Norway convicts woman who lived in Islamic State-controlled area in Syria
A Norwegian woman who lived in ISIS-controlled Syria as a housewife to three fighters was sentenced to jail despite not being involved in violence.
The case made legal history in Norway because the woman was essentially convicted of being a housewife, the prosecution said.
The Norwegian-Pakistani woman, who admitted to having “radical ideas”, enabled her three husbands to take part in fighting by staying at home with their children, the court said.
As a housewife to three successive husbands she could not claim to be a passive bystander, Judge Ingmar Nilsen said.
“By travelling to an area controlled by ISIS in Syria … by moving in and living with her husbands, taking care of the children and various tasks at home, the defendant enabled her three husbands to actively participate in ISIS fighting,” the judge said.
“She was a supporter who … looked after her three husbands at home and raised the new generation of ISIS recruits.”
The trial was the first prosecution in Norway of someone who had returned after joining ISIS-controlled areas.
“This is a special case. This is the first time that, to put it bluntly, someone has been charged for being a wife and mother,” prosecutor Geir Evanger said.
The young woman left Norway for Syria in early 2013 to join Bastian Vasquez, who was fighting in Syria.
She was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for “participating in a terrorist organisation”.
The woman’s lawyer, Nils Christian Nordhus, said his client wanted to leave Syria soon after arriving because she was subjected to domestic violence.
She was a victim of human trafficking because she had been held against her will, he said.
But the judge said she participated in the organisation knowingly and of her own will.
The woman was repatriated to Norway in early 2020 on humanitarian grounds with her two children, including a young boy described as seriously ill.
At least four other Norwegian women and their children are being held in Kurdish-controlled camps in Syria.
Source: The National News
