An Iraqi criminal court sentenced 15 Turkish women to death for joining Islamic State, a judiciary spokesperson said.
Judge Abdul-Sattar al-Birqdar said on Sunday that the central court imposed the sentences “after it was proven they belong to the Daesh terrorist group and after they confessed to marrying Daesh elements or providing members of the group with logistical aid or helping them carry out terrorist attacks,” Reuters reported.
Another Turkish woman was given a life sentence, AFP reported Birqdar as saying.
All of the women have a month to appeal their sentences.
They are the latest women to be sentenced in Iraq for joining the group or marrying ISIS fighters, some of the 1,300 women who reportedly surrendered to the Kurdish Peshmerga in Tel Afar after the city fell in August.
More: Iraq didn’t tell Berlin it had sentenced a German woman to death for joining ISIS
Iraq in December declared victory against ISIS after a years-long battle to retake territory that ISIS captured in 2014.
Last week an Iraqi court sentenced a Turkish woman to death and 10 other women to life in prison for membership in ISIS. Linda Wenzel, a 17-year-old German national who left home in 2016 to join the group and married a fighter, was sentenced to six years in prison.
An Iraqi court last month condemned to death by hanging a German woman of Moroccan origin after finding her guilty of joining ISIS with her daughters. A German official told The Defense Post at the time that Berlin was not officially notified of the sentence.
U.S. officials have urged the home countries of a number of women held in Kurdish custody in Syria to repatriate them. In January, a group of French wives and children of ISIS fighters detained in Syria sued the French government for refusing to repatriate them. French officials have indicated they will not repatriate Emilie König, a 33-year-old French national arrested by the Syrian Democratic Forces in December. König, the daughter of a police officer, had appealed publicly to be returned to France.
