German ISIS bride sentenced to 14 years for torture, death of 5-year-old girl she enslaved

A German woman has been sentenced to 14 years in prison after joining the Islamic State (ISIS), in Iraq, in which she committed a horrific act of abuse that resulted in the death of a 5-year-old girl she had purchased as a slave.
 

Jennifer Wenisch, 32, of Lohne, Germany, has been charged with two counts of crimes against humanity through enslavement, with one of those cases resulting in death. Additional charges include being an accessory to attempted murder and membership in a terrorist organization abroad, according to Daily Mail.

Wenisch, who was recruited by the terrorist organization in mid-2015, married an ISIS fighter identified as Taha Al-J. The two had purchased both a young Yazidi girl and her mother to be household slaves. In August 2015, they made the 5-year-old girl die of thirst after tying her up in the scorching hot desert, which was the girl's punishment for having wet the bed.

According to prosecutors, Wenisch pointed a firearm at the mother's head and threatened to shoot her as she was crying over her daughter's abuse that led to her child's death, the outlet reports.

In 2016, Wenisch attempted to renew her identity documents at the German Embassy in Ankara when she was arrested and sent back to her home country of Germany.

Wenisch had submitted an appeal to the court arguing that her then-husband was the one responsible for the girl's death, but Germany's Federal Court of Justice threw out the appeal and convicted Wenisch in October 2021.

In November 2021, a Frankfurt court found her ex-husband, an Iraqi national, guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and bodily damage that resulted in death. He was sentenced to life in prison.

The dead girl's mother testified at both trials, according to the outlet.

Wenisch was recruited into the terrorist group's self-styled Hisbah morality police after she left Germany to join ISIS. She was outfitted with an AK-47 automatic rifle, a pistol, and an explosives vest while she patrolled the parks in the IS-controlled cities of Fallujah and Mosul, according to the outlet.

The group gave her the responsibility of enforcing ISIS's stringent dress codes, social norms, and prohibitions on alcohol and tobacco.

One of the first instances of legal proceedings relating to the Islamic State group's atrocious treatment of Yazidis was the start of Wenisch's initial trial in April 2019.  The Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking ethnic minority from northern Iraq, have been specifically targeted and persecuted by terrorists since 2015. 

Amal Clooney, a human rights attorney based in London who worked on a campaign to have ISIS' atrocities against the Yazidi community recognized as a "genocide," was a member of the team defending the mother of the Yazidi girl, according to The Mail. She is married to actor George Clooney.