Iraq condemns six Turkish women to death for ISIL membership: Judiciary

BAGHDAD – Agence France-Presse

A Baghdad court on April 2 sentenced six Turkish women to death and a seventh to life in prison for membership of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a judicial source said.

The source told AFP that the women, all accompanied by small children in the court, had surrendered to Kurdish peshmerga after having fled Tal Afar, one of the last ISIL bastions to fall to Iraqi security forces last year.

The women told the court they had entered the country to join their husbands fighting for IS in the “caliphate,” which the group declared in 2014 in territory straddling Iraq and Syria.

Iraq in February condemned another 15 Turkish women to death on the same charge.

Since January, a German woman and a woman from Turkey have also been handed the death penalty, in rulings which Human Rights Watch (HRW) has condemned as “unfair.”

Experts estimate that a total of 20,000 people are being held in jail in Iraq for alleged membership of ISIL. There is no official figure.

Iraq has detained at least 560 women, as well as 600 children, identified as jihadist or relatives of suspected IS fighters.