BERLIN: A German-Tunisian woman who married a German rapper turned the fighter of the militant Islamic State group and who kept a child slave in Syria has been charged with crimes against humanity, federal prosecutors said on Monday.

The woman, named as Omaima A., is widely known for having been the wife of notorious German-Ghanaian rapper and IS jihadist Denis Cuspert, who went by the stage name Deso Dogg.

Arrested in September in Hamburg, she now faces a slew of charges over her membership of the extremist group.

“The defendant is suspected of having been involved as a member with the foreign terrorist organisation ‘Islamic State’. She is also charged... with crimes against humanity,” prosecutors said in a statement.

Prosecutors said Omaima A. had travelled to Syria in January 2015 with her three children to join her first husband and their father, Nadar H., in Syria.

She lived under IS rules, raising her children following the group’s doctrines, and receiving monthly financial help from the militant outfit, prosecutors said.

Between spring and summer 2015, Omaima A. allegedly held a 13-year-old Yazidi girl as a slave.

She married the rapper Denis Cuspert after her first husband was killed in an air raid in Kobane, according to prosecutors.

Cuspert, killed in 2018 in an airstrike in Syria, was one of the most notorious Western fighters for IS, having appeared in several propaganda videos including one that apparently showed him with a man’s severed head.

She subsequently left Cuspert and returned to Germany pregnant with their child, as well as her three other children, in 2016.

According to German media, Omaima A. quietly slipped back into German society after her return to Europe, working as an event manager and interpreter.

But a Lebanese journalist broke her story last year, sparking outrage in Germany over why she had not faced prosecution back in her home country.

Published in Dawn, March 17th, 2020