Isis wives on trial: Did they go willingly? What was their role? Will they finally face justice?

Many came with their husbands, others came in search of one... In a courtroom in Baghdad, Richard Hall watches the trials of four suspected Isis wives and is shocked by the sentences handed out

Wives on trial: each tells a unique story of how they ended up in the caliphate (Reuters)

The judge delivered his verdict with a softness rarely heard in a courtroom where terrorists are regularly sent to their deaths. The defendants, four women thousands of miles from home, stood in a wooden cage in the centre of a room in Baghdad’s central criminal court. The eldest of them stroked the hair of her infant daughter as she slept peacefully in her arms. A young boy pulled at the abaya of his mother, oblivious to the gravity of the moment.

The women were all from Kyrgyzstan, and had been arrested separately in Iraq on suspicion of being Isis members when the caliphate collapsed around them. Their trials had lasted for minutes, one after the other, and now they stood in the dock together to hear their fate. “These crimes are punishable by death, but the court is merciful,” the judge said. After a brief pause for his words to be translated, he announced that each of them would receive 15 years in prison. “This is the minimum sentence the law allows,” he added.

In the imagination of much of the world, the Isis caliphate was a warrior state of fighting men, local extremists joined by foreigners who came to kill and be killed for their idea of an Islamic utopia. But that is only half the story. Thousands of women came from abroad, too, after being equally as enthralled by the group’s promises and propaganda. Many came with their husbands, others came in search of one. They became known as “Isis wives”.

Now that the caliphate has been destroyed, these foreign women are being held in camps and jails in Syria and Iraq, and no one seems to know what to do with them. The countries where they came from don’t want them back. The UK is preventing the return of British women like Shamima Begum, claiming they pose just as big a security risk as the men of Isis. Much of Europe is doing the same.

Isis wives in the al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria. No one knows what to do with them (AFP/Getty) (AFP/Getty Images)

In the aftermath of the group’s reign of terror, many questions about these women remain unanswered. What role did the “wives” play in Isis’s crimes? Did all women go willingly, or did they simply follow their husbands, as they believed was their duty? Did they see themselves as witting members of the caliphate?

While much of the world studiously avoids these questions, Iraq is forging ahead with criminal trials. But much is being lost in the quest for quick justice. The trial of these four women from Kyrgyzstan gives some insight into what may lie ahead for the thousands of other women who followed the same path.

In the cold light of the courtroom, the women each tell a unique story of how they ended up in the caliphate, and of their time in it. Their defences range from coercion and trickery to ignorance and indifference.

*****

“Please don’t separate me from my children,” pleaded Zeebo Ali, the woman cradling her infant daughter, when the sentence was read. She did not appear shocked at the verdict, and yet throughout her short trial she had protested her innocence. She claimed she had been coerced by her husband. That she too was a victim.

As she told it, 36-year-old Ali’s journey from Kyrgyzstan to a jail cell in Baghdad began when she moved to Turkey in 2014 and married a Turkish man. They had been living together for a year and a half when he told the family that they needed to go to the capital, Ankara, to renew her residency papers. But he took her somewhere else instead.

We arrived at the Syrian border. When I realised what was happening, I told him to go without me, but he threatened to take my children

“We arrived at the Syrian border,” she told the judge. “When I realised what was happening, I told him to go without me, but he threatened to take my children.”

Ali said she had no choice but to follow him into Syria, and into the caliphate. They stayed in Syria for a short time before crossing into Iraq. Her husband was later killed in an airstrike and she remarried, this time to an Uzbek man.

Stories like Ali’s have become familiar to the judge. Countless women have passed through his court saying the same thing: that they had no choice. The courtroom exchanges all follow a familiar pattern.

“Was your husband with Isis?” the judge asked.

“He was ill,’’ she said, refusing to answer the question.

“Did you receive money from Isis?”

“No,” she replied.

“Then how did you live?”

“I used to make bread and give it to the shop to make a little bit of money.”

