Published: Just now
The 38-year-old mother of eight lived as a housewife in the IS stronghold of Raqqa in Syria.
Now she is sentenced by a Danish court to four years in prison and deportation.
According to the district court in Kolding, by living as a housewife in northern Syria – where she traveled in 2015 – the woman has promoted the terrorist organization Islamic State. In addition to four years in prison, she is stripped of her citizenship in Denmark, but the woman does not become stateless because she also has Bosnian citizenship.
The 38-year-old is one of three IS women who, together with their total of 14 children, were brought home in October 2021 from refugee camps in Syria. When the mothers arrived in Denmark, a legal process was immediately started against them and according to both the government and the opposition in Copenhagen, by supporting IS, they had “turned their backs on Denmark”.
The 38-year-old denied this during the trial.
– It has never been my wish to travel to Syria and stay there. My wish has always been to live in Denmark and live a life like everyone else, she said in court in Kolding.
The woman has eight children aged 3 to 17 and they currently live with the woman’s parents in Denmark. During the trial, prosecutor Bettina Wagner said that the children can remain in Denmark even if the mother is sentenced to deportation.
This is the second verdict concerning the three IS women. Last autumn, a 35-year-old woman was sentenced to three years in prison by the district court in Esjberg. A sentence that the Court of Appeal later increased to four years in prison.