German woman given 14 years for death of Yezidi girl in retrial

A German woman has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for crimes against humanity for her involvement in the death of a 5-year-old Yezidi girl in Iraq in 2015, reported dpa.

The Munich Higher Regional Court charged the 32-year-old woman with enslavement resulting in death and accused her of acting out of contempt for humanity.

She faced a retrial in Munich after an appeals court ruled that a 10-year sentence handed to her in 2021 was too lenient.

The woman, named only as Jennifer W under German privacy law, had previously confessed to having stood idly by while the girl, enslaved by her and her husband, died from thirst in the heat.

The man had chained the girl in the blazing midday sun to punish her.

The Munich court criticized the woman's behaviour after the death of the child. She had held a gun to the mother's head to force her to stop crying.

The court also considered the serious psychological consequences from which the girl's mother suffers to this day as aggravating.

Jennifer W joined Islamic State at the age of 23, marrying in Syria at a time when the terrorist organization had occupied a large swath of eastern Syria and north-western Iraq.

Her former husband is serving a life sentence in Germany after being found guilty of genocide by a Frankfurt court.