The judge, who sat atop a raised platform alongside two other judges, had in front of him a file of evidence against the accused. The Iraqi court system works differently to western courts: before the case reaches trial, it passes through an investigative court, where evidence against the suspect is supposed to be scrutinised. The amount of time a defendant gets to answer the allegations against them is fleetingly short.

Many Isis cases rely on confessions from the suspect, a practise that rights groups say encourages torture, abuse and unreliable convictions. In the case of the women, much of the evidence appeared circumstantial – relying on where they were arrested, and who their husbands were. After the judge asks a few questions, the prosecutor, who sits to the side of the court, decides whether there is enough evidence to convict. In Ali’s case, he said that there was.

Her lawyer, appointed to her moments before the case was heard, was given a chance to issue a brief defence. “She doesn’t believe in Isis,” he said, reading from a file. “Please consider that she was forced to come here. Her husband threatened to divorce her.”

*****

The other women waited in the hallway for their turn, together with the children. It was a blistering hot day and the corridors are out of reach of the air conditioners in the courtroom. As Ali left, Malika Abdel Hamin, wearing a blue abaya, walked in with her head down. At 44 years old, she is the eldest of the four. She was arrested in Mosul along with her husband when the city was recaptured from Isis. They too had been living in Turkey with her husband, an Uzbek man. They entered Syria in 2015 and went to Raqqa for two days, before settling in a village near Tel Afar in Iraq.

The judge started by telling her that her husband is a suspected Isis fighter.

“My husband was a grocer,” she replied.

“Your husband came to work as a grocer in a warzone?” the judge asked.

“Did you join Isis or believe in Isis?” he continued.

“No I don’t believe in them.”

“Who gave you the house you stayed in?”

“They were empty and we just took one,” she said.

Reading from the file in front of him, the judge noted that the village where they lived was known for housing Isis fighters stationed in Tal Afar.

“We wanted to go back, but we couldn’t,” she protested.

The prosecutor declared that the circumstantial evidence was sufficient to convict: “She came to Syria and Iraq when she knew Isis was there.”

Her lawyer argued that she was an innocent woman trying to escape poverty in Turkey.

“She had financial difficulties. When they saw the war they wanted to leave, but they couldn’t.”

“There is no evidence that she worked for Isis,” he continued. He offered the same defence as Ali’s: “If we suppose that her husband worked for Isis, then she had no choice.”

******

Deela Ekram Kamaladin’s trial was the shortest of the four. She carried no documents when she was arrested by the Kurdish peshmerga in Mosul. The court had no way of categorically determining her age, and she herself did not know. A medical examiner estimated her to be 18 or 19, meaning she was legally a child when she was accused of joining Isis. She came to Iraq with her family, she said, where she was married to a Turkish man.

Again, the judge began with questions about her husband. “What was his work? Was he with Isis?” he asked.

“I didn’t know what his work was.”

More than 70,000 people, mostly women and children, are crammed into the Kurdish-run Al-Hol camp (AFP/Getty) (AFP/Getty Images)

“What did your family do for money?”

“My father went to the market everyday. I stayed inside. I am not a member of Isis.”

The prosecutor stood to summarise the case against her: “She came to Mosul when she knew there was a terrorist group there, this shows she wanted to join them.”

*****

Thirty-five-year-old Fatimah Maarouf said she was tricked into travelling to Syria. She had been living in Turkey with her Uzbek husband when they got in the car one day and started driving. “I didn’t know that I had entered Syria. I stayed in the car,” she told the court.

She stayed for three months in Syria before moving to Mosul, in Iraq. “I didn’t know what my husband did for work. He goes out in the morning and comes back at night,” she said.

“Did you receive money from Isis?” the judge asked.

“My husband received money but I didn’t.”

“Why did you come to Iraq when there is a war going on?”

“My husband told me to.”

“Did you join Isis?”

“No I did not. I am innocent.”

The prosecutor recommended conviction. Her lawyer stood and repeated the same defence as the previous three women.

“She is a helpless woman who just followed her husband,” he said. “There is not enough evidence that she joined Isis.”

***

This was a trial of four women, and yet almost the entirety of the evidence against them related to the men they had married. These women were, according to the court, willing members of one of the most brutal terrorist groups in the world, finally facing justice. But what crimes were they answering for?

