An ethnic German woman (who presumably converted to Islam) is being tried over the death of a Yazidi slave girl in Iraq. The defendant traveled to Iraq with her husband, who had gone to fight in the jihad for the Islamic State. The couple acquired a little girl as slave, and later were responsible for her death.
Interestingly, the ISIS bride’s lawyer is claiming that the defendant could not possibly have been responsible for the death, since women in the Islamic State had no right to make such decisions — only their husbands could do so. Would this be called a sharia defense?
Many thanks to MissPiggy for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:
Video transcript:
| 00:00 | Jennifer W. is said to have bought a Yazidi slave for several hundred dollars in the summer of 2015 in Iraq, | |
| 00:06 | a five-year-old girl. After the little child got sick and wet the bed, her Iraqi husband chained the girl up | |
| 00:14 | outdoors at 45° [113°F] as punishment. There she died painfully from thirst. | |
| 00:20 | The General Attorney’s office accuses my client of having participated in war crimes as well as | |
| 00:24 | being a member of a foreign terrorist organisation. —Now a woman has come forward claiming to be the mother | |
| 00:32 | of the dead girl. She is now in Germany and will appear as a co-plaintiff in the lawsuit represented | |
| 00:37 | by the human rights lawyer and wife of Hollywood star George Clooney. Jennifer’s lawyer is skeptical. | |
| 00:45 | There are many factors to consider here: What are the facts? Could she have, as assumed in this situation, | |
| 00:51 | prevented it? According to our current understanding, women in that state, at that time, had no authority. | |
| 00:58 | The federal prosecutor is sure that the 27-year-old accused was in Iraq and a member of | |
| 01:04 | the terror organisation ISIS. There she was a kind of morality policewoman. Her job as a heavily armed | |
| 01:09 | policewomen was to force women to comply with the established behaviour and dress codes. |
Unfortunately, I suspect the defense is right. If the husband chained up the girl, it would have been impossible for the wife to unchain her.
If the ISIS bride was a gun-carrying member of the Islamic State “morality police,” then hang her. Literally hang her. By the neck. Leave her for the crows, with a sign attached.
Vlad Tepes did not stop the Mohammedan invasion of his lands by understanding the invaders and giving them apartments and stipends and land for mosques.
It shouldn’t be a very challenging case.
Jennifer W didn’t renounce her German citizenship. Hence, she is under the jurisdiction of German laws.
Under US law, and I presume German law, if you participate in a felony, you are responsible for any illegals acts committed by any other participant in that felony, even if you yourself did not do it.
Leaving Germany to join ISIS was, I presume, a felony. If not, then buying a slave was a felony by any stretch of the law. Hence, Jennifer W was responsible for any act committed against the slave girl, regardless of whether Jennifer could actually prevent it or not.
So, whether Jennifer could actually prevent her husband from his atrocity was irrelevant to Jennifer’s responsibility at that point. There is no “I didn’t pull the trigger” defense for participants in a holdup.
I’ve almost finished reading the wonderful Texan novelist Larry McMurtry’s book, “Lonesome Dove”. Spoiler alert: the two principal male characters (McMurtry’s women are equally interesting) hang their former fellow- Texas Ranger Jake Stobbs because of the crimes committed by the brutal gang he falls in with out of convenience. An interesting moral conundrum: only 10% of Germans joined the Nazi Party, but the atrocities would not have been possible without the acquiescence, if not participation, of many others. I’m sure others here could think of other, more recent examples…
I liked McMurtry back when I read him.
If you like Southern writers, I recommend Dan Jenkins’ Baja Oklahoma. It’s inspired! Here’s what he had to say about the book:
I think it’s the same book where he describes a certain type of young woman – all beauty and no brains – as a “steel-bellied airhead”.
Well, collective guilt and punishment is one thing. Inherited guilt is another.
What about collective virtue? The World War II Germans did not only produce the Nazis, SS and concentration camps; they also produced the White Rose, Otto Schindler, Canaris and the German Resistance that came close to assassinating Hitler before the bulk of the concentration camp murders were committed. So how do you balance virtue and guilt?
I would argue the actual Germans who supported Hitler, or at least carried out their lives under him, were more than punished. The utter destruction of Berlin and other German cities, impoverishment and destitution for half a generation (until a US occupation general gave permission to bypass the socialist-type constraints of the occupation government, allowing the German economy to take off), and the subjection of half the German population to the tyranny and oppression of Russian occupation and communism. Incidentally, the Russians themselves, nominally the victors, also had to live under destitution, tyranny and oppression, all a natural consequence of socialism.
I also remember the hanging of Jake in “Lonesome Dove”. The concept I took away from that is that justice stands alone, and is distinct from affection, feelings and comradeship. Jake had participated in robbery and murder of innocents. He was a weak personality but still was responsible for his crimes. The fact that his captors were his long-time comrades and friends did not relieve them of their duty.
For those very few interested, there is a similar situation depicted in the video game Red Dead Redemption 2. A former member of a vicious outlaw gang and his wife, also a former member, buy a ranch and are attempting to lead a straight life. They are depicted in extremely sympathetic terms, but you can’t get away from the fact they participated in the robbery and murder of many innocent people before settling down. Do the victims, now silent, not also have claims?