An Iraqi judge on Wednesday cleared a German-Turkish woman of having ties to Islamic State, a judicial source said, more than a year after she was detained.
Hadya Abdel Qader had been held without charge since her arrest by Iraqi security forces in Mosul, in a part of the northern city held by ISIS.
The jihadist group was ousted from Mosul in July last year after a months-long battle, during which suspected members were rounded up.
But a judge at Baghdad’s central criminal court found no evidence to link Qader to ISIS, a judicial source said Wednesday, August 29.
The 40-year-old will remain in prison while prosecutors are given a month to decide whether to confirm or overturn the judge’s ruling.
The office of Germany’s anti-terrorism prosecutor did not confirm the details of the case, telling AFP only that her name “was not unknown” to authorities.
Iraq has sentenced more than 300 people to death for belonging to ISIS, including around 100 foreigners. At least the same number have received life terms, Iraqi judicial sources have said.
On April 18, Iraq sentenced five women from Azerbaijan and a woman from Trinidad to death and two Russian and French woman to life in prison for joining ISIS. A spokesperson for the Azerbaijan ministry of foreign affairs told The Defense Post on April 23 that the ministry was not notified through official channels about the sentence. Earlier in April, the Baghdad court sentenced six Turkish women to death for ISIS membership and a seventh to life in prison. They had all joined their husbands in Iraq and Syria after 2014.
Also in April, an Iraqi court commuted the death sentence of a German woman of Moroccan origin, reducing her sentence for ISIS membership to a life term. Earlier this month, the court sentenced the woman’s daughter Nadia Rainer Hermann, also a German national, to life in prison.
A 17-year-old German girl was sentenced in February to six years in prison for ISIS membership and illegally crossing the border.
Last month, the United States repatriated Samantha Elhassani, an American woman who traveled to Syria with her husband and children to live in ISIS territory.
With reporting from AFP