Iraq court sentences a widow of ISIL leader al-Baghdadi to death

An Iraqi court has sentenced a widow of late ISIL (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to death for her role in the armed group and for detaining Yazidi women, the judiciary has announced.

The court in west Baghdad handed down the sentence to the woman, who is in custody, under Iraq’s anti-terrorism law, according to a statement on Wednesday from Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council.

She was accused of collaborating with ISIL and using her home in Mosul to hold kidnapped Yazidi women who were later taken captive by ISIL fighters in Sinjar in northern Iraq.

The court did not name the accused woman, but a judicial official cited by the AFP news agency identified her as Asma Mohamed.

She was sentenced to “death by hanging”, a court official told the Reuters news agency, adding that the ruling must be ratified by an Iraqi appeals court to become final and applicable.

The charges against al-Baghdadi’s wife come nearly five years after United States special forces killed the ISIL leader, who had built a self-declared “caliphate” across vast swaths of Iraq and Syria.

Yazidis suffered persecution during al-Baghdadi’s lightning advance through northern Iraq in 2014. ISIL fighters systematically killed thousands of their men and forced Yazidi women into sexual slavery.More than 10 years on, members of the minority group are still struggling to recover from ISIL’s onslaught with more than 200,000 of them displaced, according to a report by Refugees International and Voice of Ezidis. Few have received reparations or compensation.