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WORLD NEWS Monday 24 July 2017
German runaway girl who converted to Islam is found in Iraq
identity. is currently being held to- she will return to Germany,
The German teenager had gether with other foreign he said.
married a Muslim Arab women at a prison near “We, as the public pros-
she met online after arriv- Baghdad’s airport. Starting ecutor’s office Dresden,
ing in the group’s territory, next week, she’ll be inves- have not applied for an ar-
the Iraqi officials added, tigated by the Iraqis, who rest warrant and will there-
speaking on condition of will bring in German inter- fore not be able to request
anonymity because the in- preters for the interrogation extradition,” Haase said.
formation was not public. since she does not speak “There is the possibility that
They said Linda W. was one much Arabic. Linda might be put on trial
of 26 foreigners arrested in Haase, the German pros- in Iraq. She might be ex-
Mosul since the retreat of ecutor, told the AP that the pelled for being a foreigner
The market place of Pulsnitz photographed on Saturday, July the extremists there. girl ran away from her fam- or, because she is a minor
22, 2017. A German girl, who ran away from home shortly after So far, the young German ily home in Pulsnitz in east- reported missing in Germa-
converting to Islam, has been found in Iraq, prosecutors said
Saturday. has not made any state- ern Germany last summer. ny, she could be handed
(Sebastian Willnow/dpa via AP) ment. The officials said she It’s not clear yet whether over to Germany.”q
By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER
QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA
Associated Press
BERLIN (AP) — A German
girl who ran away from
home after converting to
Islam has been found as
Iraqi forces liberated the
northern city of Mosul from
Islamic State extremists,
German and Iraqi officials
said Saturday. She is report-
ed to be in good health
and will be interrogated
next week by Iraqi officials.
The 16-year-old teenager,
only identified as Linda W.
in line with German privacy
laws, is getting consular as-
sistance from the German
Embassy in Iraq, prosecu-
tor Lorenz Haase said from
the eastern German city of
Dresden.
Three Iraqi intelligence
and investigative sources
confirmed to The Associat-
ed Press that the German
teenager, who was appre-
hended in the basement
of a home in Mosul’s Old
City earlier this month, was
Linda W.
The girl is in good health,
the Iraqi officials said,
adding that on the day
of her arrest she was “too
stunned” to speak but now
she is doing better. They
said she had been working
with the IS police depart-
ment.
Linda W. could theoreti-
cally face the death sen-
tence, according to Iraqi’s
counter-terrorism law.
However, even if she is sen-
tenced to death in Iraq,
she would not be execut-
ed before the age of 22.
Photos of a disheveled
young woman in the pres-
ence of Iraqi soldiers went
viral online last week, but
there were contradict-
ing reports about the girl’s