They were not the first foreign women to be prosecuted in Iraq, and they won’t be the last. Iraqi courts have already sentenced dozens from Turkey, Russia, France, Germany, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, and Trinidad and Tobago. There are believed to be more than 500 foreign women and 800 children held in the country, and they will all go through the same process.

The difficulty for the courts lies in what they are able to prove. The Iraqi government came to the realisation early on that it could not pin specific crimes on the thousands of Isis suspects it is holding, and so it opted to use a vague terror law to punish anyone with an affiliation with Isis.

In addition to the obvious weaknesses of the Iraqi judicial system, which apply to men and women alike, the result of this approach is that the true role of the Isis wives in the terror group’s crimes is being left undiscovered, according to Belkis Wille, a senior Iraq researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“The charges are so vague, and because no specific crimes have to be proven there is no need for the prosecutors to engage with the victims at all. Victims of Isis aren’t having their day in court,” she said. “The Iraqi government has prioritised efficacy – going through the trials as quickly as possible – at the expense of accountability.”

This lack of accountability goes both ways. A one-size-fits-all approach to foreign Isis women means that many who were genuinely coerced or forced to travel to the caliphate by their husbands are receiving the same sentence as those who went willingly.

“The courts in Iraq have decided to completely ignore claims from foreign women that they were coerced or went against their will. We all know that Isis was using coercive measures and was engaged in human trafficking,” Wille said.

Wille said she once witnessed a case in the Iraqi courts during which a Turkish woman claimed her estranged husband came and took their son and threatened to never let her see him again unless she came with him to Syria. “The judge acknowledged what she had said, and gave her a life sentence instead of the death penalty. So he acknowledged the coercion but still gave her a life sentence,” she said.

The same is not true of Iraqi wives of Isis fighters. Apart from in very specific circumstances, Iraq’s judicial system allows the presumption of innocence on wives of Isis fighters who already lived in the caliphate. They do not presume their willingness to join Isis as they do foreign women because they did not travel thousands of miles to join it. The caliphate came to them.

*****

The Isis caliphate ended not with a bang, as its propaganda had promised, but with a whimper. After ruling over a territory the size of Britain, it found itself cornered in a small corner of eastern Syria. Thousands of fighters crammed into the small village of Baghouz, along with tens of thousands of women and children who had followed the group as it retreated. Earlier this year, as the territory grew smaller and smaller, those women and children started to leave.

The first who filed out of the territory were apparently the most eager to escape. They insisted that they had been unable to leave the caliphate, that they had been forced to retreat with Isis. They arrived tired and emaciated after months of being under siege.

As time went on, men started to leave too. Suspected fighters were disguising themselves among civilians in order to escape. It seemed that the people leaving Baghouz became more extreme the later they left. The diehards stayed to the end. The women coming out of the territory no longer denied they had been Isis members, rather they repledged their allegiance and chanted Isis slogans. They screamed at journalists who were there to cover the exodus.

All of the women and children were sent to camps further north run by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a mostly Kurdish militia and close ally of the US in the fight against Isis. The largest of those camps, named al-Hol, has a population of more than 70,000 people – mostly women and children from Syria and Iraq. Some 11,000 foreign women and children are also being held, the majority of them the wives and relatives of Isis fighters who came from around the world to join the caliphate.

Shamima Begum: ‘Just a housewife’ (PA)

Shamima Begum is among an estimated 19 British women and about 30 children living in one of the camps. She lives alongside several thousand European women and children.

Unlike the women held in Iraq, the detainees in Syria are not facing trial. There has reportedly been some consideration given to sending them to Iraq to face trial – and possibly the death penalty – but for now they are stuck in limbo. The SDF has repeatedly warned that it does not have the capacity to hold such a large number of prisoners indefinitely, and it cannot prosecute foreign Isis suspects without the formation of an international court. In the meantime, US military leaders are warning that a new generation of jihadis are being raised in the camps by women who are still loyal to Isis.

