ISIS Wives, With Children In Tow, Are Handed Long Jail Sentences Or Death Penalty
A young woman in a traditional long black cloak and a pink prison shirt holds a baby as she stands before a judge.
Then a toddler, becoming agitated in the hallway, is led into the wooden dock to join her mother. The little girl is perhaps 2 years old. She clutches the folds of her mother's black abaya with a chubby hand, as she peers out through the wooden bars.
Her mother is one of about 28 foreign women who appeared in an Iraqi court in a single day in April, accused of being married to ISIS. They are among around 560 detained women recently or currently on trial in the country for their links to the extremist group, according to Baghdad's central criminal court. The women are largely from Russia, Turkey and other countries including Azerbaijan and Tajikistan. Several are from France and Germany.
They have between them more than 1,100 young children, according to the court's president. Detained and mostly shunned by their home countries, the children and mothers face a perilous future.
The women are being tried under Iraq's sweeping antiterrorism law and many are handed lengthy prison sentences or sometimes the death penalty. Rights groups including say Iraq
