German woman jailed for watching 5-yr-old girl die in Iraq to face another trial in Munich

A German woman who was accused of being an Islamist extremist and convicted for letting a 5-year-old Yezidi girl die in Iraq, is to face a retrial in a Munich court.

The woman, identified only as Jennifer W under German privacy laws, was accused of standing and watching the young Iraqi girl died in a midday heat.

If she is found guilty, Jennifer faces a longer period in prison after an appeals court ruled in March that a 10-year sentence handed to her in 2021 was too lenient.

The Munich Higher Regional Court has now scheduled eight days of hearings before a different criminal senate for the new trial which begins on Wednesday.

The suspect had reportedly joined the Islamic State at the age of 23 and got married in Syria at a time when the terrorist organisation had occupied a large swathe of eastern Syria and north-western Iraq.

Part of the accusations against her are that her former husband had chained up the girl in the courtyard of their home while she stood by and watched her die.

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The girl died in August 2015, as the temperature in Falluja soared above 50 degrees Celsius.

The man was said to have bought the girl and her mother after they had been abducted by Islamic State, a fate suffered by many Yezidis.

Reports say the man had chained her to the bars of a window by her hands with her feet hanging in the air and she suffered heat stroke before he unchained her.

The German courts found that Jennifer W had failed to act to save the girl and a new verdict could be handed down on August 29.

Her husband is currently serving a life sentence in Germany after being found guilty of genocide by a Frankfurt court.

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