The wife of a senior Islamic State (IS) leader who was killed in a US raid last year has been charged in federal court with holding US national Kayla Mueller hostage and contributing to her death, the US Department of Justice said on Monday.
According to an FBI affidavit filed in the case, Nisreen Assad Ibrahim Bahar, also known as Umm Sayyaf, admitted after her capture in May last year that she and her husband kept Mueller, an aid worker, captive along with several other young female hostages.
US officials have said that while in custody, Mueller was repeatedly forced to have sex with Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Photo: AP, The Daily Courier
The criminal complaint, filed by federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia, charges Umm Sayyaf with conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terror organization, resulting in death.
The case was brought one year after Mueller was confirmed dead by her family and US President Barack Obama’s administration, though it is not clear when or if Umm Sayyaf will be brought to the US to stand trial.
The 25-year-old Iraqi woman, who was captured last year, is in Iraqi custody and facing prosecution there. Her husband, Abu Sayyaf, a former Islamic State minister for oil and gas, was killed in May last year in a Delta Force commando raid on his compound in Syria.
“We fully support the Iraqi prosecution of Sayyaf and will continue to work with the authorities there to pursue our shared goal of holding [Uum] Sayyaf accountable for her crimes,” US Assistant Attorney General John Carlin, head of the Justice Department’s national security division, said in a statement.
“At the same time, these charges reflect that the US justice system remains a powerful tool to bring to bear against those who harm our citizens abroad. We will continue to pursue justice for Kayla and for all American victims of terrorism,” he added.
Mueller, from Prescott, Arizona, was taken hostage with her boyfriend, Omar Alkhani, in August 2013 after leaving a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Aleppo, Syria, where he had been hired to fix the Internet service for the hospital.
Mueller had begged him to let her tag along because she wanted to do relief work in the war-ravaged country. Alkhani was released after two months, having been beaten.
Mueller was transferred in September 2014 along with two Kurdish women of Yazidi descent from an Islamic State prison to the Sayyafs, according to the FBI affidavit, which says the couple at times handcuffed the captives, kept them in locked rooms, dictated orders about their activities and movements, and showed them violent Islamic State propaganda videos.
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