Linda Wenzel | |
---|---|
Born | 2000 Saxony, Germany |
Nationality | German |
Other names | Linda W. |
Criminal charge(s) | Membership in Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant Illegal entry into Iraq |
Criminal penalty | 6 years imprisonment |
Criminal status | Incarcerated |
Spouse | Abu Usama al-Shisani (m. 2016;died 2016) |
Military career | |
Nickname(s) | Belle of Mosul |
Allegiance | ![]() |
Unit | Al-Khansaa Brigade |
Battles/wars | Battle of Mosul |
Linda Wenzel (born 2000), [1] [2] identified in Germany as Linda W., is a German-born Al-Khansaa Brigade member for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, who was captured by Iraqi troops during the Battle of Mosul, and was convicted of joining ISIL and entering Iraq illegally. [3] She was nicknamed the Belle of Mosul. [4]
Wenzel was born into a Christian family [1] and grew up in the small German town of Pulsnitz, near Dresden and the Czech border, sharing a house with her mother and step-father. Wenzel moved to Pulsnitz following her mother's divorce. She attended the local Ernst-Rietschel comprehensive school and was particularly interested in mathematics, chemistry, and physics. [5]
In the beginning of 2016 classmates of Wenzel noticed a change in her behavior, when Wenzel starting listening to Arabic music and asked the headmaster for permission to wear a headscarf at school. In the spring of 2016 Wenzel told her parents of her growing interest of Islam, but did not reveal that she had converted and had become a Muslim. During Ramadan, she told her family she was on a diet. Her parents accepted her interests, saying "we didn’t think anything of it, and even bought her a copy of the Qur'an". Wenzel had apparently been approached by Islamists online, who convinced her to convert. [5] However, according to the mayor of Pulsnitz, the school was aware of the conversion months before, and the school principal talked to the parents about it. [6] [7]
According to Wenzel, she was groomed online by a Jordanian teenager named Fatema who convinced her to convert to Islam and introduced her future husband, former ISIS fighter Abu Usama al-Shisani, whom she subsequently married via a phone conversation. [8]
On Friday 1 July 2016, she told her mother she would be back on the following Sunday at 4 o'clock, feigning spending the weekend at a friend's house. However, the friend knew nothing of Wenzel's whereabouts. Hidden under the mattress in her room police later found receipts for two tickets from Dresden to Frankfurt and from Frankfurt to Istanbul that were purchased with fake authorization from her mother's account and her mother's passport. [5]
Arriving in Syria, she married a Chechen fighter serving the Islamic State, [9] [10] after which she traveled to Syria and then onward to Mosul to fight for the Islamic State, apparently before the October 2016 start of the Battle of Mosul. [10] Her husband was killed in the beginning of the Battle of Mosul. [3] Some have speculated that she may have served as a sniper, [11] and was alleged to have admitted that she killed Iraqi soldiers. [12] During the siege of Mosul she suffered a gunshot wound to her left thigh, and an additional wound to her right knee from a helicopter attack. [13]
Wenzel was also believed to have been a member of the Al-Khansaa Brigade, which is responsible for enforcing the Islamic State's Islamic morality code, inflicting punishments such as whipping for Sharia violations such as women wearing makeup or failing to cover themselves in accordance to the Islamic State's standards. [14] [15] [1] [6]
On 18 July 2017, she was captured in Mosul by Iraqi troops along with four other German women. She had a malnourished baby boy, who is presumed to be her son, [12] with her at the time. [16] [17] Due to her inability to converse in Arabic, Iraqi troops had at first mistaken her for a Yazidi woman, despite having refused any help offered by the Iraqi army. [16] Footage of her capture, in which she was seen screaming and crying as she was being dragged by Iraqi forces, was disseminated a couple of weeks following her capture. [13]
On 15 December 2017, Wenzel was able to meet with her family in Baghdad while awaiting trial. [2] On 22 May 2018, Wenzel was sentenced to 5 years in prison. [18]
Wenzel and three other German women were formally charged by Iraqi authorities. Subsequently, German diplomats have attempted to avert death penalty charges and sentencing for Wenzel, and were reportedly confident in their ability to avert such a sentence while saying she would be expected to serve a long jail sentence. [19] However, Iraqi then-Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on 18 September 2017 that Wenzel may face the death penalty by hanging, as:
You know teenagers under certain laws, they are accountable for their actions especially if the act is a criminal activity when it amounts to killing innocent people. [3]
— Iraqi then-Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi
Wenzel has denied the charges against her saying that she was a housemaid. According to Wenzel, Islamic State authorities refused her requested return to Germany following the death of her husband, and provided her with a month's $200 widow's allowance. [8]
Under Iraqi law, Wenzel could have been sentenced to death; however the execution would not take place until she reached the age of 22. [19] The media reported on 18 February 2018 that she was sentenced to a prison term of 6 years, including five years for being an ISIL member and a year for entering Iraq illegally. [20] [21]
The Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and by its Arabic acronym Da'ish or Daesh, is a transnational militant Islamist terrorist group and former unrecognized quasi-state that follows the Salafi jihadist branch of Sunni Islam. It was founded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 1999 and gained global prominence in 2014, when it captured a large amount of Iraqi territory, and took advantage of the civil war in Syria to take control of chunks of territory in Eastern Syria. By the end of 2015, it held an area estimated to contain eight to twelve million people stretching from western Iraq to eastern Syria, where it enforced its interpretation of Islamic law, administered an annual budget of more than US$1 billion and had more than 30,000 fighters under its command. By 2019 it had lost the last of its Middle Eastern territories and returned to insurgency in the regions it once controlled, operating from remote hideouts, and continuing its propaganda efforts.
Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri, commonly known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was an Iraqi militant who was the first caliph of the Islamic State from 2014 until his death.
The War in Iraq or the Second Iraq War was an armed conflict between Iraq and its allies and the Islamic State. The war began in 2013 and ended in December 2017. Following December 2013, the insurgency escalated into full-scale guerrilla warfare following clashes in the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah in parts of western Iraq, and culminated in the Islamic State offensive into Iraq in June 2014, which lead to the capture of the cities of Mosul, Tikrit and other cities in western and northern Iraq by the Islamic State. Between 4–9 June 2014, the city of Mosul was attacked and later fell; following this, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called for a national state of emergency on 10 June. However, despite the security crisis, Iraq's parliament did not allow Maliki to declare a state of emergency; many legislators boycotted the session because they opposed expanding the prime minister's powers. Ali Ghaidan, a former military commander in Mosul, accused al-Maliki of being the one who issued the order to withdraw from the city of Mosul. At its height, ISIL held 56,000 square kilometers of Iraqi territory, containing 4.5 million citizens.
Between 1 and 15 August 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) expanded territory in northern Iraq under their control. In the region north and west from Mosul, the Islamic State conquered Zumar, Sinjar, Wana, Mosul Dam, Qaraqosh, Tel Keppe, Batnaya and Kocho, and in the region south and east of Mosul the towns Bakhdida, Karamlish, Bartella and Makhmour
On 15 June 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama ordered United States forces to be dispatched in response to the Northern Iraq offensive of the Islamic State (IS) as part of Operation Inherent Resolve. At the invitation of the Iraqi government, American troops went to assess Iraqi forces and the threat posed by ISIL.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has employed sexual violence against women and men in a terroristic manner. Sexual violence, as defined by The World Health Organization includes “any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, unwanted sexual comments or advances, or acts to traffic, or otherwise directed, against a person’s sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting, including but not limited to home and work.” ISIL has used sexual violence to undermine a sense of security within communities, and to raise funds through the sale of captives into sexual slavery.
Human rights in the territory controlled by the Islamic State (ISIL/ISIS) are considered to be in one of the worst states, if not the worst state in modern history and it has been harshly criticized by many political and religious organisations, as well as by many individuals. The Islamic State's policies included acts of genocide, torture and slavery. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) has stated that the Islamic State "seeks to subjugate civilians under its control and dominate every aspect of their lives through terror, indoctrination, and the provision of services to those who obey". Many Islamic State actions of extreme criminality, terror, recruitment and other activities has been documented in the Middle East.
Nasrin As'ad Ibrahim, better known by the nom de guerreUmm Sayyaf, is the widow of Abu Sayyaf. She was captured in May 2015 by US Delta Force soldiers on the mission where they killed her husband, a suspected leader of the Islamic State.
In early 2014, the jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant captured extensive territory in Western Iraq in the Anbar campaign, while counter-offensives against it were mounted in Syria. Raqqa in Syria became its headquarters. The Wall Street Journal estimated that eight million people lived under its control in the two countries.
The Shirqat offensive, codenamed Operation Conquest or Operation Fatah, was an offensive against the positions of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in and around the district of Al-Shirqat District to reach the city of Mosul.
A genocide of Yazidis by the Islamic State was carried out in the Sinjar area of northern Iraq in the mid-2010s. The genocide led to the expulsion, flight and effective exile of the Yazidis. Thousands of Yazidi women and girls were forced into sexual slavery by ISIL, and thousands of Yazidi men were killed. About 5,000 Yazidi civilians were killed during what has been called a "forced conversion campaign" carried out by ISIL in Northern Iraq. The genocide began after the withdrawal of Iraqi forces and Peshmerga, which left the Yazidis defenseless.
The Battle of Mosul was a major military campaign launched by the Iraqi Government forces with allied militias, the Kurdistan Regional Government, and international forces to retake the city of Mosul from the Islamic State (ISIL), which had seized the city in June 2014. The battle at the time was the world's single largest military operation since the 2003 invasion of Iraq and was considered the toughest urban battle since World War II.
This article lists the Mass executions in ISIL-occupied Mosul. Mosul, which is located in the Nineveh Governorate of Iraq, was occupied by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) from the Fall of Mosul on June 10, 2014, until the liberation of Mosul on July 10, 2017. Mosul is the second largest city in Iraq, and because of this, it was one of the Islamic State's largest bases, and their capture of the city was used in propaganda to demonstrate their military strength. Sunni Islam is the majority religion in the area. Mass executions of civilians, enemy soldiers, and members of ISIL who were accused of offenses were a regular occurrence, and executions peaked during the Mosul offensive. Mosul was the site of many of ISIL's war crimes. This article is a timeline of recorded mass executions carried out by ISIL in and around Mosul.
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The Islamic State insurgency in Iraq is an ongoing low-intensity insurgency that began in 2017 after the Islamic State (ISIS) lost its territorial control in the War in Iraq, during which ISIS and allied White Flags fought the Iraqi military and allied paramilitary forces.
Beginning in 2012, dozens of girls and women traveled to Iraq and Syria to join the Islamic State (IS), becoming brides of Islamic State fighters. While some traveled willingly, others were brought to Iraq and Syria as minors by their parents or family or forcefully.