European prosecutors adopt harsher sentences towards female ISIS returnees

New book shows how different countries are adapting to an increase in female extremists behind bars

Defendant Jennifer W. arrives in a courtroom for her trial in Munich, Germany in October 2021. The woman from Lohne in Lower Saxony is charged with murder and war crimes as an IS supporter in Iraq. AP

European prosecutors are adopting harsher sentences towards female ISIS returnees as their numbers increase due to government repatriation programmes from prison camps in north-east Syria, a new book published by Dutch counter-terrorism think tank ICCT has found.

“Women can be both victims and perpetrators, including at the same time,” according to Female Jihadis Facing Justice, which looked at 283 trials. “Several girls and young women were vulnerable, whereas other women had more agency. Many women were involved only in non-violent activities, but some were also involved in violent activities, either within the household, or by inciting or plotting terrorist attacks.”

France, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium have faced a sudden influx of female terrorists. These four countries represent more than half of all adults who travelled to Syria and Iraq to join a terrorist organisation after 2012.

At first, female returnees were treated more leniently than men and were less likely to be prosecuted, convicted or imprisoned. This may be explained in part by a key difference with men: women were less likely to have a criminal record and to have engaged in criminal activities before joining ISIS. According to ICCT director Thomas Renard, information available for Belgium showed that 6.5 per cent of women had previous criminal careers compared to half of the men.

Displaced Iraqi people are seen at the Amriyat al Fallujah camp, outside Fallujah city, where Jennifer W. patrolled parks. Reuters

A softer approach in terms of charges for women changed after a wave of ISIS attacks on European soil, and particularly after a failed all-female plot against Notre Dame cathedral in Paris in 2016. Women are now most likely to be prosecuted for non-violent crimes such as recruitment and propaganda activities, with some differences between countries due to varying terrorism laws.

Germany in particular has prosecuted women for core international crimes such as looting and slavery – notably of Yazidi women bought or captured by ISIS fighters. This is not the case for example in Belgium, where it is not possible to prosecute individuals for both terrorism and war crimes under international law. Almost all women in Belgium have been convicted for membership of a terrorist organisation.

The book also highlights how detention centres across Europe have responded in different ways to an increase in female ISIS returnees. Yet it avoids drawing conclusions about the efficiency of these methods on their reintegration into society because so few women have so far been released.

The Netherlands "concentrates" female ISIS detainees in specific wards, Belgium and Germany "disperse" them and France has a more mixed approach depending on their level of violence and zealotry.

A "striking fact” about French prisons is that the number of female extremists is growing while the number of men is decreasing, wrote Marc Hecker, director of research at the French Institute for International Relations.

In May 2023, there were 96 radicalised women in prison and 307 men compared to 36 women in December 2016 and 350 men. This is mostly due to the French government systematically placing women repatriated from camps in North-East Syria in pre-trial detention.

The complexity of these women, often depicted in the media as “naïve or monsters”, must be better understood to shed light on how they should best be treated by judicial and correctional institutions in Europe, the book said.

Women’s traditional roles within ISIS have made it hard for some returnees to understand why they were prosecuted, wrote Sofia Koller, a senior research analyst at the Counter Extremism Project, a non-profit organisation based in New York. In the chapter on Germany, Ms Koller quotes one woman as saying: “I only cooked, had babies, was sitting the whole day in a madafa [a women’s guest house] and then married the next one.”

Overall, however, incidents with female detainees are rare, according to the authors. “In spite of the very low recidivism rates […], some concerns remain,” wrote Tanya Mehra, senior research fellow and programme lead at the ICCT, author of the chapter on The Netherlands.

Women may be less inclined to be involved in violent crime than men, but they are just as likely to perpetuate ISIS ideology among their close circles and online.