Woman Accused of Joining ISIS Arrested on Return to Germany

Woman Accused of Joining ISIS Arrested on Return to Germany
Fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) stand guard as displaced people prepare to board a bus waiting outside the Al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria's Al-Hasakeh governorate on June 3, 2019, as Kurdish authorities started sending home 800 Syrian women and children who had been evacuated from the Islamic State group's "caliphate" earlier this year. (Delil Souleiman/AFP via Getty Images)
The Associated Press
7/27/2020
Updated:
7/27/2020

BERLIN—German prosecutors said Monday a German woman who allegedly joined the ISIS terrorist group in Syria was arrested upon her return to the country. She is accused of membership in a foreign terrorist group, war crimes against property and other crimes.

Federal prosecutors said in a written statement that the woman, identified only as Nurten J. in line with local privacy laws, was arrested Friday at Frankfurt Airport.

Prosecutors allege she traveled with her then 4-year-old daughter to Syria in 2015 to join ISIS. There, she married a man who had also come from Germany and they started a family.

The woman allegedly raised her children according to ISIS ideology and in return she received a monthly payment from the extremist group and lived successively in five different apartments whose former tenants were either killed or evicted.

In 2016 and 2017, she often had a friend visit her home who brought along an enslaved Yazidi woman who then allegedly had to clean J.’s home.

After ISIS lost its territories in Syria, J. and her family were captured by Kurds and were eventually taken into deportation custody in Turkey.

It was not clear if she was returned to Germany in custody and the fate of her children was not known.

The federal prosecutor’s office could not immediately be reached for further details.