Your trusted source

A German woman and former member of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) group was given on Monday a 10-year prison sentence by a Munich court for letting a Yazidi girl enslaved in Iraq die of thirst, Euronews reported.

The landmark case was one of the first trials in the world to prosecute a war crime against the Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking minority persecuted and enslaved by jihadists in Iraq and in Syria.

An estimated 10,000 Yazidi people were killed in northern Iraq in the mass atrocities. About 7,000 Yazidi women and girls, some as young as nine, were enslaved and forcibly transferred to locations in Iraq and eastern Syria.

Jennifer Wenisch, 30, accused of war crimes and murder, could have been given life imprisonment.

According to media reports, Wenisch converted to Islam in 2013 and joined IS in Iraq the following year.

She was recruited in 2015 by IS morality police, patrolling the streets of Fallujah and Mosul to ensure respect for the jihadist group's dress code and public behaviour.

German prosecutors say Wenisch and her IS husband "purchased" a Yazidi woman and her 5-year old child as household "slaves" in Mosul in 2015.

"After the girl fell ill and wet her mattress, the husband of the accused chained her up outside as punishment and let the child die an agonising death of thirst in the scorching heat," prosecutors said.

Wenisch's husband, Taha al-Jumailly, is also facing a separate trial in Frankfurt with a verdict due in late November.