By Sabine Maurer, dpa
A German woman convicted of supporting the terrorist militia Islamic State was given a two-year suspended sentence by a court in Frankfurt on Monday.
The court found that the woman, now 33, left Germany for Syria in the spring of 2016 with her two sons to join the terrorist group, which around that time controlled large swathes of Syria and Iraq.
In addition to her conviction for supporting a terrorist organization, the court on Monday ruled that the woman failed in her duty to care for her young sons.
“She promoted the organization from within,” the presiding judge said on Monday when handing down the sentence at the Higher Regional Court. The judge said that Islamic State paid money for her sons during their stay in Syria, covered more than half the rent for her flat and she herself sold homemade sweets at markets according to Islamic State specifications.
Her husband at the time was an Islamic State fighter who was later killed in an air strike in front of his sons. “She grossly violated her duties as a mother,” the judge said.
She and her children experienced almost daily bomb attacks in the civil war, and during their flight from Syria they lived at times in holes in the ground and ran through the desert.
Prosecutors had requested the two-year suspended sentence, while defence lawyers for the woman had asked the court for 18 months.
