to unsuccessfully escape from the group, had confronted her husband about the murder of “innocent people”, and that Daesh’s atrocities in Syria and Iraq had “crossed the line of humanity”.

Members of the Yazidi community had countered her comments, however, testifying that she had intentionally detained Yazidi women and girls at her home during the terror group’s rule and prevalence, actively participating in its crimes.

In a statement by the Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council’s media centre, it announced the ruling that she “detained some Yazidi women in her house, and ISIS [Daesh] gangs subsequently kidnapped them in Sinjar district, west of Nineveh governorate.”

READ: Daesh leader Al-Baghdadi grew extreme after ‘sexual torture’ under US detention in Iraq – his widow claims