Court proceedings have begun in Germany against a woman who stands accused of crimes against humanity, membership of a terrorist organization, and the enslavement of a 13-year-old Yezidi girl.
The case against Omaima Abdi, a German-Tunisian, came to court after she was tracked down by a Lebanese journalist, Jenan Moussa.
Abdi is the wife of Dennis Cuspert – one of Germany’s most notorious ISIS jihadists – whom she married while in Syria.
The mother-of-three returned to Europe in 2016 and worked in Hamburg for three years before she was arrested.
According to public prosecutor Helmut Grauer, Abdi created online propaganda for the terror group.
Abdi came to the attention of authorities after Lebanese journalist Jenan Moussa gained access to her phone, which was found to contain thousands of ISIS-related files and photographic evidence of Abdi’s life in the former caliphate.
In some of the photographs her children can be seen holding weapons.
“She taught her children the ideologies of the organization,” Grauer told.
The trial is one of several underway against ISIS women accused of holding Yezidi slaves in Iraq and Syria.
Earlier this month, proceedings began in Frankfurt against a 27-year-old woman – known as Jennifer. W – who let a Yezidi child die of thirst in 2015.
Human rights organizations have pushed for female ISIS members, often known as “ISIS brides”, to be recognized as an important and active part of the terror organization.
“ISIS women were fully complicit in the torture of Yezidi women and the enabling of their rape by ISIS fighters… these women are therefore far from innocent,” Pari Ibrahim, executive director of the Free Yezidi Foundation, said in 2019.
Second ISIS wife on trial in Germany
