German woman joined ISIS in Syria goes under trial
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – A woman who fled Germany as a teenager to join ISIS in Syria goes on trial on Tuesday accused of aiding crimes against humanity.
Leonora Messing was just 15 when she fled her home in Sangerhausen, Germany, and became a high-profile jihadi bride.
Messing reached Raqqa, then the so-called at the time ‘capital’ of ISIS in Syria in 2015, before wedding fellow German national and extremist Martin Lemke, also known as Nihad Abu Yasir.
Her father, Maik Messing, 49, revealed his shock at his radicalised daughter’s decision to join a deadly terror group when he penned the book Leonora in 2019.
He revealed that just days after she vanished he received a text message saying Leonora ‘chose Allah and Islam’ and had ‘arrived in the caliphate’.
Messing, now aged 21, is in the dock in the eastern German city of Halle on suspicion that she and her ISIS husband enslaved a Yezidi woman in Syria in 2015.
The behind-closed-doors trial, scheduled to last until at least mid-May, will also try Messing on charges of membership of a terrorist organization and weapons law violations.
Her high-profile case has dominated conversations across her homeland, with Germans questioning how a teenage girl from a tiny town could fall into the hands of the Islamist cause.