Wife of ISIS Leader al-Baghdadi Is Sentenced to Death in Iraq
A court in Iraq has sentenced to death one of the wives of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the slain Islamic State leader, for involvement in crimes against the Yazidi religious minority, the country’s judiciary said on Wednesday.
Ten years after the Islamic State massacred entire Yazidi communities, Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said that one of Mr. al-Baghdadi’s wives had been found guilty of working with the Islamic State, or ISIS, to kidnap and detain Yazidi women.
While the council did not name her, a senior Iraqi official identified the woman as Asma Mohammed, Mr. al-Baghdadi’s first wife.
When ISIS captured about one-third of Iraq and large swaths of territory in neighboring Syria in 2014, the terrorist group’s fighters swept through the Sinjar region of northern Iraq, the Yazidis’ ancestral home, killing more than 10,000 members of the religious minority and capturing 6,000 others in a campaign that the United Nations has deemed a genocide.
Ms. Mohammed was captured several years ago by Turkish forces in a part of Syria controlled by Turkey and transferred to Iraqi custody in January, according to the Iraqi official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.
Her adult daughter and another of Mr. al-Baghdadi’s wives were tried with her. Both women, the official said, were sentenced to life in prison for their roles in ISIS.
For years, human rights advocates have been pushing for greater accountability for the crimes committed by ISIS fighters, who sexually enslaved and held captive many Yazidi women and girls. At least 2,700 Yazidis are still missing, according to the United Nations.
But ensuring accountability for the women involved in the Islamic State can be challenging because there exists variance in agency and complicity along gendered lines, experts say.
“Many women bought into this ideology and helped to perpetuate the crimes of the Islamic State, even while simultaneously being victimized by the group and its ideology,” said Devorah Margolin, the Blumenstein-Rosenbloom Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and an expert in terrorism governance.
Most women affiliated with ISIS lived a largely cloistered life, sequestered in domestic and private spaces, but some women, such as those in the all-female morality brigades, actively participated in human rights violations, said Sarah Sanbar, an Iraq researcher for Human Rights Watch.
“It’s not quite accurate to say women were completely devoid of agency under the Islamic State because there were situations where women were contributing to and participating in crimes,” Ms. Sanbar said.
Experts say Iraq has a track record of charging people who were allegedly part of ISIS with crimes of affiliation instead of charging them with specific crimes. This is particularly concerning when coupled with the death sentence, they say, which Iraq has a long history of handing down without appropriate evidence or due process.
“Generally, the judiciary is sometimes failing to make a distinction between someone who was forced to cook for Islamic State fighters versus someone who was affiliated in a high-ranking, decision-making role who has committed grave violations,” Ms. Sanbar said.
The secretive nature of the trial also drew criticism.
“This is one of the highest-level Islamic State wives. There are still people who minimize the genocide. To counter extremism, to counter future genocide, we need this information on public record,” said Natia Navrouzov, the executive director of Yazda, a U.S.-based nonprofit that advocates services for Yazidis and other survivors of Islamic State genocide.
Mr. al-Baghdadi is believed to have had four wives, although it is unclear how many are still alive. He was also believed to have held sex slaves, including Kayla Mueller, a 26-year-old humanitarian worker from Arizona who was later killed.
The ISIS commander died in 2019, when he detonated a suicide vest after United States Special Operations forces cornered him in a tunnel in northwestern Syria.
Like many Yazidis, Haji Hameed Talo, 59, is still searching for his seven children who disappeared a decade ago. When he heard that Ms. Mohammed was on trial, he traveled from his home in a refugee camp in the Shekhan district, near the Syrian border, to Baghdad, where he hoped to learn what had happened to his children, he said in an interview.
Officials told him that during questioning, Ms. Mohammed had listed the names of some of the enslaved women and girls kept in her house. One of them was Reham Talo, Mr. Talo’s daughter, who was 11 when she was kidnapped by ISIS fighters in 2014.
The girl was held in the al-Baghdadi household for three months before being moved to an unknown location, officials told him.
“I do not know her fate, but today I am very happy with the news,” Mr. Talo said about the conviction of Mr. al-Baghdadi’s wife. “Soon, I will see her on the gallows.”
Falih Hassan contributed reporting.
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