- Polygamist Baghdadi’s wife arrested in Türkiye and returned to Iraq
An Iraqi court has sentenced the wife of slain Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to death on charges of detaining Yazidi women, the judiciary said Wednesday.
The wife of polygamist Baghdadi has been returned to Iraq after being detained in Turkey, judicial sources said.
“The criminal court in Karkh (west of Baghdad) sentenced the wife of terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to death for the crime of working with the Daesh terrorist group and detaining Yazidi women in her home,” the Supreme Judicial Council said on its website, using an Arabic acronym for IS.
The wife of the slain leader detained the Yazidis who were “later kidnapped” by IS fighters in the Sinjar district in northern Iraq, he added.
A judicial source identified her as Asma Mohammed.
The late leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, appears in an undated photograph
Washington announced in October 2019 that US troops had killed Baghdadi in an operation in northwestern Syria, five years after he proclaimed a “caliphate” in swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq.
During their lightning advance across northern Iraq in 2014, ISIS Islamic extremists targeted non-Muslim Yazidis, systematically killing thousands of men and forcing women into sexual slavery.
Over the years, Iraqi courts have handed down hundreds of death sentences and life sentences under the penal code for membership of a “terrorist group.”
Among those convicted in Iraq were more than 500 foreign men and women found guilty of joining IS.
Iraq announced in February that it had secured “the repatriation of Baghdadi’s family,” and a judicial source said that Baghdadi’s wife, “detained in Turkey,” had been returned along with their children.
The announcement coincided with the broadcast of an interview with “Baghdadi’s wife” on the Saudi-owned pan-Arab television channel Al Arabiya, in which Asma Mohammed was mentioned.
In November 2019, Turkey claimed to have arrested Baghdadi’s wife, whom Turkish media identified as Asma Fawzi Mohammed Al-Qubaysi, in June 2018.
U.S.-backed forces defeated IS in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, but remnants of the group continue to attack civilians and security personnel in both countries.