The first wife of former Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been sentenced to death by an Iraqi court, Iraq's judiciary said.
According to the Supreme Judicial Council, the Karkh Criminal Court convicted the woman of “collaborating with an extremist organization and detaining Yazidi women.”
The Interior Ministry identified her as Asma Mohammed, also known as Umm Hudayfa.
Her lawyer would not comment on the matter, but in a recent interview with the BBC she denied any involvement in IS's atrocities or the kidnapping and enslavement of Yazidi women.
She married Baghdadi while he was overseeing his brutal rule over much of Iraq and neighboring Syria, home to about 8 million people.
In 2019, months after the group was defeated militarily in the region, U.S. forces raided Baghdadi’s hideout in northwestern Syria with several of his family members. When cornered in a tunnel, Baghdadi detonated an explosive vest, killing himself and two of his children, and two of his four wives were killed in the gunfight.
Umm Hudaifa was detained in southern Turkey in 2018 under an assumed name and was not there. She was extradited to Iraq in February this year and is being held there while authorities investigate her for terrorism-related crimes.
UN investigators said there was clear and compelling evidence that IS had committed genocide and numerous other international crimes against the Yazidi religious minority, and that members of the group were given an ultimatum to convert or be killed.
They said thousands of Yazidis had been killed, thousands more had been enslaved, and women and children had been kidnapped from their families and subjected to brutal abuse, including serial rape and other sexual violence.
UN investigators say IS committed war crimes, including murder and torture, during the 2014 massacre of about 1,700 unarmed, mainly Shiite Muslim cadets and personnel at the Camp Speiker military base in Iraq.
When asked by the BBC about the atrocities, Um Hudaipa said she challenged her husband to get “the blood of innocent people” on his hands.
She also said she was “ashamed” and “deeply sorry” for what happened to the Yazidi women and children, at least nine of whom were reportedly taken into her home as slaves.
Yazidis who were kidnapped and raped by IS members have filed a civil lawsuit in Iraq, accusing Umm Hudaifa of complicity in kidnapping and enslaving girls and women. She denies the accusations.
Iraqi courts have sentenced hundreds of men and women to death or life imprisonment in recent years for “membership in terrorist organizations.”
Human rights groups have argued that the charges are broad and vague, and that trials are often rushed and based on confessions extracted under torture.
