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The 35-year-old woman shared photos of dead and mutilated bodies in Syria on social media.
Among other things from the Al-Naim roundabout – the place in central Raqqa where IS carried out public executions.
Now she is sentenced to three months in prison for war crimes at the Gothenburg district court.
In the winter of 2012, a 35-year-old woman from Western Sweden traveled down to the war in Syria. According to herself, she was only going down for a short visit to see her brother, but she would be staying for five years.
In questioning, she herself says that she stopped because she was affected by the situation on the spot. She wanted to “help the Syrian civilians”.
According to the verdict, she instead became part of the terrorist sect IS.
According to the 35-year-old herself, it was because she was part of the smaller group Jaish Al Muhajireen, which on the orders of IS became part of the organization. The woman herself claims that she had no choice but to become part of the Islamic State.
On location in Syria, she married a man, who after a short time died in battle. A few months later, the woman gave birth to their child.
Five years later, the woman traveled home to West Sweden, where she was charged. Back home in Sweden, she called herself a witch on social media and made a living partly by selling curses on the internet.
Shared photos with dead bodies
Now the woman is being convicted of a war crime, for having uploaded pictures of dead and mutilated bodies in the Islamic State’s former capital Raqqa in 2014. The pictures are said to have been taken at the Al-Naim roundabout. A place that shortly after the city was captured by IS became the central location for executions and desecrations.
The pictures were taken with the woman’s mobile phone, and the district court believes that there is a lot of evidence that it is the woman who is posing in the pictures, but that it cannot be proven as the face is not visible. If it is not the woman in the photos, the district court believes that it is likely that she is the one who took the photos.
On Facebook, the woman uploaded a picture of herself posing in front of a fence, with a severed head in the background. In a comment on the picture, the woman writes that it is “Bashar’s men”, referring to the fact that they would have been soldiers in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s army.
In questioning, the woman says that she wrote the comments, but that she was brainwashed and regrets it.
She is also convicted of threatening an official and gross defamation, when she threatened and hanged social workers.
The district court believes that the penalty value for the war crimes amounts to three months’ imprisonment. Regarding threats against officials and gross defamation, the court considers that the penalty amounts to one month’s imprisonment. In the combined assessment from the district court, it is concluded that the punishment value is set at three months’ imprisonment.
“Her action of posting pictures of the mutilated soldiers, together with derogatory comments about them, is completely in line with the propaganda used by ISIS,” the district court writes in the judgment.
Weapons trained other women
The woman says that she has never seen an execution and that her goal was to “help the Syrian civilians”.
For a period, the woman also ran a pharmacy in Syria, without having any previous knowledge or experience. There she means that she sold and distributed medicines to those in need.
– I almost became a doctor, says the woman in questioning.
She also admits that she learned to use weapons. After learning herself, she trained other women to use guns and shoot.
– Then you’ve shot a little, trained a little. So it’s not a big deal, says the woman in questioning.
In a post on social media in 2014, she also urged other people to travel down to Syria. “Pack your bags and come,” the woman wrote on her Facebook.