Feb 19, 2018
A Turkish woman was sentenced to death and 11 other foreign widows to life in jail by an Iraqi court, for their involvement with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).
The 12 women – 11 Turks and an Azeri, some of whom appeared at the court in Baghdad nursing infants – were convicted on Sunday, despite pleas they had been duped or forced by their husbands to join them in Iraq.
The women, aged between 20 and 50, were all arrested in Mosul or Tal Afar, where their husbands were killed as Iraqi forces recaptured the northern cities from ISIL last year.
Only the woman condemned to death, speaking through an interpreter, acknowledged she willingly travelled to Iraq with her husband and their children.
“We had to leave Turkey because my husband was a wanted man. I wanted to live in an Islamic state where sharia (Islamic law) is the law of the land,” she said.
But “I regret having come,” said the 48-year-old Turkish woman, whose husband and two sons were killed in air attacks.
Agency
