A German teenager found with Islamic State snipers in Mosul must be put on trial, according to a Yazidi MP who is the most prominent spokesperson for her beleaguered people.
Linda Wenzel, 16, must be properly investigated before being allowed to return to Germany, Vian Dakhil said. Ms Dakhil sits in the Iraqi parliament and came to prominence with a tearful appeal for help when Isis was massacring thousands of Yazidis in 2014.
“A sniper #isis was captured in #Mosul, she is ‘German girl’,” Ms Dakhil tweeted. “The mother of the #sniper girl was found in #Germany and she didn’t deny that she is her daughter.”
Ms Dakhil later said that Linda’s mother, Katharina, had confirmed that the girl pulled from a tunnel in the bomb-ravaged Old City area of Mosul was her daughter.
“She is now being investigated by the security forces,” Ms Dakhil told The Times. “We will demand that the government does not hand her over to her country. She came to Iraq and joined a terrorist group and she has to be punished according to Iraqi law here.”
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Linda disappeared from her mother’s home in Pulnitz, a small town in Saxony, in early July last year and flew to Istanbul. She had converted to Islam and was later found to have been in contact via Facebook with people in the Middle East.
Linda’s parents are reported to be travelling, possibly to Iraq. Her 19-year-old sister told the Sächsische Zeitung newspaper that “they are on their way” when asked for her parents’ whereabouts, before closing the door.
Police in Saxony said they had yet to confirm the girl’s identity. She was photographed looking dishevelled but recognisable after being pulled from the rubble of a basement in Mosul, where fighters had dug themselves in.
Lieutenant-General Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi, of the Iraqi counterterrorism service, said that she had been with a group of snipers, the assumption being that she had also been fighting.
Up to 20 foreign women have been found in Mosul, including five Germans, two Canadians, three Turks and three Russians. Some were found with or near suicide belts. Linda’s group is said to have surrendered willingly.
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A spokeswoman for the French government confirmed that a French woman with four children had been arrested and was being interrogated.
Linda was first identified by Ms Dakhil as a Yazidi woman, but the family who thought they recognised her later said she was not their daughter. Her nationality was not immediately clear because she did not speak Arabic, Kurdish or English, officials said.
General Saadi said she was being sent to Baghdad for DNA tests before a decision would be made about whether to return her to Germany. Ms Dakhil said: “Iraqi forces arrested her with a group of snipers.”
If put on trial, she cannot be executed as Iraqi law restricts the death penalty to those over the age of 21. Iraq’s prisons are overcrowded with Isis suspects. Photographs published yesterday showed rooms packed with men with their hands bound behind their backs.
Human Rights Watch has issued a report detailing scores of extrajudicial killings of captives as Iraqi troops sought revenge for three years of war.
