A German convert to Islam, who went off to join the Islamic State, bringing her 13-year-old son with her, then returned to Germany, where she is now being charged for belonging to two terrorist groups – Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State – and for allowing her young son to join a terrorist group. Her disturbing tale is told here: “German mother charged after signing up her teenage son to ISIS,” by Paul Peachey, The National, November 3, 2021:
A German woman whose son of 15 died fighting for ISIS in Syria has been charged with terrorist offences.
The woman, identified only as Stefanie A by German prosecutors, travelled to Syria in 2016 with her son, then 13, to try to join up with her husband, who had joined ISIS the previous year.
Unable to reach her husband in the northern city of Raqqa, she travelled via Turkey to the north-western city of Idlib, where she signed up with the Al Qaeda-linked Jund Al Aqsa group and allowed her son to receive weapons training and become a fighter for the extremist group, according to German federal prosecutors.
The following year, she travelled to Raqqa with other members of the group and joined up with her husband in Raqqa.
The family was bankrolled by ISIS and allowed their son to have religious and military training with ISIS.
The child was used in combat operations and died at the age of 15, in a bomb attack in March 2018, according to German prosecutors.
Stefanie A then got in touch with her [older] son who was still living in Germany and asked him to be happy about the ‘martyrdom’ of his younger brother,” prosecutors said.
Fanatical in her faith, Stephanie A. had no qualms about her 15-year-old son’s death in combat; she wanted her older son to be as “happy” as she was with his “martyrdom.”
She wore a suicide belt and carried a rifle while a member of ISIS.
She and her husband remained loyal to the group and surrendered to Kurdish troops in Baghouz in February 2019. They were held at the Al Hawl refugee camp in northern Syria.
Stefanie A returned to Germany and was arrested in March this year at Berlin Airport.
She has been charged with membership of two foreign terrorist groups, breaking weapons laws and committing her son as a fighter to a foreign terrorist group.
It was not immediately clear how she returned to Germany, but the government has been repatriating women and children who are in the camps….
Why should Germany have allowed Stephanie A. back into the country? If it was to punish her with a very long prison term, and then to expel her from Germany so that she would have to live out the rest of her days in some Muslim hellhole, that is understandable. But that is not what has been happening to ISIS brides. If recent history is any guide, she will be given at most only a few years In prison, and then allowed to remain in Germany. She joined two terrorist groups – Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, and allowed, indeed encouraged, her young son to become a terrorist, but there is no evidence that she herself committed a terrorist act. Another German woman who joined ISIS, and helped her husband to murder a five-year-old Yazidi girl whom they had enslaved, and whom, as punishment for wetting her bed, they chained to a post, and then left her to die of thirst under a blazing sun, received only ten years, and that sentence can be reduced even further if she behaves herself in prison.
What will Stephanie A. receive from a German judge? Two years? Three? And then she will, like all the other ISIS wives who have returned to Germany, be allowed to stay in the country that she abandoned, and betrayed, when she joined ISIS. She may not have managed to kill anybody while in the Islamic State – of course, we only have her word for that — but that was because she didn’t get the chance. Her fondest wish as a member of ISIS was to slaughter Infidels and insufficiently fanatical Muslims. She pushed her son to train for, and engage in terrorist acts, and took pleasure in his “martyrdom.”
A fitting punishment for Stephanie A. would not be a few years in prison, followed by living out the rest of her life in the very country that she betrayed when she became an ISIS fanatic and willingly sacrificed her young son to the cause. The German incarceration philosophy is to focus on “normalization”: that is, making life in prison as similar as possible to life in the community. It’s a very soft existence, completely unlike American prisons. And that’s not what the ISIS brides deserve.
Instead, she and the other 180-odd ISIS brides who have been allowed back into Germany should now be promptly expelled to a Muslim land, ideally one like Pakistan or Iran, where Islamic law is most strictly enforced. When these women joined ISIS, they rejected their country and their people. So let Stephanie A.’s former country and people reject her. Let her, now a woman in that strict Islamic land, wake up each morning to the full horror of what she had willingly done, when she gave up her life in Germany for the bleak life in a Muslim country, and now unable to forget that she had sacrificed her own son on the altar of fanatical Islam. Her torment, sooner or later, will be terrible.
Robert Frost once wrote that “home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” The brides of ISIS gave up on their original homes and turned on their own people. Once they joined ISIS, Germany was no longer their home. And when a German ISIS bride thinks that she has to go there, they don’t any longer have to take her in.
Anjuli Pandavar says
They also engage in a joyous passport bonfire when they arrive in ISIS land. Of course they must never be allowed back. The same goes for their monstrous “cubs”. Yes, of course it is not their children’s fault, but that does not change what they are: cold, hardwired killers. Father, mothers, children, singularly or together, all stay out.
mortimer says
The deeper question here is ‘what to do with people who VOLUNTARILY REPUDIATE their citizenship of birth, adopt another nationality and then fight against their home country, and then, the repent and want back in?’