The conditions in al-Hol camp are abysmal. Last month, during a Human Rights Watch visit to the area reserved for foreign women and children, the group’s researchers “found overflowing latrines, sewage trickling into tattered tents, and residents drinking water from tanks containing worms”.

“Young children with skin rashes, emaciated limbs, and swollen bellies sifted through mounds of stinking garbage under a scorching sun or lay limp on tent floors, their bodies dusted with dirt and flies. Children are dying from acute diarrhoea and flu-like infections,” it added.

A large number of foreign Isis wives now claim they had little to do with Isis during their time in the caliphate. Begum has claimed she was “just a housewife” during her time there, despite publicly claiming allegiance to the group.

But British officials say that the women of Isis, the so-called Isis wives, pose just as much as a threat as the men. British courts would have a much harder time prosecuting women like Begum because of a lack of evidence of specific crimes. As a result, European countries, especially the UK, have been reluctant to bring their citizens home. The thinking behind that decision is inherently linked to the ambiguity surrounding the precise role of Isis wives in the crimes of their husbands. What we do know, however, is that Isis ideology placed women at the centre of its long-term plans, according to Gina Vale, research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, based at King’s College London.

“Their fundamental role is supportive wife to their jihadi husbands, and to raise the next generation of Isis supporters, particularly strong boys as future fighters. The role of the mother figure in informal education and indoctrination within the home was critical, particularly for pre-school age children and for those raised after the caliphate’s territorial collapse,” said Vale, whose work focuses on the radicalisation of women and the role of female extremists.

“However, there are others who voluntarily adopted more violent and active roles within the Isis proto-state administration and later on the battlefield as suicide operatives and combatants.”

Most of this was almost irrelevant to the Iraqi courts. It was enough that the women travelled to Syria with their husbands. But could some women have been forced to go? “There were certainly women who were coerced or deceived to accompany a relative, often their husband, into Isis territory. I can’t comment on how common this is in reality, but many women have stated this as their reasoning for their initial travel and involvement with the group,” said Vale.

She added that once they were there, it would have been almost impossible for them to leave. “Women had to have a mahram (male chaperone) at all times, so they could not move unaccompanied. Secondly, women could not travel easily between Isis provinces, as they did not have the justification of male fighters of being stationed in a different location. As women’s fundamental prescribed role was wife and mother, many who did not want to volunteer for more active roles would have largely remained inside the home,” she said.

But remaining inside the home does not absolve these women of responsibility for the crimes Isis committed. Indeed, some of the most heinous of those crimes took place within the home.

Isis women were and remain part of the narrative and the fabric of Isis extremism. They committed horrible crimes, like the men alongside them, and they should not be incorrectly confused with real victims

The Isis genocide of the Yazidi people began with the massacre of thousands of people in the minority’s historic home of Sinjar, in northern Iraq, but it didn’t end there. The group took thousands of Yazidi women into slavery. They lived in the homes of Isis fighters, where they were raped, beaten and sold.

“Obviously, much of the blame for the specific acts of violence belongs to the individual or individuals who committed the rapes and abuses. At the same time, we must not forget that an entire network of criminal and, in fact, genocidal acts were necessary for the commission of these crimes,” said Pari Ibrahim, founder of the Free Yazidi Foundation.

“Households where Yazidi women were kept were generally guarded by female members of Isis. Yazidi women were beaten, abused, locked up, and even prepared for rape and torture by female members of Isis. They were an integral part of the sexual abuse, even if they were not the final perpetrators,” she added.

Ibrahim added that claims from captured Isis wives that they were innocent or reformed should be ignored. “Isis women never, ever would have reformed or ceased their behaviour if not for losing the territory of the caliphate. Despite the current pleas and claims that they have been tricked or are blameless, the reality is that Isis women were and remain part of the narrative and the fabric of Isis extremism. They committed horrible crimes, like the men alongside them, and they should not be incorrectly confused with real victims.”

While the wives of Isis wait in camps, recanting their allegiance to one of the most brutal terror groups the world has ever seen, thousands of Yazidi women remain missing. Without an international effort to take them to trial, we may never know the true extent of the crimes carried out by the women of Isis. We may never know how many of them were victims themselves.