Sven Hoppe/dpa via AP
- A 5-year-old Yazidi girl and her mother were enslaved by an ISIS couple in 2015, CNN reported.
- The husband left the girl to die in the heat as punishment for wetting the bed.
- His wife did not intervene and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in Germany for the girl's death.
A German woman who joined ISIS in 2015 and later married a fighter has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for the death of a five-year-old enslaved Yazidi girl, several outlets reported.
Lawyers only identified the woman as Jennifer W. and said she's "believed to be the first ISIS member who was put on trial anywhere in the world for international crimes committed against Yazidi victims," CNN reported.
The Washington Post identified the defendant as Jennifer Wenisch. She was found guilty of "crimes against humanity and attempted war crimes," by a court in Munich, The Wall Street Journal reported.
In court, the mother of the child, a Yazidi woman testified that Wenisch, 30, and her husband, Taha al-Jumailly, enslaved her and her daughter for several months in 2015 in Fallujah, Iraq, the Post reported.
The Post reported that around 7,000 Yazidi women and children were enslaved when ISIS took over Northern Iraq in 2014. The Yazidis are a religious and ethnic minority that mostly live in northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey, and northern Syria, and were heavily targetted by ISIS who falsely believed they were "devil worshippers," the BBC reported.
The mother said Wenisch did not intervene when her husband left the young girl outside to die of thirst in the heat as punishment for wetting the bed, the Journal reported. She witnessed her death.
"The child began to wet the bed from August 2015 ... when it happened again, the husband tied the child with a leash and left her in the blazing sun in the yard. When Jennifer W. found the child like this, she told her husband that he had to do something, otherwise the child would die. However, she did nothing to save the child," Florian Gliwitzky, a spokesperson for The Higher Regional Court in Munich, told CNN.
Prosecutors wanted to pursue a life sentence but the court said Wenisch had "limited possibilities" to intervene on behalf of the girl and mother, the Post reported.
"I am grateful to the German prosecutors for bringing this case and I hope that we will see a more concerted global effort to bring ISIS to justice," Amal Clooney, one of the mother's lawyers, said in a statement to the Journal.
Al-Jumailly is being tried in a separate case in Frankfurt, CNN reported.