While the UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness is aimed at stopping governments from making people stateless, but what happens when these people VOLUNTARILY relinquish their citizenship without coercion? Have the ISIS brides not CHOSEN statelessness? Why should we not respect their choice?
Following the American Civil War, a number of notable Confederates lived in exile and when they were asked their country and nationality, they gave ‘CSA’, rather than USA.
Kepha says
Yes, and those CSA refugees became good Brazilians after a generation or two.
As for ISIS brides, I don’t know what provisions there are in German law. However, the laws of most countries with strong constitutional liberties and competitive politics make it pretty hard to lose citizenship.
In the USA, it’s hard to lose citizenship unless you become head of state of a foreign country or serve in a policy-level post in such. Hence, we have to take back our ISIS-joiners. The other side of that, though, is that the FBI may be waiting for them on the tarmac.
Kagman says
What to do with them? Consider marrying into Islam like being exposed to Sarin nerve gas… Except Islam never degrades, never loses potency and it can’t be scrubbed off.
Isolate them like the poison they’ve become and, hopefully, the toxin that’s infected them kills it’s host quickly quickly. Under no circumstances should they ever be allowed back into civil society again.
fadeye@yahoo.com says
Agreed!
Phil Copson says
“…She wore a suicide belt and carried a rifle while a member of ISIS.
She and her husband remained loyal to the group and surrendered to Kurdish troops…”
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Right – so they were “loyal” / “fanatical in their faith” / “happy about martyrdom” etc etc – right up until the moment where they had to deliver on their boasts and give their own lives – at which point they promptly decided that while dying for islam was just fine and dandy for a 15-year old, it wasn’t quite so important to them after all, and surrendered. Cowardly as well as callous.
fadeye@yahoo.com says
She effectively murdered her own son, ONLY in islam does that Not require severe punishment!
fadeye@yahoo.com says
Prison for murder, of course! She murdered her own son FFS!!!
fadeye@yahoo.com says
Lol, the start of that one paragraph gave me a great idea!…the punishment for these violent islamic jihad terrorists Should be: deport the shiite terrorists to a sunni country and the sunni terrorists to see shiite country!
tim gallagher says
None of these ISIS fighters should be allowed back into the non-Muslim, western countries they previously lived in. These evil scum made their decision to go off and join in with the evil behaviour that ISIS indulged in. If they are allowed back into western countries, it will cost the taxpayers there a fortune because authorities will always have to keep checking on what evil garbage these maggots are planning to do next. As for the children, I have sympathy for them, but their minds have probably been permanently poisoned by their parents and by the ISIS scum of the earth they hung around with. Unfortunately, a lot of these ISIS scum will end up back in western countries, because we are so soft, but it will be a very foolish move to let them back in, a decision that will be regretted..
Valhella says
Absolutely, Tim – it beggars belief that we still credit followers of that Satanic cult with any semblance of humanity let alone allow them to infest civilised society.
PMK says
The best thing would be they should be hanged for committing treason. Since that will never happen, they should NEVER be allowed into polite society. If they choose to return to their country of origin, let them serve a life sentence with no parole. No freedom to move around, ever.
How many stories have there been about people being arrested as they were about to board a plane to join ISIS? At that point their passports should be destroyed and they should be warned that there is no coming back once they board that plane. Such a policy needs to be enforced, with no sympathy for those who chose to fight in the Islamist cause. Is exile for crimes committed against your country (how many of these ISIS fighters killed people from their home country?) no longer considered a just punishment?
Prabhakar Shetty says
Air drop them into Afghanistan.
Alex Lund says
Yes, but in nice flimsy underwear…
No, they belong somewhere else, like Novaya Semlja or some inaccessible islands far away from Europe.
They made their choice, so let them enjoy it to the fullest.
These “brides” will easily claim un-employment money and later unemployment money 2 aka Hartz IV aka basic security benefits for job seekers.
And they will have no hassles whatsoever.
You see, a normal german must in a financial sense make a striptease and proove to the unemployment office that he has no money, he has to literally beg and abase before them.
But do you think muslims must do this? I once received the predecessor of Hartz IV, known as Sozialhilfe aka social welfare and not only did I have to make the financial striptease, no I also had to work 20 h a week for just 1 Euro the hour. And I never saw a muslim at this work, but many collecting this money. And those muslims were having BMW 7 variety.
Where did they get the money and why didnt they have to work?
I think it may have something to do with the fact of JIHAD aka throatslitting etc.
Valhella says
You know it, Alex..
Proud Islamophobe says
Send the brides back to where they came from. Keep the kids and rehabilitate them. If they can’t be rehabilitated, throw them in jail.