Iraq Sentences ISIS Leader’s Wife to Death Over Crimes Against Yazidis

A court in Iraq has sentenced to death one of the wives of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the slain Islamic State leader, for involvement in crimes against the Yazidi religious minority, according to the country’s judiciary.

When ISIS captured about a third of Iraq and large swathes of territory in neighboring Syria in 2014, the group’s fighters swept through the Sinjar region of northern Iraq, the Yazidis’ ancestral home. The terrorist group killed more than 10,000 members of the religious minority and captured 6,000 others in a campaign that the United Nations has deemed a genocide — but justice has been elusive.

Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said on Wednesday that one of Mr. al-Baghdadi’s wives had been found guilty of working with the Islamic State to kidnap and detain Yazidi women.

Although the council did not name the woman who was sentenced, and Mr. al-Baghdadi had more than one wife, The Associated Press identified her as Asma Mohammed and said she had been transferred into Iraqi custody after being captured by Turkish forces.

Mr. al-Baghdadi died in 2019 when he detonated a suicide vest after United States Special Operations forces cornered him in a tunnel in northwestern Syria. .

ISIS fighters sexually enslaved and held captive many Yazidi women and girls and subjected them to repeated rapes.

Mr. al-Baghdadi was also believed to hold sexual slaves, including Kayla Mueller, a 26-year-old humanitarian worker from Arizona who was later killed.