Prosecutors demand man, 2 women serve prison for joining ISIS, preparing terrorist acts

The Public Prosecution Service (OM) demanded prison sentences against a man and two women on Tuesday for participating in the terrorist organization ISIS, preparing terrorist crimes, and taking their minor children into a war zone. The OM demanded seven years in prison against the man and 48 months and 42 months against the women, who are both married to the man.

According to the OM, the suspects went to Syria in 2012 and 2013 and joined ISIS, also taking their children to the war zone. “In doing so, they deprived their children of a carefree childhood,” the prosecutor said. The suspects fled from the conflict zone to Turkey, where they were arrested at the end of 2022 and then deported to the Netherlands with their 13 children.

The OM has a wealth of evidence of the man and one woman’s involvement in ISIS from chats, letters, and audio messages. One audio message was “a one-and-a-half hour list of hateful texts about burning Jordanian pilots and killing prisoners of war,” the prosecutor said. They also spread ISIS propaganda to their families and glorified the caliphate and martyrdom. And there are many photos of the man in military clothing and with a firearm.

“The women are both married to the male suspect, formed a joint household with him, and thus strengthened the terrorist organization ISIS,” the OM said, adding that the women “deliberately participated in this.”

The prosecutor stressed that ISIS committed the most unimaginable atrocities. “The organization has conducted a reign of terror in Syria and Iraq for years. Torture, beheadings, burnings, and drownings were the order of the day, visible to everyone. ISIS has dehumanized dissenters in every possible way. By murdering them, such as the unprecedented genocide of the Yazidi population. But also by treating them as objects of use, such as the large-scale slavery of Yazidi women.”

The OM demanded 7 years in prison against the man, partly because he “refused to provide any insight into what motivated him.” Based on comparable cases, the OM demanded 48 and 42 months against the women and a two-year probation period. The court in Rotterdam will rule on October 1.