IS returnee Nurten J. from Leverkusen has been sentenced to four years and three months in prison. The Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court on Wednesday found the 35-year-old woman guilty not only of being a terrorist, but also of war crimes against property, possession of war weapons, breach of duty of care and aiding and abetting crimes against humanity. Federal prosecutors had asked for four years and eight months in prison, while her legal counsel had asked for three and a half years. The woman had made a partial confession.  

Nurten J. had left for northern Syria in February 2015 with her then three-year-old daughter to join the terrorist organization "Islamic State" (IS). Through a "marriage institute" in Raqqa, the former capital of the self-proclaimed IS caliphate, she married the jihadist Ismael S. from Husum, who had also left Germany, and settled with her family in an apartment seized by IS. According to the indictment, Nurten J., who has since joined IS, was always armed and abused the labor of an enslaved Yazidi woman at least 50 times between 2016 and 2017. The Yazidi woman had previously been abducted from the Shengal (Sinjar) region during the IS genocide in August 2014 and sold as a slave to a friend of Nurten J. She had testified as a witness in the trial.

After the IS territorial rule was crushed, Nurten J. fell into captivity with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the spring of 2019. She then traveled to Turkey, from where she was deported to Germany last July. It is unknown how she got to Turkey. She presumably escaped from the Hol detention camp in the northeastern Syrian town of Hesekê. In the meantime, she has credibly distanced herself from the terrorist militia, the court found.