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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
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