SpaceWar.com - Your World At War
Iraq sentences French woman to life in jail for joining IS
Baghdad, April 17 (AFP) Apr 17, 2018
Iraq on Tuesday sentenced a French woman to life in prison for belonging to the Islamic State group, raising to more than 180 the number of such convictions of foreign women since the country's defeat of IS.

Djamila Boutoutaou, a 29-year-old of Algerian origin, told a Baghdad court that she left France with her husband, a rapper.

She said she thought they were going on holiday but "when I arrived in Turkey I discovered that my husband was a jihadist".

She said she was forced by her husband to join IS and live in the "caliphate" that the jihadists proclaimed in 2014 straddling Syria and Iraq.

Boutoutaou, who appeared in court wearing a brown headscarf, said she and her two children had been forced to live in a "cave".

Her husband was killed near the former jihadist stronghold of Mosul, northern Iraq, and her son died in bombardment, Boutoutaou said, before she and the wife of a neighbour fled and surrendered to Kurdish peshmerga fighters.

Two women from Russia, both holding children in their arms, were also sentenced to life in prison at the same hearing, while five from Azerbaijan were condemned to death along with a woman from Trinidad.

Iraq declared victory in December against IS, which at one point controlled a third of the country.

The Iraqi anti-terrorism law empowers courts to convict people who are believed to have helped IS even if they are not accused of violence.

In January, an Iraqi court condemned a German woman to death after finding her guilty of belonging to IS.

A court the following month sentenced another French woman to seven months in jail for entering Iraq illegally but ordered her release on time already served.

Under Iraqi anti-terrorism laws, a total of 97 foreign women have now been condemned to death since January and 185 others to life imprisonment by courts in Baghdad, a judicial source told AFP.

Most of the women were from Turkey and republics of the former Soviet Union.

Iraqi authorities have not announced any of the sentences being carried out.


ADVERTISEMENT




Space News from SpaceDaily.com
SPHEREx completes first full sky infrared map of the cosmos
CoDICE instrument returns first-light particle data for IMAP mission
Top 5 High Volatility Games For 2026 Chase The Biggest Jackpots Today

24/7 Energy News Coverage
The Quantum Age will be Powered by Fusion
Physicists map axion production paths inside deuterium tritium fusion reactors
Hybrid excitons speed ultrafast energy transfer at 2D organic interface

Military Space News, Nuclear Weapons, Missile Defense
SDA expands Tracking Layer satellite awards and related missile defense contracts
Space Systems Command activates System Delta 80 for assured space access
Rheinmetall ICEYE Space Solutions to provide SAR reconnaissance data to German military

24/7 News Coverage
Philosopher argues AI consciousness may remain unknowable
Climate driven model explores Neanderthal and modern human overlap in Iberia
Economic losses from natural disasters down by a third in 2025: Swiss Re



All rights reserved. Copyright Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.