"The criminal court in Karh, west of Baghdad, sentenced the wife of terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to death for collaborating with the terrorist organisation ISIS and detaining Yazidi women in her home," the Supreme Judicial Council said in a statement on its website on Wednesday.

Judicial sources, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said that a wife of the polygamist Baghdadi had been brought back to Iraq after a period of detention in Turkey. A judicial source identified her as Esma Mohammed.

Al-Baghdadi was killed in October 2019 in an operation carried out by US troops in Idlib, five years after he declared a "caliphate" in Mosul. Idlib is controlled by gang groups linked to the occupying Turkish state.

In August 2014, ISIS launched genocidal attacks on Shengal, kidnapped thousands of Yazidi women and girls and reduced them to the status of slaves, selling them in markets. The fate of many Yazidi women and girls is still unknown. Thousands of people were massacred during the attacks, while hundreds of thousands were rescued as a result of the rapid intervention of the HPG and YPG.

Turkish media reported in November 2019 that Baghdadi's wife, identified as Esma Fawzi Mohammed al-Qubaysi, was arrested in June 2018.